Creative Teaching & Learning

The Leaning Tower of PISA tests

Gove and Wilshaw have waxed lyrical about China’s results and badmouthed English schools once more. But the Chinese would rather have an education system that is more like ours. Sue Lyle, back from a visit to China, slays some mythical dragons.

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      string(4117) "2016].3. Pickett, K. and Wilkinson, R. (2010) The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. London:Penguin Books.4. Seddon, J. (2008) Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform Regime… anda Manifesto for a Better Way. Axminster: Triarchy Press Ltd.Knowledge trails1. Are the Chinese that much better than us? – Children of cleaners in Shanghai outperform the sons anddaughters of UK doctors and lawyers in global maths tests, according to the OECD. But is the reason for thisdown to good teachers, the Chinese culture, or something else entirely?library.teachingtimes.com/articles/are-chinese-better-than-us2. The Leaning Tower of PISA tests – Gove was adamant that Chinese schools were the model to follow. Yetin actual fact, the Chinese would much prefer an education system like ours! Sue Lyle reports on an enlighten-ing trip to the Hunan Province. [Available with subscription to Creative Teaching & Learning].library.teachingtimes.com/articles/leaning-tower-pisa-testsMy final principle is consonance and, at this point, I should be honest and admitthat I gathered these, magpie style, a long time ago and should probably be givingcredit to someone else for inspiring me. If anyone can give me the reference, I willreadily atone for my sin!Consonance is where one is clear about one’s values, vision and intent, and plansfrom these, but takes account of external demands and pressures. Success comes fromworking towards the external demands rather than starting from these. My favouriteexample was in the early days of implementing the 5-14 Curriculum in Scotland. The firsttwo guidelines to appear were for English language and mathematics, and the instructionwas that schools should implement the guidelines for their weaker area and then moveto the remaining one. One of the schools that I was working with at the time took adifferent path. Their priority was to make learning more active, so their approach was tofocus on problem solving in the mathematics document and the talking and listeningelement of the English language guidelines They had identified these as the aspects thatwould support their stated priority. It worked. The staff did not see 5-14 as an impositionas some others did. If anything, they saw it as a support. It was implemented with energyand commitment, and the other aspects were then seen as consistent and coherent.We can’t base change on these principles when we are basing it on educationaltourism and souvenir hunting. At the risk of facetiousness, how many of us havebrought home that drink that tasted wonderful on holiday, possibly after a numberof other drinks, and only recently purged it from the cupboard? How many of us haveartefacts and instruments that seemed amazing when we were there, but remainneglected once we are here? Is there an analogy here for educational ideas, approachesand practices?It would be myopic not to look beyond our borders, but we should make sure thatwe are doing as much learning as we can from our nearest neighbours where contextsare most similar and the chances of things taking root are greatest. We should alsomake sure that we have understood fully why something has worked in its country oforigin and then really considered what it would mean to implement it here.Otherwise, feel free to travel, just don’t bring me anything back.David Cameron is an Independent Education Consultant working across theUK and internationally. Formerly, he was a teacher, school leader, adviser and,eventually, a Director of Children’s Services.https://reformscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/bydiversemeans1.pdfhttp://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/apr/11/expert-teachers-ok-plateau-professional-developmenthttp://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/apr/11/expert-teachers-ok-plateau-professional-developmenthttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/are-chinese-better-than-ushttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/leaning-tower-pisa-tests.htm"
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Leadership

Do we really need to look abroad for better schools?

