Tough choices in school choice

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

For those parents who have the opportunity to do so, choosing a school for their child is one of the most important decisions they will make as parents – a decision that could have a lasting impact on their child’s life. What do parents look for when choosing a school for their child?

This month’s PISA in Focus reports on the criteria that parents consider before making this decision. Eleven countries and economies distributed a questionnaire to parents of 15-year-olds who sat the 2012 PISA test that asked them to report on the importance they ascribed to several criteria, including school quality, the distance from home to school, the school’s philosophy and financial considerations. Not surprisingly, the quality of the school – including such factors as academic achievement, reputation, environment and safety – comes first among parents. Yet, PISA finds that many parents value certain indicators of school quality – such as the school’s reputation or safety at the school – more highly than they do academic achievement.

While disadvantaged parents are more concerned than advantaged parents about low expenses and the availability of financial aid when choosing a school, PISA results show that disadvantaged parents often ascribe greater importance to these considerations than to criteria that focus on school quality. That is an important finding, because PISA results also show that the children of parents who consider academic achievement very important score 46 points higher in mathematics, on average, than the children of parents who consider it not important. Although the score-point difference shrinks to 32 points after students’ socio-economic status is taken into account, that difference is still equivalent to nearly an entire year of school.

A previous edition of PISA in Focus noted that competition for students among schools – or school choice, from the schools’ perspective – is related to greater socio-economic segregation among students. As this month’s edition makes clear: learning for some students, particularly disadvantaged students, could suffer tremendously in school systems where parents have to choose between affordability and quality.

Links:
PISA in Focus No. 51: What do parents look for in their child's school?
PISA in Focus No. 51 (French version)
PISA Home
PISA 2012 Results: What makes schools successful?
PISA in Focus No. 42: When is competition between schools beneficial?
Photo Credit: Empty Checklist with copy space/ @Shutterstock

Got a math problem?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Some 37% of students in the Netherlands reported that they often worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them. In Argentina, 80% of students reported the same worry. What is the percentage-point difference between the two countries in the proportion of students who worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them?*


While reading the above mathematics problem, did you:

1. start hyperventilating and repeat to yourself “I  can’t do this;
   I can’t do this; I can’t do this”
2. grab your mouse with the intent of clicking off this page
3. feel as though you have never encountered such a confusing
   jumble of words and numbers before
4. all of the above?

If you answered a, b, c or d, you’re in good company: on average, about one in three students feels anxious when confronted with a mathematics problem, and more than one in two students reported that they often worry that it will be difficult for them in mathematics classes. Those are alarming statistics – especially because PISA finds that greater anxiety towards mathematics is strongly related to lower scores in mathematics. As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, on average across OECD countries, mathematics anxiety is associated with a 34 score-point decline in mathematics performance – the equivalent of almost one year of school. In New Zealand, Norway and Poland, the decline associated with anxiety towards mathematics is even larger: at least 45 score points.

More worrying still, in almost all countries and economies that participated in PISA 2012, girls reported greater anxiety towards mathematics than boys. Only in Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates did boys report greater anxiety than girls.

PISA finds that students’ anxiety towards mathematics is not just about the subject, itself. Students are more anxious towards mathematics when their schoolmates get better marks than they do, on average. In Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands and Slovenia, students who attend schools where the average student performs better than they do in mathematics tend to be considerably more anxious towards the subject than students who earn similar marks in mathematics, but attend schools where the average student performs as well as they do or worse.

So how can students learn to adopt a more Zen attitude towards mathematics? The answer may lie in their teachers. In 39 countries and economies, among students who performed equally well in mathematics, those students whose teachers consistently tell students how well they are doing in mathematics, give students feedback on their strengths and weaknesses in mathematics, and/or tell students what they need to do to improve in mathematics reported less anxiety towards math. Knowledge is power; and when staring down a mathematics problem, it can relieve stress too.

* There is a 43 percentage-point difference between the Netherlands (which has one of the smallest proportions of students who worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them) and Argentina (which has one of the largest proportions of these students).

Links
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No. 48: Does math make you anxious?
PISA in Focus No.48 (French version)
Full set of PISA in Focus
PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn (Volume III) : Students' Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs
Photo credit: The Scream / @Wikimédia

The efficiency of Italian schools in an international perspective

by Tommaso Agasisti,
Politecnico di Milano School of Management, and TJ Alexander Fellow at OECD

Performance in PISA and (Data Envelope Analysis) efficiency scores

Budget cuts in public services are today common across countries. For schools, as everywhere else, we constantly hear calls for ways to do more with less. Efficiency, it seems, has crept up to the top of the policy agenda. The question is whether the quality of learning is suffering due budget cuts, and if the quality of learning is compromised by fewer resources.

