PISA for Development

by Erik Solheim
Chair of the Development Assistance Committee, Development Co-operation Directorate

PISA for Development, launched on the 27th of March 2015 in Guatemala, provides an opportunity to improve the quality of education in Guatemala and throughout the developing world. Participation in PISA will help Guatemala benchmark its educational system and support the government efforts to improve education at all levels, particularly for the most disadvantaged and the large indigenous population of the country. PISA for Development also aims to identify ways to better measure, benchmark and improve education in developing countries.

Extreme poverty has been halved in two decades, and the world is now richer, better educated and more peaceful than at any other point in human history. More than 9 out of 10 children, and almost as many girls as boys, now go to school. Guatemala has made great strides in the last few years. Participation in primary education increased from 86% in 2001 to 93% in 2011, above the world average. But we must get to 10 and make sure that children learn more.

Enrolling all children, keeping them in school and providing a good education is essential for development. The education a country has today is the economy it will have tomorrow. All the great success stories in recent times have put education at the core of development. South Korea went from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest, by focusing on education and industrialisation. Young Koreans are now 390 times richer than their grandparents were. Korean 15-year olds perform better in school than any other OECD nations.

Leadership is important. The founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, emphasised the importance of education during his entire life, and the results are now visible. In Guatemala, Minister of Education del Aguila has been a champion for PISA and education reform. A former teacher, Minister del Aguila combines real experience in education with political leadership.

Huge strides have been made in securing basic education for all. Nevertheless, children are not learning enough at school. Too many students still drop out before high school or university. Shortage of skilled labour is a big problem in many developing countries. The quality of education will be a central aspect of the new United Nations sustainable development goals, which will be agreed upon later this year. The OECD has launched PISA for Development as a contribution to improve the quality of education all over the globe. Since 1997, PISA has been the leading reference on the quality of education systems worldwide. The “PISA-shock”, or the understanding that you have a lot to learn from others, has inspired many countries to reconsider policies and improve their education systems. Now the time has come to take this success to a global level and work towards better quality education for all.

The OECD has partnered with Zambia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Cambodia, Senegal and Guatemala to identify how PISA can better measure the quality of education in developing countries. The PISA test instruments will need to be adjusted to account for bigger differences between the highest and lowest performing students. New methods must be tested to evaluate students that are not attending formal schooling. We hope that these efforts will enable more countries to use PISA to set national learning policies and monitor progress.

Monitoring and evaluation is crucial for improving education. PISA is a powerful tool because it gives countries an honest assessment of whether their students are on the right track. Brazil has done more than any other PISA participant to improve its education system. Brazil was on the bottom of the ranking when it first participated in 2000. Then Brazil used PISA to prioritise policies and do focus more on what policies work better. Brazil improved the quality of its education system faster than any other nation over the next 10 years. The Bolsa Familia program, which provided cash remuneration to low-income families in exchange for enrolling children in school also contributed to improved education for the poorest children most likely to be out of school.

PISA opens up opportunities to allow us to learn from the best. Chinese and other East Asian students are the best performers in mathematics and science, and reading. The seven top spots on the PISA ranking are occupied by Asian countries and cities. There must be many things we can learn from Asian success stories, whether the secret is aspiring students, good teachers or better public policies. Guatemala and Peru is paired as part of a mentoring mechanism to provide peer-to-peer technical advice and learn from each other. Identifying policies that work and implementing these on a global scale is key for improving the quality of education.

Good policies are much more important than money.  Fifteen year old students in poor Vietnam are doing better than the average student in much richer countries. Only about 6% of performance differences in PISA test are explained by national income. Money is best used to underpin good policies.

Quality education is the way to development and poverty reduction. Monitoring progress, learning from success stories and implementing the best policies is the way to improve quality of education. Let the children learn!

Links:
PISA in Development
PISA 2012 Key Findings
Photo credit: © Roberto Franco Arias/Pedro Molina

What do teens know about money?

By Andreas Schleicher, 
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

 

It used to be about what to do with the babysitting money; now it’s all about trying to get the best value for money. Or is it? What do 15-year-olds really know about money matters? Can they make sensible decisions about whether to spend or save? Can they tell the difference between a financial risk and a sound investment? (For that matter, how many of the rest of us can?)

Eighteen countries participating in PISA wanted to find out. They conducted the first-ever international assessment of students’ financial literacy. The results from that survey, released today, are presented in this month’s PISA in Focus.

The financial literacy assessment, which was administered as an option in parallel to the international PISA test, was conducted among 29 000 students – representing around nine million 15-year-olds – in the participating countries and economies.