19 May 2016

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      string(389) "The PISA test results gave our political and education leaders another opportunity to criticise British schools. But, as Sue Lyle points out on page 62, 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."
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      string(5527) " 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(325) "... performing and the highest performing children remains too wide. There is also a widening gap between the performance of boys and girls. Performance in the PISA tests for 15 year olds show that while pupils in the United Kingdom achieve above the OECD average for science and reading, performance in ..."
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      string(5701) "England has lagged behind the performance of others, as measured by international studies such as the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).  Results from the TIMSS report in 2016 for eight year olds showed that while England has risen to its highest point in these rankings for 20 years for mathematics, the gap between the lowest performing and the highest performing children remains too wide. There is also a widening gap between the performance of boys and girls. Performance in the PISA tests for 15 year olds show that while pupils in the United Kingdom achieve above the OECD average for science and reading, performance in mathematics is around average, and has remained stable since 2006. This article explores how the Mathematics Mastery programme, developed to overcome the difficulties faced by many children in developing a secure understanding of mathematical concepts, can improve outcomes in mathematics while supporting lower attainers and reducing the attainment gap.Drawing on the evidence from high-performing jurisdictions such as Singapore and Shanghai, which use the mastery approach to teaching maths, Mathematics Mastery began in 30 pilot schools in 2012 and by the end of 2016, the partnership had grown to 264 partner primary schools. Mathematics Mastery, founded by Dr Helen Drury, is a not-for-profit organisation; partner schools pay an annual subscription to gain access to their resources.What is Mathematics Mastery?Mathematics Mastery is based around the key principles of mathematical thinking, language and communication, and conceptual understanding, underpinned by problem-solving.  Referred to as the dimensions of depth, they are explained more fully in the following diagram:   What is mastery teaching?Mastery teaching has become the new buzzword in education. People often tell me that they are already ‘doing’ maths mastery in their schools. In further discussion it seems that they are using commercially available schemes, textbooks as well as resources from the NCETM’s Maths Hubs (National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics), sometimes with great success – usually less so.  So what do we understand mastery teaching to be? Mastery teaching has moved on from the approach first proposed by Benjamin Bloom in 1968, when it was referred to as ‘learning for mastery’. Then a rather narrow view of mastery meant that children were expected to attain a certain level before moving on to learn new material. Children who did not reach the standard were given additional tuition in order to get there and could not move on until they had acquired the concepts. What would this have indicated to children with additional learning needs? At Mathematics Mastery, our definition of mastery is that pupils learn to apply what they have learned to a totally new and unfamiliar situation. We don’t hold pupils back if they have not ‘got’ something (although we would suggest that pupils with difficulties are given additional support outside of the daily mathematics lesson to keep with their peers), nor do we advance pupils into new concepts beyond what others are learning.What does Mathematics Mastery look like in the classroom?High expectations for allWe believe that all pupils should have access to high quality teaching.  Pupils in Mathematics Mastery schools are not set or streamed.  We don’t label children as SEND, talk about the ‘bottom group’ or ‘lower ability’. These are banned words. Instead, all pupils quickly learn from their mistakes, understand that challenge and hard work are exciting and worthwhile, and learn to persevere with their learning.  A teacher told me that almost immediately after starting the approach, pupils in her class developed more confidence in mathematics and that the differences between higher and lower attaining children were not as obvious as they had been before using the programme. Daily interventions are used to help targeted children to keep up with the learning rather than catch up after gaps have widened. Pupils quickly begin to participate in all parts of the maths lesson and to enjoy their learning. We are used to receiving comments from teachers such as: “All children are very enthusiastic about maths and enjoy all activities,” and “Teaching using the Mathematics Mastery approach has made me question how I managed to teach maths before with anywhere near the level of engagement I am currently getting.”Purposeful talkAs well as having the key vocabulary in each lesson, with pupils expected to use this throughout, there is an expectation in Mathematics Mastery that children will always respond in full sentences. Teachers report that this has an impact not just on talk in mathematics lessons, but also in other areas of the curriculum.  Our lesson structure includes a daily ‘Talk Task’, where pupils are grouped in mixed attainment pairs.  Pupils are given the language structures needed, with the teacher modelling clearly at the outset.  The teacher then listens in while pupils talk about their mathematical problem or task, and reinforces examples of good talk and use of the ‘star words’.  Having one child who is a better model of language partnered with those whose language is not as advanced, enables those less confident to pick up and use the correct mathematical language in different situations. In a primary school I visited recently that has been using Mathematics"
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Mathematics

