Roots and Wings:
Lessons on Scale from the Weekend School
What can a Dutch supplementary school program teach us about successful scaling? As I will argue in this post, quite a lot, particularly for those of us who work on international education projects. But before I embark on this, let’s go to Molenbeek, Belgium.
It is Saturday morning at 10:30 in Molenbeek, Belgium. Outside, children have already begun to gather for school. Inside, where I sit, a group of engineers from the French company, Total, are receiving final instructions about the 4 week unit they are about to do with these kids.
The doors open and the kids bound in. For the next 5 hours, including an hour lunch provided by the center these children, the sons and daughters of Moroccan, Congolese, Sudanese, and Tunisian immigrants — study petrochemical engineering. They learn its concepts. They wear the uniforms of petrochemical engineers and interview engineers. They make plastics and practice using tools. This unit on petrochemical engineering will continue over the next four weekends. The engineers have been trained by weekend School staff in teaching methods. One tells me he has never been so nervous in his life.
The IMC Weekend School
Scenes like this play out every Saturday and Sunday across 22 sites in Holland, Belgium, and Hong Kong, where 1940 children, aged 10–14, study at the IMC Weekend School. From 11–4, over the course of 38 weekends per year, and 3 years, these kids, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, all of them low-income and identified as “at risk,” study photography, journalism, engineering and a range of other subjects, taught by over 7500 volunteer guest teachers.
Though students are identified by school social workers as potentially benefiting from the Weekend School, they must in fact apply to join. Not all get in and not everyone graduates, but since 1998, when Heleen Terwijn began the first Weekend School to help disaffected, struggling immigrant children in South Amsterdam, most children do graduate and many go on to become active young adult members of what can only be described as a movement. In addition to spreading beyond Holland, the Dutch Ministry of Education has recognized the Weekend School method and impact, and currently helps the organisation to implement the model in a growing number of at-risk public schools across the Netherlands.
Weekend School Impact
The IMC Weekend School is a beloved institution in the Netherlands, and the focus of this blog, because the model works. Research by numerous Dutch universities demonstrates that the Weekend School fosters future perspectives, persistence in school, and a sense of belonging to society.
Students in the Weekend School do better academically than non-Weekend School peers from similar backgrounds, and indeed than students from higher-income backgrounds. They also go onto university at higher rates than their non-Weekend School peers from similar backgrounds. Furthermore, data shows that IMC Weekend School alumni have better professional prospects, are more self-aware, and feel more connected with society than their non-Weekend School peers.
Lessons on Scale from the Weekend School
There is a tremendous human-interest story associated with the Weekend School that I’m forgoing to get to the real point of this blog. Like anyone reading this post, I am interested in scale: How do we do it successfully not just superficially? How do we scale quality? Like many readers, I recognize many of the inherent conflicts in our desire to scale. It is critical for lasting change but a singular focus on scale often undermines the good we are trying to attain because in order to scale we may focus on what is simple and doable versus what is complex and necessary.
The Weekend School is also the focus of this blog because it is the most successful example of scale I have seen in two decades of work on education programs whose ultimate goal is scale. The Weekend School is so successful, I believe, because it focuses on a simple, important and overlooked truth about scale: depth matters.
Depth Matters
The most common definitions of “going to scale” or “scaling up” within international education development are clustered around the elements of replication and expansion in terms of numbers (spread). The World Bank (2003), for example, defines scaling up as “expanding, adapting and sustaining successful policies, programs or projects in different places and over time to reach a greater number of people.”
However, as Figure 2 shows, scale involves four dimensions — depth, sustainability, spread, and a shift in ownership (Coburn, 2003). Though all components are equal, in the international development world, one component is more equal than others — spread. But in fact, as the Weekend School illustrates (at the risk of repeating myself), the linchpin to scale is not spread. It is depth. Without deep and lasting improvement, there is nothing to spread or shift or sustain — or scale.
It’s All about Depth
“Deep and consequential improvement” (Coburn, 2003) requires deep and lasting learning and by extension a deep and lasting investment — in curriculum, in philosophy, in preparing teachers, and in evaluating and revising all components of the program. Above all, depth involves an investment in human capital. The Weekend School invests so much time — years — educating its students, immersing them in the norms and values of the Weekend School, and helping them develop as a whole person. Each student spends a minimum of 3 years with the Weekend School but in fact, involvement is much longer, if the student wishes.
