By Gavin Mackintosh-
Educational success has been measured largely by what can be seen on a report card: examination results, grades, qualifications and university admissions. These measures remain important. They demonstrate that a student has acquired knowledge and mastered particular academic disciplines, but they tell only part of the story.
The deeper question is what happens after the examination papers have been marked. It matters whether education produce people who can think independently, communicate confidently, adapt to change, pursue ambitious goals and contribute meaningfully to society. Education is meant to inspire curiosity beyond the syllabus, and equip young people not merely to pass examinations, but to build successful and purposeful lives.
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Increasingly, evidence suggests that the quality of education should be understood in these broader terms. The OECD has argued that high-quality education produces benefits extending well beyond academic achievement. Better education is associated with higher earnings and productivity, but also with greater civic participation, wellbeing, social engagement and the capacity to respond to new challenges.
It helps develop the capabilities that allow individuals and societies to thrive.This helps explain why the achievements of former students can become an important part of the reputation of a school, college or university. Alumni are, in a sense, living evidence of what an educational institution helped its students become.
The alumni test
When parents, students and education analysts consider the quality of an institution, they often look beyond examination results to the destinations and achievements of its former pupils. At university level, graduate employment, earnings, further study, professional achievement and other outcomes are now routinely collected and analysed.
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In the UK, for example, the Department for Education’s Longitudinal Education Outcomes data tracks employment and earnings at different points after graduation. That approach reflects a sensible principle that education should ultimately make a difference in people’s lives.Research has also found a relationship between university quality and graduate earnings. An IZA study examining UK universities found a positive association between measures of university quality and graduate wages.
However, alumni success must be interpreted carefully. A university cannot claim sole responsibility for every successful graduate. Students arrive with different abilities, family circumstances, ambitions, networks and opportunities. Indeed, research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that simply comparing average graduate earnings can be misleading because selective universities may admit students who were already likely to achieve strong outcom
Nevertheless, the achievements of alumni can provide valuable evidence about whether an institution is developing capabilities that endure beyond graduation. And those capabilities are not always acquired through conventional lessons.
The education that happens after the timetable ends
Some of the most influential learning takes place outside formal classroom instruction.A student who joins a debating society learns to construct an argument and listen to opposing views. A young musician develops discipline through repeated practice. A member of a sports team learns teamwork, resilience and responsibility.
A student involved in drama develops confidence and communication skills. Someone who volunteers in the community discovers that knowledge has social responsibilities.These experiences can be difficult to capture in examination statistics, yet they may prove enormously valuable later in life.
OECD analysis of PISA data found that extracurricular activities can contribute to broader development, including persistence, teamwork and a stronger sense of belonging. Its analysis also found that students attending schools offering more creative extracurricular activities, such as music, theatre and art, had higher average reading performance after accounting for student and school characteristics. The significance is not simply that extracurricular activities can improve grades. Their deeper value may lie in the habits and attitudes they cultivate.
Education becomes powerful when students learn how to persevere after failure, collaborate with others, discover interests, manage responsibility and become comfortable with unfamiliar ideas.These are precisely the qualities that examinations alone struggle to measure.
The extraordinary power of reading beyond the syllabus
Few extracurricular activities illustrate this principle better than reading. There is a profound difference between reading because a teacher has assigned a chapter and reading because a young person has discovered something they genuinely want to know.
Academic experts agree that voluntary reading exposes students to ideas, cultures, personalities and experiences beyond their immediate environment. A teenager who reads biographies can encounter a life of extraordinary achievement in the same way a novel can introduce them to an unfamiliar culture , moral dilemma, or a pool of valuable ideas.
A book about science can transform curiosity into a career ambition. History can demonstrate how societies change; philosophy can challenge assumptions; journalism can encourage a student to question what they see around them.
Research increasingly supports the idea that reading for pleasure is not a luxury added to “real” education. A 2024 review of research found compelling international evidence linking reading for pleasure with reading achievement and other learning and wellbeing outcomes, while also stressing that the evidence is complex and should not be oversimplified.
The UK’s recent parliamentary inquiry into reading for pleasure similarly concluded that reading can affect children’s learning, wellbeing, relationships and academic attainment, with benefits that can extend into adulthood.
A particularly important finding concerns motivation. Students who enjoy reading are more likely to read regularly; regular practice strengthens vocabulary and comprehension, which can make reading more rewarding and encourage further reading. It can become a virtuous cycle in which curiosity creates competence, and competence creates greater curiosity. That is education at its most effective: when the learner eventually becomes capable of educating themselves.
Exposure creates possibility
There is another reason extracurricular reading and wider educational experiences matter: exposure can change ambition. A child cannot easily aspire to become something they have never encountered.
A student who reads about an astronaut may begin to imagine a career in space science. A young person who discovers the biography of an entrepreneur may begin to consider starting a business. A novel may inspire an interest in languages, history or another culture. Meeting professionals, visiting universities, attending competitions or participating in artistic and scientific activities can similarly expand a student’s understanding of what is possible.
Education therefore does more than transfer knowledge. It expands the individual’s map of the possible. This is especially important for students who may not have extensive opportunities outside school. For them, a well-resourced school library, an inspirational teacher, a music programme, a debating club or a school trip can provide encounters that would otherwise remain inaccessible.
In this sense, educational quality also has an equality dimension. The richest educational environment is not necessarily the one with the most expensive facilities, but the one that gives the greatest number of young people opportunities to discover talents and ambitions they did not know they possessed.
Achievement is bigger than a certificate
The danger of judging education solely through examination performance is that it can encourage schools and students to concentrate on what is easiest to measure. But some of life’s most consequential achievements cannot be reduced to a grade.
Leadership, creativity, resilience, empathy, intellectual curiosity, entrepreneurship, citizenship and the confidence to attempt something difficult may take years to reveal themselves.
Recent research on school quality makes precisely this point. A 2026 study published in the European Economic Review found that school quality cannot be adequately represented by a single ranking and that schools producing the strongest test performance are not necessarily the same schools that maximise students’ chances of graduating or progressing to further education.
The implication is powerful- a good education should be judged partly by what students achieve, but also by what they become capable of achieving.
The real legacy of a good education
The strongest schools do not simply produce high grades. They produce confident readers, thoughtful citizens, curious researchers, creative artists, determined entrepreneurs, compassionate professionals and people capable of continuing to learn long after they leave the classroom.
Their alumni become part of the institution’s legacy, not because every graduate will become famous or wealthy, but because their lives demonstrate whether education has translated knowledge into capability and opportunity.
That is why the true measure of educational quality should be considerably broader than examination tables. Grades tell us what a student knew at a particular moment. Alumni outcomes can tell us something about where education eventually led them. Extracurricular activities reveal how students learned to apply themselves beyond the curriculum. Reading for pleasure reveals whether education succeeded in creating an appetite for lifelong learning.
The finest educational achievement may be the creation of a person who no longer needs to be told what to learn. They have become curious enough to ask questions, motivated enough to seek answers and confident enough to turn what they discover into action
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