The high cost of truancy

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Resisting authority may be some teenagers’ sport of preference, but they’re hobbling themselves if they think that skipping school is cool. Results from PISA 2012 show that playing truant is related to significantly poorer performance in mathematics, which has repercussions on students’ futures, and on the performance of their school and school system. But all parents and teachers have the means to reduce the incidence of truancy.

This month’s PISA in Focus examines the cost of student truancy. Across OECD countries, 18% of students skipped at least one class and 15% skipped at least an entire day of school without authorisation in the two weeks prior to the PISA test. On average across OECD countries, skipping classes is associated with a 32-point lower score in mathematics and skipping days of school is associated with a 52-point lower score. In Japan, Korea and Chinese Taipei, the score-point difference associated with having skipped classes is larger than 80 points, and in Hungary, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Shanghai-China and Chinese Taipei, the score-point difference associated with having skipped days of school is also larger than 80-score points.

Schools, too, pay for truancy in the form of poorer performance. In Croatia, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovenia, Chinese Taipei and Viet Nam, a 10 percentage-point increase in the proportion of students who skip classes or days of school corresponds to a decline in the school’s average mathematics performance of between 10 and 34 score points, after accounting for the socio-economic status and demographic background of students and schools and various other school characteristics.

And student truancy is negatively related to a school system’s overall performance. Among OECD countries, after accounting for per capita GDP, school systems with larger percentages of students who play truant tend to score lower in mathematics. After accounting for differences in the level of economic development, measured by per capita GDP, 16% of the variation in mathematics performance across OECD countries can be explained by differences in the proportions of students who skip school. By contrast, in most high-performing school systems, such as Hong Kong-China, Japan, Korea and Shanghai-China, virtually no student skips classes or days of school.

In most countries, there is very little difference in the incidence of truancy between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Across OECD countries, for example, 19% of disadvantaged students reported that they had skipped classes, compared with 17% of advantaged students, on average; and 18% of disadvantaged students reported that they had skipped days of school, compared with 12% of advantaged students. That means that the problem of truancy cuts across all types of families and schools – and so does the solution.

In 8 of the 11 countries and economies with available data, students whose parents regularly eat the main meal with them are less likely to have skipped classes or days of school. And students who reported that they have good relations with their teachers are five percentage points less likely to have arrived late for school, on average across OECD countries, and four percentage points less likely to have skipped classes or days of school during the two weeks prior to the PISA test. In other words: parents and teachers can nurture student engagement with and at school – and by doing so, discourage students’ impulse to skip school – by being more engaged themselves with their children and students.

Links:
PISA in Focus No. 35: Who are the school truants?
PISA 2012 results
Ready to Learn: Students' Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs (Volume III)
What Makes Schools Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices (Volume IV)

Photo credit: Erasing desk  / @Shutterstock

Japan finds inspiration in its PISA results

by Miki Tadakazu
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

PISA 2012 showed mixed results for Japan. While Japanese students maintained their strong performance in mathematics, reading and science, the assessment found that 15-year-olds in Japan take less pleasure in learning mathematics and have less interest and motivation in doing so than the average student across OECD countries although Japanese students’ interest and motivation have improved since 2003. The Japanese government is using these findings to improve both the way students learn and what they learn.

Up until 2002, Japanese primary and secondary students attended school six days per week. Saturday schooling was eliminated that year in an effort to let students have a wide variety of activities and experiences outside of school. But after that reform was adopted, educators realised that inequities in schooling began to develop. In particular, while advantaged students benefited from Saturday studies at the privately owned and managed educational institutions known as juku, disadvantaged students usually did not have access to these opportunities. Many parents reported that they wanted their children to attend school on Saturday morning.

Late last year the government made it clear that individual local education boards could opt to have learning activities on Saturdays to meet their students’ learning needs. The aim of this reform is to conduct high-quality learning activities on Saturday in cooperation with parents, local communities and economic communities. Each school can provide diverse learning opportunities such as classes that fall within their curriculum, extra-curricular activities and non-profit organisations’ coordinating activities, based on their students’ needs.

On 14 December, using PISA mathematics items, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Hakubun Shimomura took the initiative to experimentally teach mathematics during Saturday learning activities in a public elementary school located in Itabashi City in Tokyo. The goal was to ensure the effectiveness of Saturday learning activities in school by increasing students’ diverse learning opportunities and improving their pleasure, interest and motivation to learn. During his learning session, he not only taught how to solve equations, but also dissected them and showed students how they encounter these kinds of problems in everyday real life situations.

