Human Resources Development in the Education Environment

Human Resources Development is the act of organising the learning experience of an individual in a specific period of training time to deduce possibility for better performance or personal growth (Nadler and Nadler as cited in Gold, Holden, Iles, Stewart and Beardwell, 2010). Ofsted, the Office of Standard in Education, is the one who inspects institutions who provide education and skill for the pupil at all age in the United Kingdom. Ofsted then produces a report which reflects the school performance, which also reflects the human resource department of that school. For the school to be able to find success and higher prestige in the ranking system, the human resources department needs to be in collaboration with others department in the school, connecting them together to function at high efficiency. By comparing schools in Huddersfield from Ofsted reports, the assignment will show how important the role human resources in the school system, specifically how the human resources can able school to be more productive and how it makes the learning progress of the pupil differ. According to Honey and Mumford (1996), learning is when an individual can demonstrate a subject that the individual did not know before and/or the individual obtain a skill or set of skills. The assignment will firstly discuss learning needs, going through the planning stage, delivery and evaluation which can be used as tools for school to increase their performance. Finally, Kirkpatrick’s level of evaluation will be developed through the assignment as the foundation to the solution that school can introduce into their operating system as the assignment examines the problems that they face.

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Learning, Education and Training are similar concepts; however, it is important to distinguish them from one and another. Mayo and Lank (1994) explained education as the act of exposure to new knowledge, ideas with the purpose of increasing your understanding of a specific subject. On the other hand, training involves being taught and shown the way things work, obtaining the essential skill to satisfy the learning need. And learning is when the employee needs to be centred and focus on their benefits in developing. Similarly, Reid and Barrington (1997) learning involve a change in behaviour as a result of practice or experience. By understanding the definition of learning, Beevers and Rea (2016) move on to identify the learning need which exists where there is a lack of capability and desired at the current stage. Moreover, when the term “capability” is mention, it is usually referring to three main elements: knowledge, skills and behaviours. According to Honey (as cited in Middlewood and Lumby, 1998;1999), people learn new things whether we want them to or not, the only problem is that some institutions are unwittingly to design an encouraging environment to develop behaviours and practices they wish they had. Ofsted (2008) report on Greenhead College provided a mission statement is to provide a supportive environment for the individual to feel valued, being nurtured to strive for their full potential in academic, moral, social and physical development. In contrast, Ofsted (2018) and Ofsted (2017) reports on Almondbury Community School and Colne Valley Highschool are unable to provide a mission statement making them be in the improvement and inadequate categories. Without the mission statement, teachers and pupils do not have a goal to act on there for their needs of learning to develop become more crucial. Recognising the needs to learning and identifying the problems, for schools such as Ofsted (2008) who have set out the mission and value statement, the school can easily act upon it as a foundation to operate or pilot the school the way they want. Interestingly, when Ofsted (2008) pointed out Greenhead College improvement points, the school taking it into account immediately as they want to increase their high standard quality. Whereas, Almondbury school before was a require improvement school but now their quality has fallen because of the lack in identify what it needs to develop.

