PISA: Time for some scepticism

Editorial from Creative Teaching & Learning issue 4.3 (Dec 2013)

The PISA test results gave our political and education leaders another opportunity to criticise British schools. But, as Sue Lyle points out in this Creative Teaching & Learning (issue 4.3), the picture is much more complex than it at first might seem.

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      string(5491) " CTL ISSUE 4.3The PISA test results gave our political and education leaders another opportunity to criticise British schools. But, as Sue Lyle points out in her article ‘The Leaning Tower of PISA tests’, the picture is much more complex than it at first might seem. The schools in Shanghai that did so well and were held up as such shining examples had recently dismissed, at 14 years old, all but 20 per cent of their populations.  What was left was a 20 per cent cohort of children who represented the academic elite of the area, and possibly the country. It is analogous to the grammar schools here, which Wilshaw has bravely refused to allow to expand in Kent, on the grounds that they are ‘stuffed full of middle-class children’ and would in no way improve social mobility.On top of this selectivity, the Shanghai student elite are, to quote Norman Matloff, an American Professor also expressing some scepticism of the results, academic athletes who are trained to pass tests – including the PISA tests. America had the same sort of results as the UK, with us middling in the league tables, a long way behind Asian countries.Like athletic training, Chinese education is drill, drill, practice, practice. Students in the US, Matloff reminds us, have much better things to do with their time, including leading world popular culture and starting up multi-national internet companies. As anyone who has met Chinese headteachers will tell you, they are desperate for some of the more creative pedagogy that takes place in the UK.Even former Premier, Wen Jiabao, Matloff points out, has complained about China’s rote-memory approach to education. And Chen Lixin, an engineering professor at Northwestern Polytechnic University in Xi’an, has warned that China produces students who can’t think independently or creatively, and have trouble solving practical problems. He wrote in 1999 that the Chinese education system ‘results in the phenomenon of high scores and low ability’, an observation germane to PISA results. In the 2009 tests, ‘students scored low in independent reading strategies, meaning they rely on teachers’ instruction on what to read,’ according to the Shanghai Daily.In the United States, as in the UK, a complicating factor is socioeconomic class. Interesting research in the US has found that test scores in states such as Utah, Iowa and Nebraska, which don’t (yet) have a large underclass, are similar to those of the top Asian countries. In 2011, compilation of the PISA data showed that the white (read ‘middle-class and up’) students in Washington, D.C., scored much higher in maths than students in Hong Kong and Taiwan, two of the highest international scorers.Matloff ends his critique of the PISA test results by pointing out that an Economic Policy Institute study shows that, after socioeconomic data are accounted for, the adjusted ranking for the US is much higher than the raw scores indicate, and it’s a safe bet that the same would be true for the UK.High scoring, low ability children might ring a bell to many of you. It is very much the direction our system is moving in… Gove’s main education project has been to roll back the weak, but valiant attempts to make UK education relevant to a modern British society and a modern intellectual property-based economy, opting instead for more ‘traditional’, more academic exams and tests, more emphasis on facts, an abandonment of project work and a downgrading of art, music, design and technology, and a skills-based approach to learning.This all seems to have been done under the banner of ‘The Glorious Past’, regardless of how well that glorious past really served our national interests. Alongside the PISA test results, a new and disturbing report has been issued about the chronic under-productivity of our workforce. There are lots of theories about this, none of which has to do with laziness – the British work longer hours than any of their Western European counterparts.The first main theory to emerge is that capital investment has been lower – due to a risk-averse elite and an over-reliance on the finance sector and other services. The second is that our industry is failing to use its intellectual talent more seriously than any other advanced nation. The result is that UK managements are full of poor problem-solvers and are failing to introduce new work-process innovations. The second theory is linked, but is even more of an economic time-bomb… It suggests our schools might be teaching the wrong subjects, in the wrong way.Linking our teaching, learning and assessments to our economic needs is an idea far beyond the capacity for Gove or even the Labour education spokespeople… whoever they are. But the Americans, Singaporeans and, one expects shortly, the Chinese, are radically re-organising their curriculum and assessments to stress learning in depth, higher order thinking, collaborative project work, problem-solving and creativity.In 2013, we were frogmarched in the opposite direction. Will 2014 be any different?To access articles from Creative Teaching & Learning Magazine:Please Log in.To view the latest issue of Creative Teaching & Learning, please go to the Online Publications page or Click here for the direct link.Alternatively, you can subscribe here. Call our sales team for the best rate: 0121 224 7599"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Editor’s Comment – PISA: Time for a little scepticism

