Are efficient schools more inclusive?

by Tommaso Agasisti
Thomas J. Alexander Fellow, Directorate for Education and Skills

Distribution of efficiency scores by country
Click here for full size

Analysing the efficiency of education systems and organisations is at the forefront of today’s policy and academic debate. Various factors make efficiency more important than ever: declining public budgets, rising competition across public services for limited public expenditures, increasing demand for transparency in information about the costs and results of schools’ activities. From this perspective, fiscal consolidation in many countries depends on the ability of governments to proactively use information concerning the efficiency of public spending. When focussing on education, providing clear quantitative information about the efficiency of educational institutions has become more important than ever.

In the working paper, we propose an innovative use of PISA data for measuring the efficiency of schools in an international comparison; more specifically, we compare the efficiency scores of more than 8 600 schools in 30 countries using PISA 2012 data. The study deals with the following key research questions:

a)    How relevant are the differences in the efficiency of schools across the selected 30 countries? Are these differences driven more by between-schools or between-countries variance?
b)    Which factors are associated with schools’ efficiency scores? And, are these factors common across all countries?
c)    Is there a trade-off between efficiency and equity at school level?

All three questions can have policy and managerial implications, and each of them also opens the door to potential benchmarking exercises that can prompt school principals to look at the most efficient schools in the world, investigating the drivers of their performances.

Using a non-parametric technique, called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), that measures efficiency scores from 0 to 1 (where 1 is maximum efficiency level observed in the sample), we find that efficiency scores vary widely both between and within countries. When considering all schools together – so allowing for the existence of an international common benchmark – we find that on average schools can raise their scores by 27%, ranging across countries from 15% for schools in Singapore to more than 33% for those in Slovenia. The Figure 1 highlights how dispersed efficiency scores are within countries; these efficiency scores of schools within countries encompass the entire range of the international distribution of efficiency, underlying the fact that country average efficiency scores mask substantial internal variation.

When we compare each school with those operating in the same country, the average improvement in output is estimated at 15%, ranging from 6%, on average, among schools in Ireland to 22% among those in Slovenia. This result suggests that it could be necessary to consider an international benchmark for efficiency analysis; indeed, the room for improvement is much larger when considering in the sample institutions from various contexts. International benchmarking exercises are really options for opening the mind to more ambitious performance goals – and at lower cost.  

We also investigate if are there factors at the school and country levels that are associated with efficiency. These second-stage variables have been classified in three main groups: students’ characteristics, other than socio-economic status, general characteristics of the schools, and schools’ practices and processes. This last group of variables can help policy makers and school managers to act for improving institutions’ efficiency. The results reveal that the characteristics of the student intake in each school (i.e. the proportion of girls and immigrants, the diversity of socio-economic background, etc.) explain most of the variation in efficiency across schools; however, school-related factors (i.e. practices such as extracurricular activities, principals’ leadership style, etc.) also play a role in describing differences in efficiency across schools.

In the last part of the study, we discuss how we find no evidence of a trade-off between efficiency and equity; in other words, more efficient schools tend to be more inclusive. Efficiency scores are related to greater inclusion, as measured by the percentage of students in the school who score above proficiency Level 2, the baseline level of performance in PISA.

Limitations on methods and data sources imply that the estimated efficiency scores are only proxies for true efficiency. Most importantly, they do not provide precise measures of efficiency at the school level and any attempt to use these measures to rank schools would be ill conceived. Yet, these estimates provide a clear picture of the distribution of schools’ efficiency scores across and within countries. 

We hope that this contribution can help to direct researchers’ attention towards this topic, to explore further the factors that affect efficiency in education.