Being able to identify the learning needs that the institutions are lacking, the next stage is to plan. According to Hyman, the lesson gives a real insight into the extraordinary alchemy of teaching but without planning the lesson, teaching becomes more predictable and the lesson turns into a routine give a sense of boredom. This marks the time to change the teaching formula that has been excessively used. (as cited in Butt, 2006).  Being able to create an effective and ‘fit for purpose’ training and learning requires the organisation to carefully translation and identified needs into thoughtful learning plans (Gold et al., 2010). Similarly, Hyman (as cited in Butt, 2006) stated that it is common for all teaching to meticulous planning and create pacey lessons which contain all the learning needs that sweep the student along the way. Specific objectives need to be communicated with the team involved with the plan and they must be measurable, design fit for purpose of training and avoid ambiguity in the process. Plan must contain the following elements: details on a calendar basis of each department’s project on training for each categories; the training standard needs to be specified and achieved; its duration and training cost has to be listed, the detail of the date it will take place and its expected completion date; a summary of the budget allocated for training (Reid and Barrington, 1997). As well as learning needs information, the institution needs to clarify other factors, such as legislative requirements, factor concerning the delegates who are attending on the delivery stage. Ofsted (2008) stated that there is good communication between department as outstanding teaching practices are being shared among teachers. Whereas, Ofsted (2017) stated the leaders of Colne Valley Highschool have a lack of clarification in their plan in how to change the quality teaching, this cause ambiguous among teachers and staffs on how to deliver the school objective and obtain better performance. Therefore, planning can make the delivery process straightforward as the objective is in order and the teaching material are easily hand. The person who is delivering the project can be confident and assured as the individual who attends the train is going to responsive and the material is layout perfectly with the flow when coming through training transitions. This makes the act of delivering the project appear almost effortless and the outcome being smooth, natural (Butt, 2006). Most of the time school suffer from low-level of disruption, poor classroom practice, inadequate progression and poorly assessment task can all be traced back to unsatisfied planning structure (Butt, 2006). This suggested why Ofsted (2018) report on Almondsbury Community school suffer from teachers not planning according to the pupil’s needs, therefore creating issues such as the progress among pupils vary and creating an environment where exclusion, racist incident and unwanted behaviour exist. Teachers need to be able to balance between activities, exercises and the amount of time delivering the knowledge.

In the delivery stage, it is critical to understand the learning barrier and what learner difficulty as they approach to learn. The first barrier that makes delivery stage difficult is that learners will certainly experience the feeling of uncertainty and ignorant. Afterwards, learners will try to protect themselves from their shame of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process of blocking out new understanding is what Argyris calls ‘skill incompetence’ – teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning (Senge as cited in Middlewood and Lumby, 1998;1999). This led to the first step in delivering a session is to break the ice, welcome the learners and encouraging them to introduce themselves. The action will make them feel more comfortable and confident about participating in later activities. If all learner’s interaction with each other’s positively and respectfully, and all group of members feel included a positive learning environment is created. An environment which learner feel safe, confident and motivated to participate. An effective delivery session means using a variety of appropriate mixture of training methods and resources to deliver the activities which meet learning objective. Ofsted (2008) reported that teachers are enthusiastic and committed to delivering a high standard session with a commitment to make student success. Whilst delivering the session, the deliverer should always pay attention to the individual learner progress and make adjustment where their lack of understanding can be enhanced. Although this can be challenging during the moment the session is being delivered, it can be managed by taking a small amount of listening and observing learners and make small changes to adapt to the environment. Therefore, experienced teachers may seem different from others as they have a good understanding of their roles, the resources that they use, making it seem that they can deliver the session without barely planning anything. This is because they know how to make changes according to the situation and knowing which learning activities work best for his or her pupils (Butt, 2006). It is argued that the pace of which pupils take in the knowledge vary, therefore by putting knowledge into practice, the teacher can have a better understanding of the student progress. However, there is rarely one best method to deliver the session. It is noted that all methods have their strengths and weaknesses. The key is to match the method with the needs of the pupils and the flow of the session being delivered. Blended learning, which contains a combination of appropriate methods, is increasingly seen as the way to gain the pupils’ attention, as this will enable more of activities for them to engage and decrease the feeling of boredom. Effective use of blended learning also may well be the best option toward ‘hard to reach’ or disenfranchised learners (Gold et al., 2010). This can be applied to Almondsbury and Colne Valley schools as they are struggling to obtain the pupils confident and attention during every lesson (Ofsted, 2017;2018). Resources also play an important role in the delivery stage as it needs to be prepared before the lesson start such as notes, handout sheets, document, … It is also advised that the teachers need to encourage learners to identify the topic of the session beforehand and bring in their own learning resources. The more information that is being brought to the session, the better the learning experience will become like the teachers and their pupils is building up a unique collection exciting knowledge (Gold et al., 2010). Before ending the session, the deliverer needs to ensure that a transfer from learning to practice take place and ensure that some form of evaluation has been undertaken.