What the assessment shows is just how varied are students’ knowledge of and understanding about money matters. Across the 13 participating OECD countries and economies, only one in ten students scores at the highest financial literacy proficiency level – Level 5. These students can solve non-routine financial problems, such as calculating the balance on a bank statement, taking into account such factors as transfer fees, and can demonstrate an understanding of the wider financial landscape, including the implications of income-tax brackets. At the other end of the proficiency spectrum, 15% of students, on average, score below the baseline level of performance, Level 2. At best, these students can recognise the difference between needs and wants, make simple decisions about everyday spending, recognise the purpose of everyday financial documents, such as an invoice, and apply single and basic numerical operations (addition, subtraction or multiplication) in contexts that they are likely to have personally encountered.

Students in Shanghai-China score the highest in financial literacy, with a mean score of 603 points, 103 points above the OECD average. Students in Australia, the Flemish Community of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, New Zealand and Poland also score higher than the OECD average.

Coming on the heels of the biggest global financial crisis since the Great Depression – one felt keenly by millions of young adults who are having trouble finding work after they graduate from school – and at a time when financial products and services are becoming increasingly complex, the results show that, even in some of the countries that performed well on the assessment, there are sizeable populations of students who lack essential financial skills. That is of concern. Students who have difficulties with simple things, like assessing the long-term liabilities arising from debt, risk getting ripped off by outrageous interest rates on their credit cards. And let’s remember that one of the triggers of the global financial crisis was the corrosive mix of people living beyond their means combined with unscrupulous lending practices.

So what can we do about this? Countries approach the goal of preparing students for an ever-more complicated financial world very differently. Some have begun to introduce financial education explicitly in their school curricula, which can help strengthen the links between school and real life. But of course, other interest groups are doing that too: those who want to make sure that there is digital education to strengthen digital literacy, health education to strengthen health literacy, environmental education to strengthen environmental literacy, and so on, with the result that students often end up with mile-wide, inch-deep curricula that lack the depth on which to build solid foundations for learning. That may also explain why some of the countries where students have the greatest exposure to financial education don't do particularly well on financial literacy – or on any of the other PISA assessments.

Other countries place their efforts squarely on strengthening students’ conceptual understanding in key areas, such as mathematics, and then expect their students to be able to apply that understanding in different contexts, including financial ones. That risks disconnecting students from the real world. But the fact that the latter group includes top performer Shanghai, whose students show higher financial literacy skills than those in any other country, even though they are rarely exposed to financial contexts in school, shows that the question of how best to develop financial literacy is still very much open to debate.

Whatever the right balance between a focus on conceptual understanding and real-life application in school curricula, the results show clearly that many students need to have higher levels of financial literacy.

Links:
PISA 2012 Results
PISA in Focus No. 41: Do 15-year-olds know how to manage money?
Press release: First OECD PISA financial literacy test finds many young people confused by money
Launch of the OECD PISA Financial literacy assessment of students, 9 July 2014, Paris
Follow on twitter:  #OECDPISA and #OECDfe

A silent revolution in Colombia

by Andreas Schleicher
Acting Director and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General

I visit Colombia at a time when education - Colombia’s future - has moved to the forefront of the political and public debate. The latest results from PISA have triggered an unprecedented search in this country for the right policies and practices to help students learn better, teachers to teach better, and schools to work more effectively.

The public eye is on how modestly Colombian students perform when compared with students in the world’s most advanced education systems. Nobody I speak with takes any consolation from the fact that there are just three OECD countries showing a faster rate of improvement in the reading skills of 15-year-olds than Colombia, according to PISA results. Everybody here wants Colombia to play in the first league of global education, knowing that this is far more important for Colombia’s economic and social future than playing in the first league of the world football championship, where the country is already well established.

In a way, it is not fair to compare Colombia’s schools with those in OECD countries, given the far greater social and economic challenges the country faces; but policy makers here understand that, in a global economy, the benchmark for educational success is no longer just improvement by national standards, but in comparison with the best-performing school systems internationally. They realise that Colombian schools must prepare their students to collaborate, compete and connect with different people, ideas and values from across the globe.