6 Jun 2013

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      string(3437) "Teachers could spend less time on discipline matters and classroom management,and more time on the actual lesson.But, what this simplistic view ignores is the wider culture in which Chinese children liveand the influence that parents have on their child’s learning. It is ridiculous to suggestthat teachers brought in from China will have any more knowledge or expertise thanteachers from othercountries or indeed ourown.Other factors atworkLike most Asians, theChinese think of mathsas a vital, high status skillthat must be acquired, andthat the route to successis hard work rather thaninnate talent. This attitudeis instilled in the child froman early age (for example,70 per cent of students inShanghai attend after-school maths classes,compared with 40 per centin the UK).There’s no surprisethen that recent researchsuggests that much of the success of East Asian pupils in international tests is not downto the quality of the region’s schools, but to family background, personal characteristicsand other out-of-school factors.As a result, a study from the Institute of Education (IOE) concluded that it wouldactually be more helpful to examine the reasons why the children of immigrants fromcertain East Asian countries also thrive in Western countries with ‘average’ schoolsystems. In England, for example, Chinese children have the highest GCSE scores of anyethnic group.Parental expectations, pupils’ socio-economic backgrounds, culture, society andtraditions are all big factors in Shanghai’s success. Also, due to their faith and trustin the curriculum and teaching methodology, every Chinese maths teacher believesthat every single child, regardless of background, will succeed at mathematics, ratherthan thinking about which ones won’t be successful. The mentality in Shanghai is thatwhoever you are and wherever you come from, if you work hard, you can go to the bestuniversities.And as further evidence of this attitude, not everything about Chinese teaching isconsidered good – they are learning from us too from the exchange programme. Forexample, the forthcoming reforms to China’s university entrance exam (which will allowmore flexibility in the subjects studied) are partly inspired by UK education.And the way the UK system gives students flexibility and more room to be creativeis also of interest to China. Remember, our system is responsible for churning out someof the world’s finest innovators.Pedagogy matters, and in many places, we have an innovative way of teaching,which is recognised by the world.Perhaps we will find that discipline and creativity are difficult to reconcile withinone school system. Even so – and despite cultural differences – we should not feel wecannot do anything to close the gap with China. Headteachers and teachers can playa really important role in determining school cultures – and that is where the roots ofsuccess lie.Knowledgetrails1. PISA: Timefor a littlescepticism –The PISA testresults gaveour politicaland educationleaders anotheropportunity tocriticise Britishschools, but isthe picture morecomplex than itseems?www.teachingtimes.com/articles/ctleditorial1http://www.ioe.ac.uk/104961.htmlhttp://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/ctleditorial1http://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/ctleditorial1http://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/ctleditorial1http://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/ctleditorial1"
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Leadership

Are the Chinese that much better than us?

27 Jan 2015

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      string(5617) "IntroductionThis article explores the development of school to school support and partnerships in England.  These partnerships have become a defining feature of what the Government calls the ‘self-improving, school-led’ system (DfE, 2010; Sandals and Bryant, 2014).  Most schools engage in partnerships that are informal and emergent, based on shared interests, concerns, or simply personal relationships.  Even partnerships that do have a more formal basis face sometimes fraught political and inter-personal adaptive challenges (Kamp, 2013).  The focus here, however, is on more formal arrangements that are structured through a policy-driven process.  These generally fall into one of the following non-mutually exclusive categories:  structural governance models, such as multi-academy trusts/academy chains and federations; designations based on formal criteria, such as National Leaders of Education (NLEs) and Teaching Schools; role related partnerships, such as where an Executive Head oversees two or more schools (but not in a formal federation).  Key to this development has been the emergence of a cadre of what are called ‘system leaders’, broadly defined as leaders who work beyond their immediate school to support the improvement of the wider system (Fullan, 2005).  The need for such lateral school to school partnerships has become apparent in the face of evidence that neither top-down centrally imposed change, nor pure competition and marketization can achieve sustained improvement across school systems (see the article by Greany and Earley which is also in this issue).  Instead, the aim has been to ask school system leaders to work together in ways which transfer knowledge, expertise and capacity within and between schools, so that all schools improve and all children achieve their potential.  There is emerging evidence that such models can prove effective in addressing underperformance and improving outcomes, in particular in some of the most challenging schools.  However, as this article highlights, England’s ‘self-improving’ system also faces significant challenges, at both conceptual and practical levels.  The role of school partnerships in England’s quasi-market systemStrange bedfellows: autonomy, accountability, competition and collaborationGranting schools autonomy to determine how they secure improvement whilst holding them accountable for their performance has become an increasingly central tenet of international thinking and policy on school system reform (OECD, 2015).  Such approaches are frequently associated with wider quasi-market reforms, such as giving parents the right to choose which school they prefer for their child, backed by funding models which reward more popular schools.  The argument for granting schools autonomy is that it will free them up from hidebound bureaucracies and make them more responsive to their parent ‘customers’ (Institute for Government, 2012).  Quasi-markets are thus clearly predicated on competition between providers as the primary driver of improvement (Lubienski, 2009).  Of course, in practice, public education systems are not markets in the true sense of the word, since the consumer does not pay and failing providers (i.e. schools) are rarely allowed to close altogether.  England is recognised as a relatively extreme example of high-school-autonomy-high-accountability quasi-market (or neo-liberal) reform by international standards.  By the time of PISA 2009, schools in the UK were judged to be among the most autonomous in the world1 (OECD, 2011) and few would argue that they are also among the most accountable (for example as a result of high stakes inspections published by the inspectorate Ofsted).  Given this focus on quasi-markets and competition, it may seem strange that England now sees networking and collaboration as central to the success of its ‘self-improving school system’.  How and why has this happened?   The policy journey travelledOne way to assess this is through an historical lens, mapping the trajectory of policy thinking over the past three decades.  A Conservative government brought forward the Education Reform Act (ERA) in 1988, which introduced the core reforms that have shaped the system in England, such as school autonomy and accountability and funding following the learner.  Whilst subscribing to the broad tenets of the ERA, New Labour’s approach to reform from 1997 was markedly top down.  For example, the National Strategies for Literacy and Numeracy introduced and all but mandated specific pedagogic practices across primary schools, which did lead to initial improvements in pupil outcomes but then stalled in the mid-2000s.  This led to a gradual re-evaluation of the approach and a recognition that lateral networks of schools overseen by system leaders might offer more sustainable and effective ways of addressing under-performance and developing and distributing innovation between schools (Higham et al., 2009).  These ideas were picked up by the centre right Coalition government elected in 2010, which adopted the ‘self-improving system’ label and began a radical and far-reaching programme of reforms.   On the one hand, school autonomy has been radically increased with the extension of academy ‘freedoms’ to all schools.  Academies are funded directly from central government and have a range of decision-making rights that are not available to"
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Executive Leadership