Links:
The Efficiency of Secondary Schools in an International Perspective
PISA 2012 Key Findings
Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship
Photo source: Authors’ elaborations on PISA 2012 data, www.oecd.org/edu/Figure2.pdf

Education post-2015

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Knowledge capital and economic growth rates across countries*

Next week, UNESCO will convene the world’s educational leaders in Incheon to set the agenda for educational development over the next 15 years. Those who think that’s mainly an agenda for the developing world should read our new report Universal basic skills - what countries stand to gain. The report shows the scale of the effort that is ahead even for many of the wealthiest nations to develop the essential skills that can transform lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. And with a new global metric of the quality of learning outcomes, the report demonstrates that the world is no longer divided between rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly educated ones.

Importantly, the post-2015 agenda is no longer just about providing more people with more years of schooling, but about making sure that individuals acquire a solid foundation of knowledge in key disciplines, that they develop creative, critical thinking and collaborative skills, and that they build character attributes, such as mindfulness, curiosity, courage and resilience.

The first thing the report shows is that the quality of schooling in a country is a powerful predictor of the wealth that countries will produce in the long run. Or, put the other way around, the economic output that is lost because of poor education policies and practices leaves many countries in what amounts to a permanent state of economic recession – and one that can be larger and deeper than the one that resulted from the financial crisis at the beginning of the millennium, out of which many countries are still struggling to climb.

Among the countries compared, Ghana has the lowest enrolment rate in secondary schools (46%) and also the lowest achievement levels for those 15-year-olds who are in school (291 PISA points). While it is difficult for Ghana to meet the goal of universal basic skills any time soon, if it did, it would see a gain over the lifetime of its children born today that, in present value terms, is 38 times its current GDP. This is equivalent to tripling Ghana’s discounted future GDP every four years during the working life of those students with improved skills. For lower-middle income countries, the discounted present value of future gains would still be 13 times current GDP and would average out to a 28% higher GDP over the next 80 years. And for upper-middle income countries, which generally show higher levels of learning outcomes, it would average out to a 16% higher GDP.

The goal of universal basic skills also has meaning for high-income countries, most notably the oil-producing countries. Many of them have succeeded in converting their natural capital into physical capital and consumption today; but they have failed to convert their natural capital into the human capital that can generate the economic and social outcomes to sustain their future. The report shows that the high-income non-OECD countries, as a group, would see an added economic value equivalent to almost five times the value of their current GDP  if they equipped all students with at least basic skills. So there is an important message for countries rich in natural resources: the wealth that lies hidden in the undeveloped skills of their populations is far greater than what they now reap by extracting wealth from national resources. And there is more: PISA shows a significantly negative relationship between the money countries earn from their natural resources and the knowledge and skills of their school population. So PISA and oil don’t mix easily.

One interpretation is that in countries with little in the way of natural resources education is highly valued, and produces strong outcomes, at least partly because the public at large has understood that the country must live by its knowledge and skills, and that these depend on the quality of education. In other words, the value that a country places on education may depend, at least in part, on a country’s view of how knowledge and skills fit into the way it makes its living.

One might be tempted to think that high-income countries have had all the means to eliminate extreme underperformance in education and should already have achieved the education post-2015 goal and targets. But the report shows otherwise. For example, 24% of 15-year-olds in the United States do not successfully complete even the basic Level 1 PISA tasks. If the United States were to ensure that all students meet the goal of universal basic skills, the economic gains could reach over USD 27 trillion in additional income for the American economy over the working life of these students. So even high-income OECD countries would gain significantly from bringing all students up to basic skills by 2030. For this group of countries, average future GDP would be 3.5% higher than it would be otherwise. That is close to what these countries currently spend on their schools. In other words, the economic gains that would accrue solely from eliminating extreme underperformance in high-income OECD countries by 2030 would be sufficient to pay for the primary and secondary education of all students.

The message of these rather complex analyses is simple: there is no shortcut to improved learning outcomes in a post-2015 world economy where knowledge and skills have become the global currency, the key to better jobs and better lives. And there is no central bank that prints this currency. We cannot inherit this currency, and we cannot produce it through speculation; we can only develop it through sustained effort and investment in people.

