The Common Good Test
Do you own your decision-making capability, or rent it?
Fifteen statements on the five principles of the common good, applied to an institution's technology estate. Scored out of thirty, around six minutes with a senior team. Score each statement No, In part or Yes, read the band, and start with the lowest section.
How to use this
Fifteen statements, grouped into the five principles of the common good as applied to an institution's technology estate. Answer for the institution as it behaves this term, not as it is described in policy.
Score each statement No (0), In part (1) or Yes (2). Where two people disagree, the lower score is the more useful one.
| No | In part | Yes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1We have stated two or three improvement missions for this year, in terms specific enough to be proved wrong. | |||
| 2Every technology subscription is attached to a stated contribution to one of those missions, and can be cancelled when it is not making one. | |||
| 3Renewal is an active decision requiring evidence, rather than the default outcome of an unexamined direct debit. | |||
| 4Teachers shaped how our systems capture their practice, rather than absorbing fields chosen by someone outside the classroom. | |||
| 5No tool in our estate requires staff to enter data in order to receive an insight. | |||
| 6Local governors see spend, usage, implementation progress and outcomes for their own school, rather than receiving a curated summary. | |||
| 7A named human reviews, edits and approves every model output before it enters a pupil record. | |||
| 8Our systems state their confidence and flag what they could not see, in the output itself rather than in a footnote. | |||
| 9A governor can ask an unscheduled question and receive an answer with its provenance attached, without a member of staff assembling it by hand. | |||
| 10High-evidence provision, including tutoring, reaches our pupils by need rather than by what their families can pay. | |||
| 11We can say whether our AI tools are narrowing or widening the gap between our highest and lowest attainers. | |||
| 12Where our data improves a supplier's product, our terms reflect that contribution. | |||
| 13We capture a baseline before adopting a tool, rather than reconstructing one afterwards. | |||
| 14We record cost alongside effect for every intervention we evaluate. | |||
| 15We publish what we learn, including null and negative results, in a form a neighbouring school could act on. |
Reading the total
- 25-30 · Sovereign
- You can specify, evaluate and challenge what a vendor supplies. The exposure now is durability: capability that lives in individuals is not yet infrastructure.
- 17-24 · Governed in parts
- Real instruments in some places and none in others. Partial visibility concentrates governance in whoever holds the spreadsheet. Close the weakest principle first.
- 9-16 · Renting governance
- The institution can operate, but cannot answer questions about itself without asking a supplier. The first move is stating what the estate is for, so that something can be cancelled.
- 0-8 · In tenancy
- Decision rights are leased. Institutional knowledge flows outward and returns as a dashboard you cannot audit.
Take this evaluation online to see your score against the anonymised sector benchmark at educave.ai. educave.ai · Free to copy, forward and use inside your institution, with attribution.