In most countries, educational results have not progressed in line with the increases in resources used by schools. Large scale international assessments, such as PISA, opens the door to new research on efficiency. Using PISA 2012 data, we estimated efficiency for almost 9 000 schools operating in 30 countries. In this context, efficiency is defined in a technical sense: inputs are the number of teachers per student, the number of computers per teacher (measures that provide us with an idea of the amount of human and material resources available to the school) and students’ average socio-economic background (a measure of the environment the school operates and the family background of the students that attend the school), while outputs are measured by the average test scores in mathematics and reading of the students in the school. Using international data, the efficiency at school level is not determined only by national efficiency standards in a particular country, but by schools in all countries.

The results highlight that among the 30 countries being examined, the average efficiency of school stands at 0.73. This means that PISA test scores could be raised by 27% if resources were used at the optimal level of efficiency (those attained by top performing schools for each combination of resources). For Italian schools, the average efficiency score is 0.71, which implies that on average, the PISA scores could be raised by 29%. By way of comparison, the country in which efficiency scores are the highest is Singapore (0.84), followed by two other Asian countries (Korea and Japan), then Poland and Estonia (see Figure above).

The empirical analysis compares Italian schools with a sample of schools in other countries Many Italian schools are comparable with the best schools in the world, while others struggle with underwhelming results (both with regards to achievement and efficiency). One of the most striking findings of this research is the amount of variation in efficiency across schools within each country. In this sense, the “typical, average” Italian school simply does not exist.

The PISA data allows less efficient schools to observe the characteristics of more efficient ones, by studying their organisation and activities, regardless of the country where they operate. Drawing inspiration from these data, each school can adopt the mix of resources, practices and processes that they consider most suitable for improving their operations (in terms of achievement scores and efficiency). In addition, by collecting information at different points in time, schools can monitor improvements and its determinants, eventually adjusting activities and strategies if satisfactory results are not achieved.

An evaluation system of this kind is no substitute for the experience of teachers and principals, rather it can stimulate them, and other stakeholders, into considering the measurable characteristics of their work without renouncing to the more intangible aspects such as cultural and educational values.

Links: 
PISA 2012 findings
PISA 2012 country note - Italy

Original version of this article, published in Italian
Chart source: @OECD

Excellence through Equity

by Max Rashbrooke
Journalist, SGI News

In social terms, it’s essential to invest in education.  A recent OECD report How was Life?, looking at global well-being since 1830 finds that, in terms education, there has been a massive improvement.  A lack of educational opportunities creates a vicious circle, in which those unable to get a decent education are denied opportunities for social betterment, the socially disadvantaged then struggle to access education, and so on. Breaking this vicious circle not only improves the lives of individuals; it helps maintain the social fabric. At the same time, it makes good economic sense to nourish every child’s talent, so that they grow up to be productive members of the workforce.

In its assessment of equitable education, the Bertelsmann Stiftung new study “Social Justice in the EU – A Cross-national Comparison" has ranked all 28 European Union countries’ educational policies in several dimensions. The extent to which children’s socio-economic status determines their school results is a key measure. But the report also looks at spending on early childhood education, and countries’ success in lowering the rates of students leaving school early. Finally, it includes an expert assessment of countries’ overall educational policies.

In general, those doing best in the rankings are three Nordic European Union member states (Denmark, Finland and Sweden), two Baltic countries (Estonia and Lithuania), and a European Union new entrant (Croatia). Britain’s ranking is slightly below average. The very worst performers are Malta, Portugal, Slovakia and Greece. The biggest improver has been Luxembourg, while the worst slide down the rankings has come in Slovakia.

Countries should not focus on excellence per se but on equity

Several of the top-ranked countries in terms of equitable access to education such as Estonia and Finland are also the best performers when it comes to reducing the influence of students’ social background on their educational performance. What lies behind this success?

If Finland is anything to go by, the answer is that if a country wants high achieving students, its best bet is – counter-intuitively – to focus not on excellence per se but on equity. Finland’s school system, which is dominated by public schools and has no national testing, has some of the best-performing students in the European Union, as shown in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Despite these excellent results, the Finns don’t relax their focus: their latest four-year education plan places a special emphasis on preventing poverty, inequality and exclusion.