That raises the question of whether the improvements in learning outcomes suggested in this report are realistic – and how they can be achieved by 2030. The answer to the first question is unambiguously positive. PISA shows that top performers in education, such as Shanghai in China, Korea and Singapore, were able to further extend their lead over the past years, and countries like Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia and Turkey achieved major improvements from previously low levels of performance – all at a speed that exceeds, by a large margin, the improvements described in this report. So the world is full of examples of improvements in education, and there is no time to lose. Without the right skills, people end up on the margins of the society, technological progress doesn’t translate into economic growth, and countries face an uphill struggle to remain ahead in this hyper-connected world. Ultimately in this scenario, the social glue that holds our societies together will disintegrate. The world has become indifferent to past reputations and unforgiving of frailty. Success will go to those individuals, institutions and countries that are swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change. The task for governments is to help their citizens rise to this challenge by ensuring that by 2030 all of their people are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need for further education, work and life.

Links:
Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain
UNESCO World education Forum, 19-22 May 2015, Incheon, Korea
The World Bank Education for Global Development: A blog about the power of investing in people
PISA 2012 Key Findings
Follow on twitter: #UniversalBasicSkills
Chart Source: Hanushek and Woessmann (2015)
*Added-variable plot of a regression of the average annual rate of growth (in%) of real per capita GDP from 1960 to 2000 on average test scores on international student achievement tests, average years of schooling in 1960, and initial level of real per capita GDP in 1960 (mean of unconditional variables added to each axis).
Note by Turkey: The information in this document with reference to "Cyprus" relates to the southern part of the Island. There is no single authority representing both Turkish and Greek Cypriot people on the Island. Turkey recognises the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Until a lasting and equitable solution is found within the context of the United Nations, Turkey shall preserve its position concerning the "Cyprus issue". 
Note by all the European Union member States of the OECD and the European Union: The Republic of Cyprus is recognised by all members of the United Nations with the exception of Turkey. The information in this document relates to the area under the effective control of the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.

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

A shared aspiration

By Alfonso Echazarra
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills 

If there’s one word that encapsulates the desires and aspirations of education stakeholders around the world, it is improvement. When the first PISA results revealed the disappointing performance of German students, the country became determined to improve, and shake up, its education system. More recently, after declining results in reading, mathematics and science, Wales introduced large-scale school reform measures with the aim of becoming one of the top 20 performers in PISA reading performance by 2015. While there is no one sure path to improvement in education, this month’s PISA in Focus relays a positive message: any country can improve its performance and equity in education – and relatively quickly.

This means that improvements in PISA performance are not bound by geography, national wealth, cultural heritage or where the country started off on its way towards excellence in PISA. For example, Singapore, a small, relatively wealthy Asian country (which ranked second in mathematics performance in PISA 2012) has improved its mean score by 4 points per year – as has Brazil, a large, middle-income Latin American country, where two out of three students still do not attain the baseline proficiency Level 2 in mathematics. Countries as diverse as Chile, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, Qatar and Romania have also seen significant improvements in mathematics performance.

PISA results over the years also show that change can happen relatively quickly, and this is good news for governments setting ambitious goals. Look at Poland: its performance in reading, mathematics and science has improved remarkably since the first PISA results – more than 25 score points in all 3 subjects – to the extent that Poland is now among the 10 top-performing OECD countries. Brazil, Bulgaria, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey have also made great leaps forward.

And there’s still more good news: improvement in performance rarely comes at the expense of equity in education. When countries show improvements in their performance, it is usually because they have managed to reduce the proportion of low-achieving students. For instance, improvements in mathematics performance in Mexico, Tunisia and Turkey, all of which scored well below average in their first PISA tests, are observed mainly among low-achieving students. This usually means greater equity of education opportunities in these countries. In fact, in the majority of the countries and economies whose mathematics performance has improved over the years, the relationship between students’ socio-economic background and mathematics performance has grown weaker, not stronger.

PISA is a useful tool not only for measuring how students perform now, but how much countries and economies have progressed over time in encouraging – and realising – excellence and equity in education. What eventually makes the difference for education systems is their aspiration to improve, not a desire to be top of the class.