The improvements seen in the PISA results show that Colombia is on its way. Since I first visited the country in 2002, education here has gone through a silent revolution, barely noticed by the international community, but deeply transforming the lives of people in this once conflict-ridden country. I have always admired former Minister Cecilia Maria Velez White for the ways in which she was able to establish a solid foundation for schooling in Colombia amidst even the most adverse circumstances, with a constant focus on the effectiveness of institutions and a rigorous approach to quality assurance. But the success of current Minister María Fernanda Campo to bring education to the people, to mobilise teachers and school leaders, and to build trust in the profession is by no means less impressive. Education in Colombia is becoming everybody’s responsibility, with strong links across the sectors, engaging government leaders, educators, parents, business executives and civil society leaders as partners in education. The mission is todos a aprender (everyone to learn).

We leave Bogota just before dawn for Barranquilla, hometown of Shakira. But today is not about pop music; today the Colombians celebrate education and the superstar is Colombia’s Minister of Education. She receives an enthusiastic welcome from the entire community, and students and their families, together with hundredths of teachers and school leaders, all spend their Saturday to share their experiences. Education here, some 800 kilometers from the capital, is not about politics but about creating new education opportunities. Todos a aprender provides a comprehensive vision for that, embracing an instruction system with learning and teaching materials, an inclusive approach to school management, an eye on the basic infrastructure of schools and the safety of children, and - perhaps most important - an innovative approach to teacher development that builds on the good ideas and capacity that Colombian schools already have.

Just over 3 000 of the most talented teachers were identified, through a rigorous evaluation process, to serve as mentors and tutors for their fellow teachers. I meet some of them and am inspired both by their professionalism and by their dedication to serve as innovators and incubators of change. Although somewhat suspicious at first, teachers now see these tutors as their main allies who cultivate an environment in which teachers work together to frame good practice and who shape intelligent pathways for teachers to grow in their careers. A group of teachers from Soledad recounts how the programme has transformed their local community of teachers from strangers who worked in isolation in their classrooms into colleagues and friends. And they are just a few of the 88 000 teachers who already took part in the training programme. Latin America’s school systems have been characterised by delivered wisdom handed down by government and by compliance from schools. Todos a aprender seeks to turn that on its head, putting the premium on user-generated wisdom, on enabling teachers to be inventive, and on moving from administrative control to professional forms of work organisation.

I speak with a group of older teachers whom legislation protects from evaluation but who signed on to the scheme voluntarily with the aim of improving their own teaching and that of their colleagues, and of pursuing professional development that leads to stronger educational practice. I meet a group of school principals who discuss how they can take all this to the next level, using digital technology to spread innovation and connect the ideas of school leaders and teachers throughout the country. One day, when all of Colombia’s teachers know what some already know today, Colombia will join the world’s most advanced education systems.

There is no doubt that the status quo will always have many protectors. But todos a aprender is helping educators to be bold in thinking and in actions to effect real change on the ground. It is a vision that already extends to over half of Colombia’s primary school children – more than 2.4 million children in total - with 77% of the 22 000 schools in rural areas taking part. But as one school leader explains to me, the test will be whether todos a aprender will transcend the electoral cycle and evolve from a programme into national policy. That would set this programme apart from the many reform initiatives in Latin America and could make a real difference for the future of Colombia’s students, teachers and citizens.

Links:
PISA 2012 results
Tertiary Education in Colombia (2012)
Barefoot Foundation
Photo credit: Todos a aprendar event in Baranquille /  ©Andreas Schleicher

What Spanish schools can learn from Spanish schools

by Andreas Schleicher
Acting Director and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General

I arrived in Madrid in the morning of 1 April, coming from Singapore. I met with Singapore’s school principals and policy makers the day before to review the results from our new PISA problem-solving skills assessment. Singapore’s education system has at times been criticised for encouraging rote learning at the expense of creative skills development. Those critics should have a second look.

The PISA results show that 15-year-old Singaporeans are quick learners, highly inquisitive and able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts. Indeed, no education system outperforms Singapore on this problem-solving test. The Spanish results on the same test, which I presented later in the day in Madrid, were a lot more troubling.  As shown in previous PISA assessments, Spanish students face challenges in math and science. However, there is bigger concern regarding their problem-solving skills. Spanish students performed significantly worse on tasks requiring creative problem-solving skills. The issue is not simply concerning poor kids in poor neighbourhoods, but is an issue that touches children from many regions of Spain. What’s more, these results do not correlate with the amount of money going into Spanish schools.

This is troubling because the dilemma for educators is that routine cognitive skills, the kind of things that are easy to teach and easy to test, are also the skills that are easiest to digitise, automate and outsource. There is no question that state-of-the-art knowledge in a discipline will always remain essential. Innovative or creative people generally have specialised skills in a field of knowledge or a practice. As much as ‘learning to learn’ skills are important, educational success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying that knowledge creatively.