The final stage is to evaluate what has been delivered. This is crucial as it enables us to establish how the session has impacted on performance and supporting business objective.  Evaluation is the process of collecting and interpreting the data as the method to prove, improve and control performance. Moreover, evaluation is also to ensure that the planning and delivery stage is aligned and help to enhance and achieve the business objective. In 1959, Kirkpatrick publishes a technique to evaluate training programs with four different levels. The first level of evaluation is the reaction, this is where the evaluation process only touches the surface, asking how the learner feeling toward the session being delivered. Learning is the second level name and this dive deeper into whether the learner gains new knowledge or skill. The next level is behaviour which concerns that it is possible that the learner can enjoy the session, but it might have no impact on changing their performance (Beevers and Rea, 2016). The last level in Kirkpatrick’s evaluation is a result which ask the question of whether the session has had an impact on the organisation. However, Beavers and Rea (2016) suggested that Kirkpatrick’s evaluation can be extended to a fifth level where it is taken into to account of Return on Investment (ROI). At this level, the evaluator will need to look at the detail of on the benefits and the cost of the session to work out the financial value that it has cost the institution. For example, when the session is happening, someone must be there to monitor the knowledge that is being delivered and this is a cost as they could have been doing other work. On the other hand, learning will have an impacted-on performance, skills and knowledge of the one whom been deliver. Ofsted (2018,2017) reports show that the schools have not done any evaluation activities which lead to quality of teaching vary across the school or the pupils’ work in class is underperformance. Ofsted (2008) also reported that in an outstanding school, the data being collected is not used efficiently, however, this has not led to the school performance degrade. The result that evaluation produce can then be appraised and use for managing the performance of the institution. By taking corrective action such as discipline and grievances the relationship between principle, teachers and pupil can be better. As the relationship improve, the teachers will put their trust in the leaders’ plan and the pupil can be confident that they are being taught and protected by their teacher.

In conclusion, HRD plays an important role in the education industry as it can create separate an outstanding school such as Greenhead College from Almondsbury and Colne Valley. Being able to demonstrate the value statement and mission statement, Greenhead College manages to identify their learning needs with ease, therefore, they were able to plan the training that they need in their teacher. Moreover, not only that Greenhead College have a plan, but they also are trying to deliver an environment where there is mutual respect between teachers in a different department, teachers-student and student-student relationship. Whereas Almondsbury and Colne Valley reports require an improvement in the behaviour of the student and the classroom discipline as this can be traced back to poorly plan lesson and training for the teacher. Recognising the importance of needs, planning and delivery, evaluation is none the less vital in HRD because the institution can identify its costs and benefits to improve the quality of teaching and stabilise financially.

Reference List:

Beevers, K., & Rea, A. (2016). Learning and development practice (3rd ed.). London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Butt, G. (2006). Lesson planning (2nd ed.). London: Continuum.

Gold, J. (2010). Human resource development: Theory and practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mordechai, G. (2005). The Basic, Educational Purpose, and the Curriculum. In J. L. Kincheloe (Ed.) Classroom teaching: An introduction (pp. 74-83). New York: Peter Lang.

Ofsted (2008). Greenhead College. Retrieved from https://files.api.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/908017

Ofsted (2017). Colne Valley High School. Retrieved from https://files.api.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/2704159

Ofsted (2018). Almondsbury Community School. Retrieved from https://files.api.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50055332

Reid, M., & Barrington, H. A. (1997). Training interventions: Managing employee development (5th ed.). London: Institute of Personnel and Development.

Honey, P., & Mumford, A. (1996). How to manage your learning environment: Making learning a priority at work. Maidenhead: Peter Honey.

Mayo, A. & Lank, E. (1994). The power of learning: a guide to gaining competitive advantage. London: Institute of personnel and development.

Middlewood, D., & Lumby, J. (1998;1999;). Human resource management in schools and colleges. London: Paul Chapman.