Links: 
Education Policy Outlook 2015
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No. 47: How has student performance evolved over time?
Full set of PISA in Focus 
Excellence through Equity, Giving Every Student the Chance to Succeed (Volume II)
Photo credit: Business occupation - finger people moving step up /@Shutterstock

Trouble with homework

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

It’s sometimes hard to tell who has more trouble with homework: students or their parents. PISA results show that homework, itself, may inadvertently perpetuate a problem that goes far beyond spoiling a student’s evening or a parent’s self-esteem. As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, homework may widen the performance gap between students from different socio-economic backgrounds.

Students everywhere are assigned homework by their teachers, and across OECD countries in 2012, 15-year-old students reported that they spend almost five hours per week doing homework. (If you think that’s a lot, it’s actually one hour less per week than the average reported in 2003 – and 9 hours less per week than students in Shanghai-China reported in 2012.)

The problem lies not so much in the amount of time spent doing homework, but in differences in the amount of time spent doing homework that are related to students’ socio-economic status. In every country and economy that participated in PISA 2012, advantaged students spend more time doing homework than disadvantaged students. In OECD countries, for example, advantaged students spend 5.7 hours per week doing homework, on average, while disadvantaged students spend an average of 4.1 hours per week. PISA also finds that students who attend schools whose student body is predominantly composed of advantaged students, and students who attend schools located in urban areas, reported spending more time doing homework than students who attend schools with a more disadvantaged student body and schools located in rural areas.

What accounts for these differences? PISA cannot establish cause-and-effect links, but results from previous PISA studies suggest that advantaged students are more likely than their disadvantaged peers to have a quiet place to study at home and parents who convey positive messages about schooling. The connection between the socio-economic profile of a school’s student population and the amount of time students spend on homework might reflect differences in teachers’ expectations for their students and teachers’ perceptions of their students’ capacity to study independently.

All of this has an impact on student performance. Students who spend more time doing homework tend to score higher in the PISA mathematics test. And if you compare students from similar socio-economic backgrounds who attend similarly resourced schools, those who attend schools where students, in general, spend more time doing homework perform better in mathematics than those who attend schools whose students devote less time to homework. In fact, PISA results show that the net payoff in mathematics performance from attending a school where more homework is assigned, in general, is particularly large – 17 score points (the equivalent of nearly 6 months of schooling) or more per extra hour of homework – in Hong Kong-China, Japan, Macao-China and Singapore.

One good way to make sure that homework does not perpetuate differences in performance that are related to students’ socio-economic status is for schools and teachers to encourage struggling and disadvantaged students to complete their homework. This could involve providing facilities at school so that disadvantaged students have a quiet, comfortable place to work, and/or offering to help parents motivate their children to finish their homework before going out with friends or surfing the web. The homework still has to get done; but maybe students and their parents will find it a little less troublesome.

Links: 
PISA 2012 Findings
Does homework perpetuate inequities in education?
PISA in Focus No.46 (French version)
Photo credit: Student connection / @Shutterstock

Maths education for innovative societies

by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin
Senior Analyst and Project Leader, Directorate for Education and Skills

Mathematics is at the core of science, engineering and technology. Mathematic modelling of various phenomena underpins technology innovation. No wonder that mathematics education has always ranked high on the innovation policy agenda.

There is now ample evidence that preparing students for an innovative society goes well beyond preparing them for science-related professions. Given that a large share of professionals contributes in some way to innovation, the new educational imperative is to equip a critical mass of workers and citizens with the skills to thrive in innovative societies.

How can education systems meet this demand through mathematics education? First, they should improve students’ technical skills in mathematics. By technical skills, I mean the know-what (for example, the theorems) and the know-how (for example, the procedures to solve different types of problems). The 2012 results of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that many countries still have room for improvement. They also reveal that too many students still perceive mathematics as an educational stumbling block.