Students who took the session said, “I got tense but enjoyed myself,” and “I hope my score will improve if I join Saturday learning sessions.” Minister Shimomura gathered from this session that Japanese students could enjoy a wide variety of learning activities, which could further develop their pleasure, motivation and interest to learn. 

Among other ways of using this additional time in school, the “period of integrated study”, mandatory in the Japanese curriculum, will be used. During this study time, the focus is on learning through observation, experiments, field study, investigation and problem solving. The idea, then, is that on Saturdays, parents and members of the local community are more available to offer their specific knowledge and skills to students, skills that are used in daily life and that may also inspire students to take a greater interested in weekday course work.

Providing learning activities on Saturdays is not intended to add more time for students to absorb and reproduce established knowledge. Rather, the aim is to offer learning activities that challenge students to apply what they have learned in school to real-life problems and that help them acquire the kinds of “soft” skills – communication, collaboration and imagination – that are considered essential for the 21st century.

Links:
PISA 2012 Results
PISA 2012 Country-Specific overview on Japan
OECD Programme for International Student Assessment
Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education - Lessons from PISA for Japan
Photo credit: Ministry of Education, Japan

Our Ageing Societies

by Tracey Burns
Analyst and Project Leader, Directorate for Education and Skills

The G8 leaders met in London in mid-December with a special goal: developing a cure for dementia by 2025. Finding a cure for dementia has become a social and economic imperative. Dementia currently affects 44 million people worldwide, a number forecasted to reach 135 million by 2050. According to the World Health Organisation, the disease cost the world 439 billion euros in 2010. In addition to these stark figures, there is a psychological toll: dementia has replaced cancer as the disease people fear the most.

Education has a role to play: Higher levels of education can impede the onset of dementia. And although cognitive abilities generally tend to decline with age, it is possible to slow or even reverse the downtrend. A just released Trends Shaping Education Spotlight looks at the role of education in our ageing societies.

Average life expectancy across OECD countries has risen from 69 years in 1970 to an average of 79.7 years in 2010. By 2100, the median age across all OECD and BRIC (Brazil, the Russian Federation, India and China) countries is forecasted to reach 45 years, up from 38 years in 2010. As the average age increases, so too does the proportion of the elderly (i.e. those over 80 years). In fact, there will be more than twice as many people over the age of 80 in 2050 as there are now.

Although this may seem like an issue for the distant future, some of these concerns are immediate. One example is the rising age of teachers across most of the OECD. In 2011, 40% or more of secondary school teachers were at least 50 years old in Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Over 50% of all secondary teachers in Germany and Italy were over 50 years of age (in Italy the figure is 60%). Given these figures, attracting and retaining new teachers is an immediate policy priority for most OECD countries.

In the medium term, this demographic transformation will have important implications for our education systems. Overall, people who have completed more years of education tend to have better health and well-being. Education has a direct positive impact on healthier behaviours and preferences, as well as indirect effects on income, opportunities and self-confidence.

Governments across the OECD have been promoting a lifelong learning culture through policies aimed at improving work-based skills development, vocational training and adult education. This effort is needed: results from the Survey of Adult Skills demonstrate that proficiency reaches a peak at around 30 years of age and then declines steadily, with the oldest age groups displaying lower levels of proficiency than the youngest age groups.

A promising example of how lifelong learning can be promoted comes from Japan, a rapidly ageing society with the highest life expectancy at birth among the OECD countries. In 2006, the government amended its Basic Act on Education to integrate the concept of lifelong learning, ensuring support for its municipalities with funding and guidance. Lifelong learning councils were established at the prefecture level and by 2012, 18 metropolises and 996 municipalities had action plans in place to promote lifelong learning. Japan’s education ministry is maintaining the programme’s momentum by providing information on good practices, and at the local level, some municipality leaders have formed an alliance for information-exchange and policy research.

This is just one example of how governments and communities are coming together to increase participation in formal and informal education throughout a person’s lifetime. Lifelong learning will keep our populations healthier, more active and more connected to society. It will also allow the increasingly large proportion of the elderly to enjoy their later years to the fullest. As our governments and research institutes do their best to find a cure for dementia by 2025, we can challenge ourselves to help as we can: by reinforcing lifelong learning, and continuing work on education, ageing, and well-being.

Links:
Trends Shaping Education Spotlight #1 - Ageing Societies
Trends Shaping Education 2013 publication
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation CERI
Photo credit: Senior woodcrafter @ Shutterstock