Estonia can boast a similar record: top school results, with little influence of social background on students’ performance. This shows that a high degree of social justice and a well-performing school system are not incompatible goals; in fact, emphasising one often delivers the other.

Investing heavily in the early years also pays dividends. Students who have been in pre-primary education do better than those who have not, especially when they have been in it for several years and its facilities have small pupil-to-teacher ratios.

Some countries have picked up on the importance of the early years. Poland, for instance, is making big strides by insisting on compulsory preschool education. Overall, Bulgaria, Denmark and Hungary invest the most in early childhood education. This is especially important in the latter two countries, where the link between social background and academic achievement has historically been very strong. In contrast, Germany, despite having recently increased public spending on early-childhood education, is still only spending at about the average level for the EU, and does not place sufficient emphasis on high-quality early education.

Early school leavers rates are declining across the European Union – yet not evenly

Reducing the number of students leaving school early is another important objective. Early school leaver rates are declining across the EU, but some countries are doing much better than others. Spain has the worst early leaver rates, at nearly one in four of all students, a situation being made worse by austerity policies that are cutting spending on education.

Countries such as Croatia and Slovenia, by contrast, have exceptionally low rates of early leavers. However, there are fears that many of their students are parked in low-quality vocational courses that do not provide the skills employers need and therefore do not lead to good job opportunities.

There are, in contrast, few question marks over Germany’s justly famous vocational system. It is hugely important to the country’s functioning, with over half of all young workers having gone through the system. Helping reduce youth unemployment, it is well-calibrated to employers’ needs, and leads to strong job and income prospects.

It is, however, situated within a wider education system that is highly selective and segregated. Children are pushed down a particular path, whether it is academic or vocational, at a relatively early age. This tends to create a ‘twin-track’ approach, in which a child’s ability in early life – which tends to be heavily influence by their background – pushes them into a path that, to some extent,determines their fate for the rest of their life.

Avoiding early selection in schools is essential

In countries with early selection, educational success depends strongly on a child’s origin and socioeconomic background, and children from disadvantaged and immigrant backgrounds have much less chance of doing well at school than they would in other European Union countries.

In short, to advance social justice and equal access to educational opportunities, avoiding early selection is essential. Over and over, countries with early selection are marked out as having poor opportunities for the most disadvantaged. Luxembourg, for instance, has this issue, despite spending more per student than any other European Union country.

In Austria, experts have criticised the early division of children into multiple educational tracks. This policy means that parents’ social status very often influences whether children go onto higher education.

PISA results highlight another aspect of this issue. The earlier children are tracked and separated according to performance, the more influence their background has on their educational success. But the countries that do this early separation do not see their overall results rise. In other words, it is not possible to say that even if some children’s prospects are damaged by this approach, most children are better off.

The lesson to be drawn here is not too different from that provided by the Estonian and Finnish systems, which, as above, focus on equity and – as a by-product – also deliver excellence. School systems that don’t separate children out early seem to do better both on educational justice and in terms of learning success. And this exemplifies that social justice and economic progress, far from being competing ideas, are actually entirely compatible. In other words, you really can have your cake and eat it.

A forthcoming OECD Education Policy Outlook will provide policy makers with the policy options to deliver equity and quality in education,  such as investing in early childhood education and care (ECEC), tackling system-level policies that may hinder equity (such as grade repetition, unsupported school choice or early tracking) and supporting students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Links:
Education Policy Outlook
How was Life?
PISA 2012 Results
OECD work on Early Childhood Education and Care
Equity, Excellence and Inclusiveness in Education : Policy Lessons from Around the World
Related blog posts:
OECD educationtoday: Building the knowledge economy
Photo credit: Toys seesaw wooden blocks / @Shutterstock

Spoiled for choice?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Would you rather choose where to send your child to school or have the decision made for you based on where you live? Many parents would rather choose, in the belief that with choice comes the chance of getting a better education for their child. But results from PISA find that education systems do not necessarily benefit as a result.

As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, where parents can choose the school that their children attend, socio-economically disadvantaged parents can end up choosing the best school among a more limited set of choices than more affluent parents; as a result, the benefits of school choice may not accrue to the same extent to disadvantaged students as to their more advantaged peers. And if affluent families are more likely to opt out of the neighbourhood school than poorer residents of the same area, competition may increase socio-economic segregation in schools.