How could one possibly improve the learning outcomes in mathematics that are traditionally tested and, at the same time, develop other important skills for innovation, such as reasoning, understanding, posing (rather than just solving) problems, self-confidence, and even communication skills?

This is precisely the question that Zemira Mevarech and Bracha Kramarski address in a new OECD report entitled Critical Maths for Innovative Societies. Strong experimental and quasi-experimental research evidence points to one solution that teachers could easily adopt more systematically in their teaching: the explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies.

Meta-what? Let’s not be intimidated by scientific language. Metacognition simply means “thinking about” or “regulating” one’s thinking. While one often thinks about one’s thinking when learning, metacognitive pedagogies make students develop explicit (rather than implicit) learning and problem-solving strategies by making them systematically go through a series of questions about their learning.

Initiated by the Hungarian mathematician George Polya, these strategies have had several developers and promoters. For example, the teaching method developed by Mevarech and Kramarski, called IMPROVE, asks students to answer four types of questions when exposed to new content knowledge or when solving a problem: comprehension questions (e.g. what is the problem about?); connection questions (e.g. how does this problem relate to problems I have already solved? Please explain your reasoning); strategic questions (e.g. what kinds of strategies are appropriate for solving the problem, and why? Please explain your reasoning), and reflection questions (e.g. does the solution make sense? can the problem be solved in a different way?). These questions and their related processes then gradually become a habit of mind. Rigorous research shows that using this pedagogy, and others like it,  yields positive results on a variety of outcomes and skills that matter in innovative societies.

First, compared to traditional pedagogies, these methods lead to better learning outcomes in arithmetic, algebra and geometry, and their effectiveness increases in co-operative learning settings and when they also address learners’ emotional responses.

Second, they do not enhance only traditional learning outcomes, but also other skills for innovation. Metacognitive pedagogies help students to articulate their thinking, actively use the “mathematics language”, be more curious as they relate their learning to their interests, provide elaborated explanations, and also be involved in conflict resolutions and mutual learning. Students thus become better at mathematical reasoning, and better at regulating their emotions when confronted with mathematical problems. Students who have been taught using these pedagogies show less anxiety towards mathematics, for example.

Metacognitive pedagogies work for students in primary, secondary and tertiary education, as well as in teacher training; and some longitudinal studies show that they have a lasting effect and lead to much better retention of knowledge.

A noteworthy finding for policy makers is that metacognitive strategies are effective both for traditional and for complex, unfamiliar and non-routine math problems. Because they can be more authentic, more open, and more related to real life, these kinds of problems may arguably better prepare students to exert their creative and critical minds. An example of such a problem is the following: “several supermarkets advertised that they are the cheapest supermarket in town. Please collect information and find out which of the advertisements is correct.” Students then have to design and implement a strategy to come up with a reasoned answer. These kinds of problems may have several solutions, depending on how students interpret the problem: the students may go for a different basket of goods, or take into account qualitative differences in a different way – as we do in real life.

Some mathematics educators believe that complex, unfamiliar and non-routine problems are not “real maths” problems; but the good news is that, whatever the type of problem they prefer, metacognitive strategies will still improve their students’ learning outcomes.

Would metacognitive pedagogies have positive effects if mainstreamed in mathematics education (and possibly other disciplines)? Singapore is the only country where metacognitive strategies are now one explicit dimension of the mathematics curriculum. That means they are taught in teacher training and teachers are obliged to use them. This might partly explain why Singapore is consistently one of the top performers in mathematics, in both the PISA and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests.

Many educators and policy makers call for more evidence to support improvement of educational practices and reform education systems before adopting education reforms. For once, we have strong evidence. So why wait any longer to promote the use of metacognitive pedagogies in the classroom?

