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(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. The assessment of learning and the judgement of schools based"
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Leadership

Education and the 2015 election - what now?

21 Sep 2015

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      string(5627) "‘Education policy in Britain seems to be a mess!’ It’s not me saying this but teachers I’m talking to in Finland during a visit to find out why their country is among the best in the world for children. So, I’m visiting a nursery and kindergarten in Helsinki and then a secondary school to see for myself what it’s like. Immediately, I see life on a different planet to here. Colleagues there tell me that their success is due to ‘our attitude, Al’ to the importance of children, family stability, high quality education and local community responsibility for children. They tell me, too, that they are proud that their political policies are based on long-term consensus and common sense. Tellingly, they tell me that their high ranking in the PISA international league tables for education has not been sought actively but reflects their whole approach to education.Their strategy begins with getting a great start in life. I’m told that the nursery staff are graduates, many with master’s degrees in child development. I’m also told it’s highly competitive to work with early years – only 1 in 10 students is accepted, training being coterminous with general teacher training. They tell me they are well-paid and highly respected, for working with young children in a valued profession supported by the local community. ‘School readiness’ to them means that schools are ready to accept all children. Children do not start formal school until they are seven, being educated until then through the rigorous science of play.In the secondary school, teachers were aghast to be told about the reach of Ofsted. There are no inspections or competitive league tables. ‘I trust my staff to do a great job’ said the head teacher, ‘our results reflect the high quality of teachers I’m able to recruit’. I’m taken aback to be told that 14 per cent of children have special needs – but to them a special need encompasses not only children with disabilities but those with a gift or aptitude for sport, the arts or music, with all pupils being given a personalised learning plan. There is also a special emphasis on technical qualifications required to meet the skills needed in a modern society.How different to here, where we have been indoctrinated by zealous political ideology driven by ‘group think’ to get mothers back to work with accountability through a narrow curriculum, tests and league tables. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, with plans to meet the shortfall in recruitment by accepting candidates with lower ‘GCSE’ and ‘A’ level grades needed for teacher training.  So, is childhood across Britain in crisis? My answer distilled in my new book ‘The British Betrayal of Childhood’ is an unequivocal ‘yes’! And it is time for politicians and the public to wake up to the reality.Children matter – to parents, families and communities in every village, town and city across Britain. Quite simply, they are our nation’s most precious resource not only as citizens today, but because of the massive changes in demography with older people living longer. Who will generate the wealth to support them? The children of today. So, through an economic lens, I argue that we need healthy, educated, creative and resilient, happy children equipped with the life skills for those who can to become confident adults and parents in due course. But we must also make sure that those who can’t through disability or disadvantage are also supported to develop their full potential. Surely, this should drive political strategy, and policy especially that for education? But, does it? My ‘forensic’ analysis concludes that it doesn’t. Yes, we have fantastic children everywhere, many overcoming difficulties of illness or disadvantage that are not of their making – most are supported by loving families and motivated staff in children’s services. But the uncomfortable reality is that we have some of the worst outcomes overall for children not just for education but across health, social care, youth justice and poverty in the developed world. The ‘exam’ question is ‘why’? A question that politicians seem unwilling to answer. My answer is fourfold: 1) indifference and denial in public and political ‘attitude’ to the importance of children in stark contrast to that I’ve seen in Holland, Finland and Canada 2) government policies that are short term, inconsistent, and in the case of dismantling the world’s best policy programme for children, ‘Every Child Matters’, shown to be untrustworthy 3) the failure of effective political advocacy for the best interests of children locally and nationally and, finally, the ubiquitous presence of bunkers and silos in and between organisations in the children’s sectors compounds the problem. This is most starkly manifest in the bunkers between children’s health and education in government. Other bunkers exist between early years, primary and secondary education, and devastatingly between the maintained and independent sectors.The ‘elephant in the room’ question that undermines our education outcomes is the inequality of access to first rate schools. Independent schools educate just 7 per cent of children, yet 37 per cent of our Olympic athletes came from such schools – they dominate law, medicine, politics, acting and journalism, it being claimed that only 10 elite schools produce over 12 per cent of high-flying professionals. Inequality in accessing the very best education is a"
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Editorial/Opinion

It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This

13 Nov 2018

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