To understand how school choice works in practice, PISA asked parents to rate the importance of different criteria for choosing a school for their children, from “not important at all” to “very important”. Among the list of 11 possible criteria given to parents, one is directly related to the quality of teaching and learning (“The academic achievements of students in the school are high”), but only a minority of parents rated this as “very important” (except in Korea, where 50% of parents did).

Three of the criteria for school choice listed in the parent questionnaire are related to direct or indirect monetary costs (“the school is a short distance from home”; “expenses are low”; “the school has financial aid available”). For more affluent parents, these cost-related factors weigh less than the quality of instruction in their choice of schools, as shown by the proportion of parents who rate the different criteria as “very important”. But in 10 out of the 11 countries and economies that distributed the parent questionnaire, disadvantaged parents tend to choose their children’s school as much on the basis of cost-related factors as on the quality of instruction. These data therefore suggest that parents of different socio-economic status do not seek the same information about schools before choosing one; and even if they have information about the quality of instruction, it may not be the deciding factor.

PISA results also show that, on average across countries, school competition is not related to better mathematics performance among students. In systems where almost all 15-year-olds attend schools that compete for enrolment, average performance is similar to that in systems where school competition is the exception.

What this means is that school choice may actually spoil some of the intended benefits of competition, such as greater innovation in education and a better match between students’ needs and interests and what schools offer, by reinforcing social inequities at the same time.

Links:
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No. 42 : When is competition between schools beneficial?
OECD PISA for Parents Facebook page
Photo credit: Set of colorful lockers  / @Shutterstock 

Poverty and the perception of poverty – how both matter for schooling outcomes

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Note: The size of the bubbles is representing the strength of the relationship between mathematics performance and ESCS (Percentage of explained variance in mathematics performance)

Compensating for students’ socio-economic disadvantage is one of the greatest challenges facing teachers,school leaders and education systems as a whole. However, data from PISA show that some countries are much better at this than others.

Consider the chart above. The horizontal axis shows the percentage of lower secondary teachers who work in schools where their principal reported that more than 30% of students in their school were from disadvantaged homes.¹  The vertical axis shows the actual percentage of 15-year-old students from disadvantaged homes, measured by PISA’s internationally standardised index that summarises various indicators of socio-economic disadvantage, including parents’ income and education level, educational resources at home, and other family possessions.² In other words, the horizontal axis reflects school principals’ perception of disadvantage by national standards while the vertical axis reflects the prevalence of disadvantage as compared internationally.

Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico and Portugal are found in the upper right corner of the chart because their schools have a large share of disadvantaged children and that aligns with the reports of principals. The lower left corner includes the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Korea and Norway where disadvantage in schools is limited, and fewer than one in ten principals reports significant disadvantage.³ These are the results one would expect.

But actual disadvantage and principals’ perceptions of disadvantage don't always align: 65% of principals in the United States say that more than 30% of their students are from disadvantaged homes, far more than in any other country. However, the actual percentage of disadvantaged students reported by PISA is just 13%, marginally higher than in Japan and Korea; but in those two countries, only 6% and 9% of principals, respectively, report a comparable share of disadvantaged students in their schools. In other words, the actual incidence of child poverty is roughly the same among these three countries, but more than six times as many US principals reported that more than 30% of their students are disadvantaged. Conversely, in Croatia, Serbia and Singapore, more than 20% of students are disadvantaged, while 7% or fewer principals report significant populations of disadvantaged students.

Obviously, a child considered poor in the United States may be regarded as relatively wealthy in another country, but the fact that the perceived problem of socio-economic disadvantage among students is so much greater in the United States - and in France too - than the actual backgrounds of students also suggests that what school principals in some countries consider to be social disadvantage would not be considered such in others.

And there is a third important dimension, namely the actual impact of disadvantage on learning outcomes, which is shown by the size of the circles in the chart.⁴   That impact reflects whether an education system provides equitable learning opportunities. In countries like Finland, Iceland and Norway, one would expect this impact to be small because these countries have very little socio-economic disadvantage in their student populations. Achieving equity in school is easy when society distributes wealth and family education equitably. But the more impressive examples are countries like PISA top-performer Singapore, where disadvantage is significant, but its impact on learning outcomes is only moderate. These countries seem very good at nurturing the extraordinary talents of ordinary students and at ensuring that every student benefits from excellent teaching. In contrast, France has a comparatively small share of disadvantaged students, but school principals perceive this share to be large, and student learning outcomes are closely related to social background – more closely, in fact, than in any other country except Chile and the Slovak Republic. More generally, the results show that principals’ perception of disadvantage correlates with inequalities in education opportunities more strongly than real disadvantage does.