Links:
Critical Maths for Innovative Societies The Role of Metacognitive Pedagogies
PISA 2012 Results: Creative Problem Solving (Volume V)
PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can Do (Volume I)
Measuring Innovation in Education: A New Perspective
Art for Art’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education
The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice 
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
OECD Insights: Want to improve your problem solving skills? Try metacognition
Photo credit: © Aakash Nihalani (“Sum Times”)

Spread the wealth, reap the benefits

by Marilyn Achiron, 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Quick: Who has more up-to-date textbooks: students in wealthier schools or students in poorer schools? Actually, it depends where you live. As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, not only are some countries better than others in allocating their educational resources more equitably across schools, but students in these countries generally perform better in mathematics.

PISA 2012 asked school principals to report whether teacher shortages, or shortages or inadequacy of physical infrastructure or instructional materials, like textbooks, hindered their school’s ability to provide instruction. PISA found that while disadvantaged schools benefit from investments in smaller classes, they are also more likely to suffer from teacher shortages and inadequate instructional materials than advantaged schools. In general, schools with more socio-economically disadvantaged students tend to have less adequate resources than schools with more advantaged students.

It may come as a surprise, but according to PISA data, the United States is the second least-equitable OECD country, after Mexico, in the allocation of educational resources. One in four disadvantaged students in the United States attends a school whose principal reported that a shortage or inadequacy of science laboratory equipment hindered – to some extent or a lot – the school’s capacity to provide instruction. Meanwhile, only around one in seven advantaged students in the United States attends such a school. The differences between advantaged and disadvantaged schools are even starker among Latin American countries, including the OECD countries Chile and Mexico. For example, fewer than one in two disadvantaged students, but more than three in four advantaged students, in Mexico attend schools that have adequate instructional materials.

Apart from making a huge difference to individual students, inequity in resource allocation has an impact on a country’s overall performance in PISA. After taking into account countries’ relative wealth, 19% of the variation in mathematics performance across all the countries and economies that participated in PISA 2012 can be explained by differences in principals’ responses to questions about the adequacy of science laboratory equipment, instructional materials, computers for instruction, Internet connectivity, computer software for instruction, and library materials. At least 30% of the variation in mathematics performance across OECD countries can be explained by how equitably resources are allocated across all schools.

PISA has consistently found that, when it comes to education, money isn’t everything, and that beyond a certain minimum level of expenditure per student, how the money is spent is more important than how much money is spent. When money is translated into such tangibles as up-to-date textbooks, reliable Internet access, and a school library full of books, spreading the wealth evenly across all schools, regardless of their socio-economic profile, gives all students, not just those in the wealthiest schools, the nourishment they need to succeed.

Links:
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No. 44: How is equity in resource allocation related to student performance?
PISA in Focus No. 44 (French version)
Photo credit: Teenager students outside protecting their heads from a rain of books / @Shutterstock

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

Why policy makers should care about motivating students

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

What’s in it for me? Positive answers to that ubiquitous (and often crass) question may actually make a fundamental difference in how students learn. As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, students who are highly motivated to learn mathematics because they believe it will help them later on score better in mathematics – by the equivalent of half a year of schooling – than students who are not highly motivated.

Most students recognise that learning mathematics is important for their future studies and careers. Indeed, 75% of students agree or strongly agree that making an effort in mathematics is worth it because it will help them in the work that they want to do later on; 78% agree or strongly agree that learning mathematics can improve their career prospects; 66% agree or strongly agree that they need mathematics for what they want to study later on; and 70% agree or strongly agree that learning many things in mathematics will help them get a job.

Results from PISA 2012 show that, on average across OECD countries, the difference in mathematics performance between students who reported higher levels of motivation to learn mathematics and those with lower levels of motivation is 18 score points, or the equivalent of roughly half a year of schooling; in Korea, Norway and Chinese Taipei, the difference is greater than 30 score points. The results also reveal that motivation is particularly strongly associated with performance among the highest-achieving students. On average across OECD countries, the difference in PISA scores associated with instrumental motivation is 21 points among top performers while it is only 11 points among low achievers. In Belgium, France, Hungary and the Slovak Republic, the score difference, related to motivation, between high and low performers is larger than 20 points.