At age 14, if students meet all requirements, they receive a diploma from the Weekend School and become “alumni.” Here they join other active alumni in a four-year Weekend School alumni network program (Alumni networks are almost unheard of in Holland and Belgium). As part of a network of 2400 other alumni, students engage in a variety of follow-up activities, such as master classes, leadership classes, job readiness trainings, coaching, and tutoring. Upon completing the alumni program, at age 18, students, if they wish to continue, apply to become part of an “Ambassador” program where they assume managerial, mentoring and teaching responsibilities and organize bi-annual workshop, which they organize, and where they hold classes for each other (I attended one of these). Alumni have also instituted a Weekend School program for refugee children in three refugee schools.
Depth → Ownership, Spread, Sustainability
Once a critical mass of highly knowledgeable and committed individuals who have lived and been transformed by an experience takes root, the other elements of scale can more easily be established. Depth leads to a shift in ownership because to be successfully scaled, an approach or innovation approach needs to be owned — individually, collectively, and institutionally. Ownership involves understanding, integration, putting into action. Weekend School students, alumni and ambassadors embody this. Their professional and personal pride in being a member of the Weekend School is manifest. They exhibit a strong sense of this is “what we do” and “who we are.” A shift in ownership, so necessary for successful scale, is based on beliefs, on expertise, on seeing the actual value of what you do and knowing that it is good. It takes years, and constant practice, not months, not a 5-day Train-the-Trainers session to cultivate. It takes opening our work up to rigorous outside evaluations so we know that our project is worth scaling. Moreover, it takes a focus, not just on product, but also on process.
Together, depth and ownership result in spread — disseminating the beliefs, norms and practices associated with an innovation to a wider audience and doing so with fidelity and quality. The Weekend School has been able to spread to three countries because it knows that its innovation is worth scaling (see previous paragraph about evaluations) and it avoids founder syndrome by empowering students, alumni and ambassadors to establish new programs and run them. The Weekend School franchises its own model — helping social entrepreneurs understand the Weekend School approach, providing all content and materials, and assessing the financial plans of potential Weekend School affiliates (like the one I visited in Molenbeek). These “franchises” are then given a great deal of autonomy as long as they hold to the Weekend School mission and purpose.
Sustainability is not simply about financial and organizational survival. It is about the degree to which activities and programs become “what the institution does” as part of their day to day, year in/year out work, and their ability to keep supporting, and sustaining these efforts organizationally, financially and in terms of volition. Again, without depth, there is no sustainability. Sustainability has to begin at the individual level — with individuals and organizations that have expertise, embody excellence, and have the individual and collective self-efficacy that comes from both of these qualities. And sustainability is also cumulative. It depends on knowing that your innovation or approach is worthy of spread and that others value it and deep sense of pride and commitment that come with a shift on ownership.
Roots and Wings
No organization is better than the collective capacity of its members. This is why the kind of deep investment in building the knowledge and skills, and changing the beliefs of members, is so critical. This is the Weekend’s School greatest lesson to those of us who work on international education projects. Without depth, there is no shift in ownership, spread and sustainability. Without depth, scale is ephemeral and quantitative, not deep and lasting.
With depth, spread, shift in ownership and sustainability, scale moves beyond numbers (more Weekend School students) and organizational expansion (more Weekend School sites) to quality outcomes (students who go on to be productive members of their community). It results in the scaling of functions (in the case of the Weekend School, working with refugee children). It results in political scaling up (working with other stakeholders like the Dutch Ministry of Education) (Uvin, 1995). Above all, it results in disseminating and sharing educational practices that qualitatively make a difference in the lives of so many young people.
References
Coburn, C.E. (2003, August/September). Rethinking scale: moving beyond numbers to deep and lasting change. Educational Researcher, 32 (6), pp. 3–12
Uvin, P. (1995). Fighting hunger at the grassroots: Paths to scaling up. World Development, 23(6):927–939.
World Bank (2003, June). Scaling-up the Impact of Good Practices in Rural Development: A Working Paper to Support Implementation of the World Bank’s Rural Development Strategy. Report Number 26031. Agriculture and Rural Development Department