There is another way of looking at this: In Korea and Singapore, more than one in two students from the bottom quarter of the socio-economic spectrum score among the most proficient quarter of the world’s students on PISA; in Japan, 45% of disadvantaged students are similarly “resilient” and perform better on the PISA test than their backgrounds would predict. By contrast, in France and the United States, only around 20% of students are resilient, and in Israel, just one in 10 is.

So what does all this mean? Socio-economic disadvantage is a challenge to educators everywhere, but in countries like France and the United States, perceived disadvantage is far greater than real disadvantage and it makes a significant difference for student performance. In countries like Singapore, real disadvantage is far greater than school principals’ perception of it, but Singapore’s schools seem to be able to help their students overcome that disadvantage.

<sup>1. Or more precisely, the percentage of lower-secondary teachers in schools whose principals reported that more than 30% of students are from disadvantaged homes. Data are based on the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), which is representative of the teaching force in the participating countries.
2. Referred to as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS).
3. Significant here means more than 30% of students from disadvantaged homes in the school.
4. Measured here by the percentage of variation in mathematics performance that is explained by the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS).</sup>

Links
PISA 2012 Results: Excellence Through Equity: Giving Every Student the Chance to Succeed (Volume II)
The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) - 2013 Results
Chart source: © OECD TALIS 2013 and PISA 2012 database

The urban paradox

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

Our world is becoming more and more urban. Today, more than half of the world’s population live in cities, and this proportion will continue to grow. On average across the OECD, over 85% of the population will be living in cities by 2050.

The growth of cities is driven by hopes and dreams for a better life: large urban environments provide more educational and career opportunities, better access to high quality health and emergency services, and as well as a number of other positives. Yet urban areas are confronted with a paradox: they concentrate wealth and employment opportunities, but they can also host high levels of poverty and labour-market exclusion.  In addition, the agglomeration of workers and firms is often accompanied by negatives such as more tenuous social networks and disconnection from family and community, which can engender social alienation and violence.

Schools increasingly provide a sense of belonging and play the role of the immediate community and neighbourhood in urban areas. A just released Trends Shaping Education Spotlight looks at the role of education in our increasingly urban societies.

First, the good news: the urban advantage in education is real. Students who study in urban areas scored on average 20 points higher in PISA 2012 than students in small towns and rural schools even after controlling for socio-economic status (which is generally higher in cities). This urban advantage is on average equal to half a year of schooling and is particularly large in countries like Hungary, Mexico and Slovenia which have high gaps in performance between urban and rural schools.

Why is this? The wealth of cultural opportunities and science institutions in urban environments expose young people to a diverse set of educational and career opportunities that are largely unavailable in rural setting. Such experiences can inspire, motivate, and challenge children and young people to achieve more. In addition, schools in urban centres are generally larger and more autonomous and might therefore be better able to allocate resources and retain qualified administrative and teaching staff.

However not everyone can benefit from these opportunities. Families with lower socio-economic status, immigrant families, and single-parent families are all less likely, on average, to be able to benefit from the urban advantage. It is thus important to address urban inequities that can undermine children’s access to quality education, such as unequal allocation of educational resources, lack of access to cultural institutions, residential segregation in major cities, higher concentration of single-parent families, and more disparate income levels. Only then can all students benefit from the opportunities unique to an urban environment.

The urban paradox is real, then. Along with increased opportunity come larger threats. In densely populated regions, poor social cohesion and rising inequality can lead to conflict and tension. Attempts to improve the security and safety of urban environments often rely on schools as a way to reach out to young people at risk. In addition to ensuring academic excellence, schools will continue to be called upon to strengthen bonds within the urban community by helping young people develop skills in non-academic areas such as tolerance, conflict resolution, and civic participation.

Similarly, schools have begun to take a more active role in promoting mental and physical health, and teachers are increasingly relied upon to detect students who are showing signs of withdrawal and alienation and to effectively model positive social behaviours.