Perhaps surprisingly, students’ motivation is also associated with certain education policies – particularly those related to sorting or grouping students into different schools or programmes, such as general versus vocational programmes. PISA examined different ways of grouping students between schools and found that students’ motivation is lower in those school systems that offer a larger number of distinct education programmes; where larger proportions of students attend vocational or pre-vocational rather than academic programmes; where students are grouped or selected for these programmes at a younger age; where a large proportion of students attends academically selective schools; and where a large proportion of students attends schools that transfer students with low achievement, behavioural problems or special learning needs to another school.

While creating homogeneous student populations through grouping may allow teachers to tailor instruction to the specific needs of each group, selecting and sorting students generally reinforces socio-economic disparities, results in differences in opportunities to learn, and consequently, de-motivates large numbers of students who do not feel they are being given equal opportunities to succeed. Indeed, selecting students in these ways implies that only some students can achieve at high levels, and thus runs the risk of de-motivating the very students who would benefit the most if their parents, their teachers and their schools held high expectations for them. If students can’t find a good answer to the question why should I bother studying? then all of us have failed.

Links:
PISA 2012 Findings
Pisa in Focus No. 39: Are grouping and selecting students for different schools related to students’ motivation to learn?
PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn: Students' Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs
Photo credit: College math student /@Shutterstock

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

Are 15-year-olds good at solving problems?

by Francesco Avvisati
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

As our economies and societies grow ever more complex, success in life and work is increasingly determined by our ability to adapt to new situations, learn from mistakes and try out new approaches. Are these the qualities that today’s 15-year-olds learn in school?

PISA 2012 investigated this question with a special set of assessments based around creative problem-solving. Students in 44 countries and economies took part in this computer-based assessment, tackling real-life, interactive problems, such as troubleshooting a malfunctioning MP3 player and planning a trip, available online through PISA 2012 Problem-Solving questions. aim was to assess how well they could resolve problems with no immediately obvious solutions, so demonstrating their openness to novelty, ability to tolerate uncertainty, and capacity to reason and learn outside of school contexts.

Results, published today, show that students in Singapore and Korea, followed by students in Japan, score higher in problem solving than students in all other participating countries and economies. Students in these countries are quick learners, highly inquisitive, and are able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts. Four more East Asian partner economies rank between 4th and 7th place: Macao-China, Hong Kong-China, Shanghai-China, and Chinese Taipei (in descending order of their mean scores). Canada, Australia, Finland, England (United Kingdom), Estonia, France, the Netherlands, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, the United States and Belgium (in descending order of their mean scores) all score above the OECD average, but below the former group of countries.

Just because a student performs well in core school subjects doesn’t mean he or she is proficient in problem solving. In Australia, Brazil, Italy, Japan, Korea, Macao-China, Serbia, England (United Kingdom) and the United States, students perform significantly better in problem solving, on average, than students in other countries who show similar performance in reading, mathematics and science. This indicates, for instance, that the best students in Australia or the United States not only learn the curriculum, they also learn how to enrich their knowledge and use that knowledge outside of school contexts. In some countries, however, it may also signal that schools do not always make the most of students’ potential when it comes to learning the core subjects.

Many of the best-performing countries and economies in problem solving are those with better-than-expected performance on knowledge-acquisition tasks, which require high levels of reasoning skills and self-directed learning. Meanwhile, compared to students of similar overall performance, students in Brazil, Ireland, Korea and the United States perform strongest on interactive problems, which require students to uncover useful information by exploring the problem situation and gathering feedback on the effect of their interventions. In order to solve interactive problems, students need to be open to novelty, tolerate doubt and uncertainty, and dare to use intuition to initiate a solution.

Today’s 15-year-olds are the Robinson Crusoes of a future that remains largely unknown to us. They will need to cope with a changing environment, work in jobs that do not exist today, using tools to which they had no introduction in school. Adapting, learning, daring to try out new things, and always being ready to learn from mistakes are among the keys to resilience and success in an unpredictable world.