Mathematics Mastery

20 Jun 2017

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      string(5634) "32Vol 7.1School Leadership Todaywww.teachingtimes.comDebateEducationlandscapeEducation and the2015 election –what now?The dust has settled on the ConservativeParty’s shocking majority win, but the futurefor education is far from certain. PeterDownes highlights the key issues for schoolsand their leaders, this September and beyond.For headteachers, governorsand the educationalprofessional world, the run-up to the May 2015 electionwas a disappointment. Educationdid not feature prominently in thetelevised debates nor in the presscoverage, apart from one or twospecialised articles. The attentionwas on the economy, migration, theEU referendum, saving the NHS andthe implications of the SNP surge.Education took a back seat.33Vol 7.1School Leadership Todaywww.teachingtimes.comDebateEducationlandscapeThe Conservative manifesto had few new ideas and was, in essence, saying thatthey would carry on doing what they had been doing so well for the past five years.Labour had a high-profile front man in Tristram Hunt, but many Labour activists foundhim unwilling to take risks and advocate a significant change of direction in terms ofeducation structure and curriculum, though there were some individual good ideas.As so often in the past, the Liberal Democrats had the most fully worked-outeducation manifesto, with commitments to a national funding formula and to adistinctive role for the ‘middle tier’ between central government and individual schools,but they failed to get that across in the general noise about increases in tuition fees,which still rankled after five years. UKIP’s big educational idea was to create a grammarschool in every town but, mysteriously, there was no mention of the three secondarymoderns that would have been created for every new grammar school. As usual,the Greens had the luxury of making the most radical proposals for a more creativecurriculum without any worry about having to implement it.The debate about what might happen after the election was totally distorted bythe assumption that nobody would win an outright majority and that there was goingto be another coalition government. Much of the discussion in educational circles wasabout what compromises might be cobbled together in the event of various coalitionoptions. Looking across the education manifesto spectrum, the most attractivecoalition looked like Labour/Lib Dem. There was a sense of shock when it became clearthat the Conservatives would be in power for a further five years without having tobother about making concessions to the Lib Dems, as they had done for the previousfive years.The impact of a Conservative majorityThe new Secretary of State, Nicky Morgan, having been drafted into her post in thelater stages of the previous parliament to minimise the damage to education moralecaused by Michael Gove, suddenly became emboldened to assert that there would beno change of direction. The ‘relentless’ drive to raise standards through rigorous and,at times, punitive inspection, the insistence on traditional subjects, the expansion ofacademies and free schools – all this was pure Gove without any attempt to placate thealienated teaching profession.So heads, governors, teacher trainers, academy chains and local authority staffall find themselves having to come to terms with five more years of what has beenwidely regarded as the most disruptive and unsettling period of change the majority ofcurrent and recent practitioners can remember.34Vol 7.1School Leadership Todaywww.teachingtimes.comDebateEducationlandscape There are many significant issues on the educational agenda at this time. Forexample:a. Teacher recruitment and retention. The need for more teachers because of therising school population (up to an extra 800,000 pupils by the end of the decade)coincides with more teachers leaving the profession than ever before, largelybecause of what teachers perceive to be the unreasonable pressure put on them byheads who themselves have the Damoclean sword of Ofsted hanging over them.b. Shortage of school buildings, a huge backlog of repairs and the urgent need for thereplacement of buildings from the 1970s that have now come to the end of theirnatural life. This pressure on capital funding is exacerbated by the government’scontinuing obsession with creating more ‘free schools’, which will go down in oureducational history as one of the most expensive and pointless ideas ever invented.c. The government’s obsession with ‘world-class comparisons’, copying what itperceives to be good practice from elsewhere. Yet education systems in other partsof the world are in the process of abandoning exactly what we are supposed toadmire in them – i.e. the Swedish free schools project now recognised in Swedenas having been costly and ineffective, and the Singaporean approach to achievinghigh scores in the PISA tests, which is now coming under critical scrutiny forbeing far too narrow a form of education for pupils living in a rapidly changingworld, where creativity and flexibility will be skills of greater use than traditional‘knowledge’.d. The credibility of Ofsted, now dispensing with the services of 40 per cent of itsprevious inspectors in a purge of North Korean dimensions.However, I think the three most challenging problems we face now, particularly thoseof us who are governors, heads, councillors, educational administrators and examiners,are as follows:1. The structure of the school system, its governance and accountability2. The funding of education3. 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Leadership

Education and the 2015 election - what now?

21 Sep 2015