Is that beyond what can be achieved in the Spanish education system? The PISA results show that school curricula – and teachers – make a difference in imparting creative problem-solving skills. Engagement with, and at, school is relatively high in Spain, and I witnessed this first hand at the Santa María La Blanca school, just half an hour by car from where I had presented the disappointing PISA results in the morning. Comparatively speaking, I was amazed at how much the school in Spain had in common with schools in Singapore. Structurally, there was nothing spectacular about the building. The school’s teachers hadn’t had more extensive training. Nor did the students come from more advantaged backgrounds. It was all about the learning environments and about learner ownership. The lessons weren’t one-size-fits all, but I witnessed students designing their own learning experiences on constant reviews and revisions of their learning goals. These students were able to explain to an outsider, like myself, what they were learning, how they were learning and why it mattered.

These students were experiencing the most rewarding kind of learning achievement: knowledge as a product of hard work versus knowledge as inherited intelligence or luck. The teachers I met embraced diversity through differentiated instructional practices, realising that ordinary students have extraordinary talents. Each students’ learning path is planned jointly, facilitated by the latest digital technology. And, as always, behind a great school is a great principal. Someone who supports teachers to make innovations in pedagogy, to improve their own performance and that of their colleagues. It is a team effort in constructing stronger pedagogical practice.

The PISA results show that school autonomy is still rare in Spain. Additionally, schools exercise even less autonomy than they actually have. However, Santa María La Blanca has moved beyond the paradigms of standardisation and compliance and enables their teachers to be inventive. The teachers are no longer looking upwards to bureaucracy, but look outwards to the next teacher and the next school to create a network of innovation.

If all Spaniards knew what some Spanish schools know, students would probably match their peers in the world’s top performing education systems. Having the belief in being able to achieve at high levels, and the ability and willingness to do what it takes, would equip Spanish students with the attributes to enable them to lead full lives, meet challenges and make the most of available opportunities along the way.

Perhaps there is not much we can find in Singapore that we can’t see somewhere in Spain too. But, what makes Singapore different is that it has made success systemic. They have aligned policies and practices across all aspects of the system to encourage ingenuity and entrepreneurship, made policies and practices coherent over sustained periods of time, and seen innovative practices that are consistently implemented.  In this way, Spain still has a long educational path ahead.

Links:
PISA 2012 Results, Volume V
Country note Spain (Problem Solving)
Country note Singapore (Problem Solving)
Photo credit: School girl drawing sketches with marker /@Shutterstock

What we learn from the PISA 2012 results

by Andreas Schleicher
Deputy Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary General

 

International comparisons are never easy and they aren’t perfect. But PISA shows what is possible in education, and it helps countries see themselves in the mirror of the education opportunities and results delivered by the world’s leaders in education. Even those who claim that the relative standing of countries in PISA mainly reflects social and cultural factors must now concede that improvement in education is possible. In mathematics, countries like Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia and Turkey rose from the bottom; Italy, Portugal and the Russian Federation advanced to the OECD average or close to it; Germany and Poland rose from average to good; and Shanghai-China and Singapore have moved from good to great. Indeed, of the 65 participating countries, 40 saw improvement in at least one of PISA’s three subject areas. These countries did not change their culture, or the composition of their populations, nor did they fire their teachers; they changed their education policies and practices.

We focused this year’s PISA assessment on mathematics. Each year, OECD countries invest over 200 billion euro in math education in schools; but poor math skills still severely limit people’s access to better-paying and more-rewarding jobs and, at the aggregate level, inequality in the distribution of math skills closely relates to how wealth is shared within nations.

This PISA 2012 assessment came at a time when countries were still grappling with the aftermath of the economic crisis - a period that has brought home the urgency of equipping more people with better skills to collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive our economies forward, foster employment and reduce social inequality.

A large part of the challenge in education lies in addressing underperformance. Across countries, almost one in four 15-year-olds did not even reach Level 2, the PISA baseline level of proficiency in mathematics, where students have to do little more than employ basic algorithms or procedures involving whole numbers. But in Canada, Korea, Shanghai-China and Singapore, it is one in ten or fewer. According to one estimate, if all 15-year-olds in the OECD area attained at least PISA Level 2 in math, they would contribute USD 200 trillion in additional economic output over their working lives. While such estimates are never wholly certain, they do suggest that the benefits of improvement dwarf any conceivable cost. Part of the issue lies with students living in social disadvantage, and many school systems amplify that disadvantage. According to PISA, advantaged and disadvantaged schools show particularly wide differences in levels of teacher shortages. Attracting the most talented teachers and school leaders to the most challenging classrooms will therefore be key to making headway. Indeed, PISA finds that higher-performing countries allocate educational resources more equitably among advantaged and disadvantaged schools.