What the results of the PISA assessment of problem-solving skills suggest is the important role of teachers and schools in preparing students to confront and solve the kinds of problems that are encountered almost daily in 21st century life. In countries and economies that rank at the top in problem‑solving proficiency, students not only learn the required curriculum, they also learn how to turn real-life problems into learning opportunities – creatively devising solutions and reasoning with a specific purpose outside of school contexts.

Links:
PISA 2012 Results
OECD Press release: Singapore and Korea top first OECD’s PISA problem-solving test
Creative Problem Solving: Students' Skills in Tackling Real-Life Problems (Volume V)
PISA 2012 Problem-Solving questions
VIDEO: Alliance for Excellent Education interview with Andreas Schleicher
Pisa in Focus No. 38: Are 15-year-olds good at solving problems?

Photo credit: Thinking Smiling Woman with Questions Marksabove looking up / @shutterstock

Our mothers were right: Hard work and perseverance do pay off

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

How many times have you heard successful people, in all walks of life, credit their triumphs to hard work and perseverance? Now PISA adds to the chorus with some hard evidence: when students believe that working hard will make a difference in their studies, they score significantly higher in mathematics.

This month’s PISA in Focus examines how students’ perseverance and belief that hard work yields positive results are clearly linked to better performance. Students who reported, through the PISA student questionnaire, that they continue to work on tasks until everything is perfect, remain interested in the tasks they start, do not give up easily when confronted with a problem, and, when confronted with a problem, do more than is expected of them, have higher scores in mathematics than students who reported lower levels of perseverance. In as many as 25 countries and economies, students who have greater perseverance score at least 20 points higher in mathematics than students who reported lower levels of perseverance; and in Finland, Iceland, Korea, New Zealand, Norway and Chinese Taipei, this difference is larger than 30 score points.

Similarly, students who strongly agreed with the statement “If I put in enough effort, I can succeed in mathematics” perform better in mathematics than students who did not agree by an average of 32 score points. The score-point difference in mathematics performance that is associated with this self-belief is 50 points or more in Iceland, Korea, Norway and Chinese Taipei – well over the equivalent of a full school year.

The relationship between students’ perceived control over their success in mathematics and their performance in mathematics appears to be particularly strong among the highest-achieving students. Among these students in OECD countries, those who strongly agreed that they can succeed in mathematics if they put in enough effort have a performance advantage of 36 score points over students who did not agree with that statement; among the lowest-achieving students, the difference is only 24 score points. In 24 countries and economies, this difference is 15 score points or more, and it is particularly large – 30 score points or more – in Hungary, the Slovak Republic, Sweden and Turkey.

Students’ perseverance and drive to learn are not immutable; they can be nurtured with the right kind of guidance and teaching. For example, PISA results reveal that teachers’ use of cognitive-activation strategies, such as giving students problems that require them to think for an extended time, presenting problems for which there is no immediately obvious way of arriving at a solution, and helping students to learn from their mistakes, is associated with students’ drive. And students who reported that their mathematics teachers use teacher-directed instruction (such as when teachers set clear goals for learning) and formative assessments (when teachers give students feedback on their strengths and weaknesses in mathematics) also reported particularly high levels of perseverance and openness to problem solving.

Yet, the use of such strategies among teachers is not widespread: only 53% of students across OECD countries reported that their teachers often present them with problems that require them to think for an extended time, and 47% reported that their teachers often present problems for which there is no immediately obvious way of arriving at a solution. On average across OECD countries, only 17% of students reported that their teacher assigns projects that require at least one week to complete.

What this suggests is that many more students need to be given the chance – and encouragement – to show that they are capable of putting in the hard work – and doing so over a longer time – so  that they, too, can ultimately add their voices to the growing chorus.

Links:
PISA
Pisa in Focus No. 37: Do students have the drive to succeed?
PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn: Students' Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs
Photo credit: Sisyphus, Simple Drawing and Modern Representation of famous Greek mythology character /@shutterstock