In comparison with students from other countries, British students are treading water. Despite the introduction of marketisation, despite the GCSE results getting better year on year, despite more money being spent on education under New Labour, looked at internationally, we are going nowhere… at least if you believe the latest analysis from PISA

 

PISA – the Programme for International Student Assessment – aims to compare and rank the mathematical, reading and science skills of 15 year olds in 65 different countries. It does this by subjecting a sample of children from a range of different backgrounds within these countries to do a two hour test (an overall sample of about 450 000!)

PISA is less interested in knowing whether children can repeat, like parrots, what they have learnt in class. It is more interested in knowing whether students can use their reading skills, for example to make sense of the information they find in newspapers and government documents etc. Fastforward to about 4 minutes in the video below to get examples of the kinds of questions asked.

According to the latest (2009) results the countries at the top in reading are…

1. China
2. Korea
3. Finland
4. Singapore and
5. Canada

The United Kingdom ranks only 25th. The really worrying thing is that although in Britain GCSE results may well be getting better year on year,  in international standings, Britain has stagnated.

PISA also allows to figure out what works in terms of education – and what works is as follows

1. Placing a high value on education
2. Countries with a high proportion of children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds tend to do worse – and within each country students who attend schools with a largely disadvantaged background tend to do worst than those from – partly related to the fact that the best teachers tend to drift to schools
3. Interestingly, spending on eductaion seems to matter much less than the above.Having universally high standards for all students – this basically means the absence of ‘early tracking’ where it is assumed that certain students will not be capable of an ‘academic’ education for example and so are pushed into vocational pathways early on.
4. Not allowing repetition of years – emphasising the importance of first time success.
5. Attracting the best minds into the teaching profession – which basically means paying teachers well.
6. Schools having a high degree of freedom – but designed with a strong system of accountability, so that the authorities can step in if a school is failing.

PISA also tells us that girls persistently do better than boys in reading in all countries, but in maths the opposite is the case, while in science there is no significant gender differnce.

So why are UK students going nowhere?

Obviously we have to consider the fact that other countries are improving, but we need to ask – why aren’t our students improving compared to those in other countries? The answer, I believe, must be due to five things – basically involving the fact that we are not doing the things that work listed above!

• Firstly, we have appalling levels of inequality – this is what really shows up in international perspective – a signficiant percenatage of our kids from poorer backgrounds are failing GCSEs and thus wouldn’t have a hope in the PISA test
• Secondly, we ‘early track’ to the hilt – through banding and tiering in GCSEs for example – and with ‘vocational pathways’ being a possibility this is only set to get worse.
• Thirdly, ever since marketisation, we teach to the test!
• Fourthly, schools don’t have that much autonomy – The National Curriculum and OFSTED and national testing constrain teachers considerably.
• And finally – this is true at A level at least, we allow resit after resit after resit

I feel it necessary to emphasise the extent to which Inequality seems to matter more than the amount spent on education in explaining PISA rankings…. look at these two graphs below –

 

 

 So what is the government doing about this?

1. Promote social policy that increases inequality
2. Promote more vocational education and encourage students to take up vocational type GCSE equivelents
3. Make students pay for Higher Education to further alienate children from disadvantaged backgrounds from the idea of going to university
4. Worsen the conditions of teachers by giving them a pay freeze and cutting pensions

In fairness there are some aspects of government policy I agree with (dare I say it Gove’s emphasis on ‘proper academic’ subjects for all kids) but unless we alter the fundamental basis of inequality and a marketised education system that favours the rich, then, overall, our students will never be competitive at a global level.