However, there is a real question about the responsibility of schools in addressing all these important issues. Youth at risk are more likely to drop out of school before completing their studies, and can therefore not be reached by standard school-based programmes. Furthermore, teachers are already charged with an important educational mission that does not necessarily overlap with a demand for crime prevention and mental health approaches.

Who is responsible for what, and how can this all be balanced in our changing (and increasingly urban) world? This is not a new question, but it is becoming ever more important as we continue to become more urban and more diverse. As schools become microcosms of our progressively more diverse society, they have the opportunity to prepare children for our increasingly heterogeneous, more global and less locally connected world. Are our education systems ready for this challenge?

Links:
Trends Shaping Education 2013
PISA 2012 Results: Excellence Through Equity: Giving Every Student the Chance to Succeed (Volume II)
OECD working paper: Urban Trends and Policies in OECD Countries
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Photo credit: Young boy in urban background / @Shutterstock

The socio-economic divide in pre-primary education

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

The metaphor “levelling the playing field” crops up a lot in discussions about pre-primary education.

As well it should: attendance in those programmes has been shown to improve education outcomes later on. But as this month’s PISA in Focus shows, not even a steamroller can level the playing field of formal education if disadvantaged students are sidelined from the beginning.

PISA consistently finds that 15-year-old students who had attended pre-primary education tend to perform better than those who had not attended pre-primary education, even after accounting for the students’ socio-economic status. 51 points – the equivalent of substantially more than a year of formal schooling.

In 2012, the vast majority of 15-year-old students in most PISA-participating countries and economies reported that they had attended pre-primary education; and PISA data confirm that enrolment in those programmes has grown over the past decade. In 2003, 69% of 15-year-olds across the OECD countries that have comparable data between 2003 and 2012 reported that they had attended pre-primary school for more than one year; in 2012, 75% of students reported so.

But PISA also finds that while 15-year-old students in 2012 were more likely than 15-year-olds in 2003 to have attended at least one year of pre-primary education, pre-primary enrolment is higher among advantaged students than disadvantaged students, and higher among students attending advantaged schools than those attending disadvantaged schools. In 2012, an average of 67% of disadvantaged students had attended pre-primary education for more than one year, while 82% of students in advantaged schools had done so.

This difference in enrolment between advantaged and disadvantaged students is seen in almost all PISA-participating countries and economies. It is largest – 48 percentage points – in Poland, and between 25 and 30 percentage points in Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Uruguay. This means that the students who could benefit the most from these programmes – those from disadvantaged backgrounds – are less likely to participate in them. This socio-economic divide widened in the Slovak Republic between 2003 and 2012 as it did, to a lesser extent, in Finland, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland and the Russian Federation; it narrowed, however, in Germany, Korea, Macao-China, Portugal and Uruguay. 

That pre-primary enrolment rates are growing faster among advantaged students than among disadvantaged students signals that countries have to work harder to ensure that all families, particularly disadvantaged families, have access to high-quality pre-primary education, and to information about such programmes, near where they live. An investment in early education, both for parents and for governments, pays dividends later on in life. Which brings to mind another apt expression: “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

Links:
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No. 40 : Does pre-primary education reach those who need it most?
Photo credit: Kids Hands / @Shutterstock

Is more time spent in the classroom helpful for learning?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

In OECD countries, between the ages of 6 and 15 – this is the age-bracket covered by compulsory education, including primary and lower secondary education – children are supposed to spend their days at school. All countries attach great value to schooling and expect children to learn the foundation skills during their time spent in formalised instruction. Therefore, one would expect there to be a shared view on how much time exactly children should spend in school.

The most recent issue of the Education Indicators in Focus series shows however that there is actually no common view. The data on the total number of instructions hours in primary and lower secondary education per country (see chart above) show a surprising variation in the number of hours OECD countries expect children to be at school. The OECD average total intended instruction time is 7 751 hours, but the instruction-time requirements range from 6 054 hours in Hungary to 10 710 hours in Australia. This means that the total time Hungarian children spend in school is only 56.5% of what their Australian peers have to spend. Even if we forget the outliers, we cannot ignore that the discrepancies between countries with very similar educational systems and histories are striking: the total intended instruction time in the Flemish Community of Belgium is only 71.5% of that in the Netherlands. And yet, both countries’ educational systems share many features and are performing very similarly in many educational outcome measures.