System leadership and collaboration – a new skillset for leaders?

18 Apr 2018

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Head oversees two or more schools (but not in a formal federation).  Key to this development has been the emergence of a cadre of what are called ‘system leaders’, broadly defined as leaders who work beyond their immediate school to support the improvement of the wider system (Fullan, 2005).  The need for such lateral school-to-school partnerships has become apparent in the face of evidence that neither top-down centrally imposed change, nor pure competition and marketization can achieve sustained improvement across school systems (see the article by Greany and Earley which is also in this issue).  Instead, the aim has been to ask school system leaders to work together in ways which transfer knowledge, expertise and capacity within and between schools, so that all schools improve and all children achieve their potential.  There is emerging evidence that such models can prove effective in addressing underperformance and improving outcomes, in particular in some of the most challenging schools.  However, as this article highlights, England’s ‘self-improving’ system also faces significant challenges, at both conceptual and practical levels.  The role of school partnerships in England’s quasi-market systemStrange bedfellows: autonomy, accountability, competition and collaborationGranting schools autonomy to determine how they secure improvement whilst holding them accountable for their performance has become an increasingly central tenet of international thinking and policy on school system reform (OECD, 2015).  Such approaches are frequently associated with wider quasi-market reforms, such as giving parents the right to choose which school they prefer for their child, backed by funding models which reward more popular schools.  The argument for granting schools autonomy is that it will free them up from hidebound bureaucracies and make them more responsive to their parent ‘customers’ (Institute for Government, 2012).  Quasi-markets are thus clearly predicated on competition between providers as the primary driver of improvement (Lubienski, 2009).  Of course, in practice, public education systems are not markets in the true sense of the word, since the consumer does not pay and failing providers (i.e. schools) are rarely allowed to close altogether.  England is recognised as a relatively extreme example of high-school-autonomy-high-accountability quasi-market (or neo-liberal) reform by international standards.  By the time of PISA 2009, schools in the UK were judged to be among the most autonomous in the world1 (OECD, 2011) and few would argue that they are also among the most accountable (for example, as a result of high stakes inspections published by the inspectorate Ofsted).  Given this focus on quasi-markets and competition, it may seem strange that England now sees networking and collaboration as central to the success of its ‘self-improving school system’.  How and why has this happened?   The policy journey travelledOne way to assess this is through an historical lens, mapping the trajectory of policy thinking over the past three decades.  A Conservative government brought forward the Education Reform Act (ERA) in 1988, which introduced the core reforms that have shaped the system in England, such as school autonomy and accountability and funding following the learner.  Whilst subscribing to the broad tenets of the ERA, New Labour’s approach to reform from 1997 was markedly top-down.  For example, the National Strategies for Literacy and Numeracy introduced and all but mandated specific pedagogic practices across primary schools, which did lead to initial improvements in pupil outcomes, but then stalled in the mid-2000s.  This led to a gradual re-evaluation of the approach and a recognition that lateral networks of schools overseen by system leaders might offer more sustainable and effective ways of addressing under-performance and developing and distributing innovation between schools (Higham et al., 2009).  These ideas were picked up by the centre right Coalition government elected in 2010, which adopted the ‘self-improving system’ label and began a radical and far-reaching programme of reforms.   On the one hand, school autonomy has been radically increased with the extension of academy ‘freedoms’ to all schools.  Academies are funded directly from central government and have a range of decision-making rights that are not available to Local"
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Executive Leadership

System leadership and collaboration – a new skillset for leaders?

16 Apr 2018

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