A belief that all students can achieve at a high level and a willingness to engage all stakeholders in education – including students, through such channels as seeking student feedback on teaching practices – are other hallmarks of successful school systems. New results from PISA also show that students whose parents have high expectations for them tend to have more perseverance, greater intrinsic motivation to learn math, and more confidence in their own ability to solve math problems.

But the challenges of school systems are not just about poor kids in poor neighbourhoods, but about many kids in many neighbourhoods. Only 2% of American students reach the highest level of math performance, demonstrating that they can conceptualise, generalise and use math based on their investigations and apply their knowledge in novel contexts. That compares with an OECD average of 3%, and proportions of up to 31% in Shanghai-China. The world economy will pay an ever-rising premium on excellence, and a number of countries have shown how the share of top performers in school can be raised significantly, including in high performers, such as Hong Kong-China and Korea, and low performers, such as Italy, Portugal and the Russian Federation. It is important that raising excellence and improving equity are not seen as conflicting policy objectives. Indeed, of the 13 countries that significantly improved their math performance since 2003, three also show improvements in equity in education, and another nine improved their performance while maintaining an already high level of equity.

Of course, raising outcomes is easier said than done. The status quo has many protectors, and countries need to be bold in thinking and in execution to effect real changes. Obviously, we can’t copy and paste school systems wholesale. But PISA has revealed an encouraging number of features shared by the world’s most successful school systems.

Everybody agrees education is important. But the test comes when education is weighed against other priorities. How do countries pay their teachers, compared to other highly skilled workers? Would you want your child to be a teacher rather than a lawyer? How do the media talk about teachers? What we’ve learned from PISA is that the leaders in high performing systems have convinced their citizens to make choices that value education, their future, more than consumption today.

But placing a high value on education is just part of the equation. Another part is the belief that all children can achieve. The fact that students in some countries consistently believe that achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than inherited intelligence, suggests that education and its social context can make a difference in instilling the values that foster success in education.
In the past, different students were taught in similar ways. Today’s top school systems embrace diversity with differentiated instructional practices; they realise that ordinary students have extraordinary talents and they personalise educational experiences. High-performing school systems also share clear and ambitious standards across the board. Everyone knows what is required to get a given qualification. This remains one of the most powerful system-level predictors in PISA.

And nowhere does the quality of a school system exceed the quality of its teachers. Top school systems pay attention to how they select and train their staff. They watch how they improve the performance of teachers who are struggling and how to structure teachers’ pay. They provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame good practice. And when deciding where to invest, they prioritise the quality of teachers over the size of classes. Not least, they provide intelligent pathways for teachers to grow in their careers.

High performers have also moved on from administrative control and accountability to professional forms of accountability and work organisation. They support their teachers in developing innovations in pedagogy, in improving their own performance and that of their colleagues, and in pursuing professional development that leads to stronger education practice. The goal of the past was standardisation and compliance; now, top performers enable teachers to be inventive. In the past, the policy focus was on providing education; in today’s top school systems, it’s on outcomes, shifting from looking upwards in the bureaucracy towards looking outwards to the next teacher, the next school, about creating networks of innovation.

Perhaps the most important outcome of world-class school systems is that they deliver high-quality education across the entire school system so that every student benefits. Overall, Finland did not come out quite as impressively as in previous assessments; but what makes Finland still special is that only 6% of the performance variation among students lies between schools. In other words: every school succeeds.

Last but not least, high-performing systems tend to align policies and practices across all aspects of the system, they make them coherent over sustained periods of time, and they see that they are consistently implemented.

Of course, there is no single combination of policies and practices that will work for everyone, everywhere. Every country has room for improvement, even the top performers. That’s why the OECD produces this triennial report on the state of education across the globe: to share evidence of the best policies and practices and to offer our timely and targeted support to help countries provide the best education possible for all of their students. With high levels of youth unemployment, rising inequality, a significant gender gap, and an urgent need to boost growth in many countries, we have no time to lose.

Links:
PISA 2012 Results
OECD Programme for International Student Assessment
Press release: Asian countries top OECD's latest PISA survey on state of global education
Follow:
PISA on twitter: @OECD_Edu @SchleicherEdu @OECDLive #OECDPISA
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