How much does instruction time actually matter then? Comparing country-level data on instruction time with PISA 2012 data on learning outcomes for mathematics does not seem to support the hypothesis that more instruction time leads to better student learning outcomes. As far as there is any relationship, it actually goes the other way: the 10 countries with the highest instruction time have a mean PISA score for mathematics, which is 20 score-points below that of the 10 countries with the lowest amount of instruction time. More than 2 700 hours of instruction in primary and lower secondary education do not seem to make a difference in learning outcomes at the end of that period. And at first sight more instruction time does not help reducing the proportion of low-achieving students either: the 10 countries with the highest number of instruction hours have 47% of 15 year-olds achieving at or below level 2 on the PISA math scale, compared with 40% for the 10 countries with the lowest amount of intended instruction time. It is likely that the amount of instruction time educational systems have settled on is related in quite complex ways to historical patterns and social conditions in countries. Or it may be a mere product of pure coincidence and tradition having gradually lost its social significance and relevance.

Of course, children do many more things than just sitting in the classroom, and they learn through many more daily activities than just going to school. After all, total instruction time in schools comprises an estimated 15% of total non-sleeping time of children aged between 6 and 15. From a learning perspective the remaining 85% is interesting. Some activities are school-related, such as homework, others expand formal learning into parallel environments, such as private tutoring or music lessons. In some countries these activities significantly increase the formal learning time beyond school-based instruction.  Children also participate in non-formal learning, such as sports, youth work and cultural activities. We should also not forget that children need time to play with friends, to engage in family time with parents and siblings, to learn from surfing the internet, to participate in social media, to watch television or just to enjoy being on their own. Very little is known about this crucial dimension of time of children and how it may contribute to learning. But several countries – mainly European ones such as Germany, Belgium, Austria, Nordic countries, etc. – who do not consider a very long school day for children as optimal for learning and well-being, attach great importance to safeguarding children’s play-time and joyful informal learning.

Completely different views on children’s learning time exist as well. In some countries activists and movements concerned with maximising learning opportunities for disadvantaged children seek to increase school-based instruction time, because they think it’s the only way to offer more favourable learning conditions to disadvantaged kids than the home or the street. Historically, this thinking aligns with some of the considerations which led to the implementation of compulsory education legislation one century ago.

There are many good reasons to bring children together in schools to offer them a powerful learning environment. But there doesn’t seem to be a shared view on exactly how much time children should spend in schools.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus, Issue No. 22, by Eric Charbonnier and Nhung Truong
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm



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 do your parents do for a living? (and should it matter?)

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Does where you come from really tell you anything about where you’re going? When it comes to parents’ occupations and students’ performance, the answer is a qualified ‘yes’ – but it also depends on where, geographically, you go to school.

Intrigued? PISA is unveiling a web-based, interactive tool (occupations@pisa2012) that allows anyone to explore and compare the relationship between student performance in reading, mathematics and science and parents’ occupations in PISA-participating countries and economies.

The tool is based on results from PISA 2012. Among many other questions concerning students’ backgrounds, PISA asked participating students what their parents did for a living. Their responses were then coded into an internationally comparable classification that allows for identifying individuals working in similar industries, on similar tasks, with the same types of responsibilities. As this month’s PISA in Focus reveals, students whose parents work in professional occupations generally outperform other students in mathematics, while students whose parents work in elementary occupations tend to underachieve compared to their peers.

PISA shows that in the United States and the United Kingdom, where professionals are among the highest-paid in the world, students whose parents work as professionals do not perform as well in mathematics as children of professionals in other countries – nor do they perform as well as the children in Shanghai-China and Singapore whose parents work in manual occupations.

Results also show that, while France and New Zealand perform around the OECD average in mathematics, the performance gap between the children of skilled workers and those of unskilled workers is among the largest observed in participating countries and economies. By contrast, the relative high performance of Finland, Hong-Kong and Korea stems from the fact that the difference in mathematics performance between children of skilled and unskilled workers is relatively small. You’ll also see that Germany is not among PISA’s strongest performers overall because, while the children of professionals in Germany are among the world’s best performers in mathematics, students whose parents work in manual occupations perform very poorly, and these families make up a large share of the country’s total population.

This all boils down to a relatively simple message: if school systems want all of their students to succeed in school, they should give the children of factory workers and cleaners the same education opportunities that the children of doctors and lawyers enjoy.

Links:
Occupations@pisa2012
PISA 2012 Results
PISA in Focus No. 36: Do parents' occupations have an impact on student performance?
Photo Credit: Small Boy with Businessman Looking at Board with Mathematics Formulas / @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