Combatting bullying in schools

by Tracey Burns and Andrew Macintyre
Directorate for Education and Skills

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me". So goes the English nursery rhyme taught to children to console them if they have been called names, or teased by their friends or classmates. But no matter how often you repeat it as a child, it doesn’t really make you feel better. Why? Because it’s not true.

Being called names does hurt. A lot. So does being picked on, being pushed around, being excluded from groups – in short, being bullied. Bullying is not new – Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, wrote about it in 1847 and Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) brought the issue widespread attention. It has been the subject of countless  teenage coming of age books. And it regularly makes national headlines with stories of teens being pushed into desperate situations, even suicide, as a result of relentless bullying.

While bullying has been around for a long time, it has recently taken on a new form: cyber bullying. Cyber bullying includes many different forms of online bullying such as sending threatening emails, copying personal conversations and sending them to others, creating derogatory websites about a person or humiliating them repeatedly on social networks. A recent Trends Shaping Education Spotlight looked at this issue and found that estimates of the prevalence of cyber bullying vary widely but an EU-wide study indicates that on average, 6% to 9% of 16-year-olds report being bullied online.

So what can be done? First, it is important to emphasise that although cyber bullying is often represented in the media as something new, it is an extension of traditional face to face bullying. Certainly there are differences – for example, it can be especially hurtful because it can be witnessed by a much larger audience than face-to-face bullying, such as when pictures of a humiliating event or abuse are circulated and recirculated among an entire school or village. Cyber bullying is also not confined to school hours and can happen anywhere, anytime.

However these differences should not blind us to the similarities with face-to-face bullying in the damage it can cause. Bullying, in all of its forms, is no laughing matter. Bullies, motivated to enhance their status among their peers, bully in front of witnesses, whose approval (or at least tacit silence) is crucial. They tend to choose their victims from those who sit in the bottom line of the social ledger, those least able to fight back. And it works, both to raise the popularity of the bully and to hurt the victim: the research to date shows that victims of bullying do worse at school, tend to have lower self-esteem, and are more likely to attempt suicide – both during childhood and later on in life.

There is one interesting finding that also emerges from the research: the bully and victim roles can be interchangeable and related. Of the young internet users surveyed in the EU Kids Online Survey quoted above, only 4% of those who reported not bullying others had been the victim of cyber bullying themselves. For self-confessed online bullies, 47% reported being bullied in turn.

This finding is key. It shatters the myth that the bully is always an evil, swaggering strongman (or woman) who ruthlessly attacks the weaker, more vulnerable peer, so popular in comic books and superhero films. While this may be true in many circumstances, it is not uncommon that those who bully are also bullied, and vice versa. This is a useful reminder for us that the dynamics of human behaviour are complex, and not given to easy solutions. So what can be done?

Luckily, we know quite a bit about what can be done to fight bullying, both face-to-face and online. A recent systematic review of the literature has demonstrated that school-based anti-bullying programmes are often effective. The most successful interventions were in-depth work in parent trainings, improved playground supervision, use of disciplinary methods (both punitive and non-punitive), and work on classroom management and in teacher training. Programmes were also more effective when addressed to older children (age 11 or more). However, and this is important - one type of programme was associated with an increase in victimisation, and that was work with peers, for example peer mediation and peer mentoring.

These results and work on bullying more generally give policy makers a number of good options for addressing the issue in their schools and systems. Parents and teachers can and should intervene in suspect incidents. In all aspects of bullying an important role is played by the bystanders whom, by saying nothing, silently condone the practice. Schools can therefore take action both by raising awareness and by educating students and parents about their role and responsibility in its prevention. As Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace prize winner and South African inspiration put it: If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Links:
Trends Shaping Education
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Related blog posts:
2much 2handle? Schools, social networks, and cyber bullying
Making bullying prevention a priority in Finnish schools
Photo credit: Schoolyard bullies, boy walks away with head down / @Shutterstock

Education Policy Outlook: Vocational Pathways in Denmark, France, Germany and Spain

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

As Helen Keller said “alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”. In classrooms around the world, teachers encourage peer-to-peer learning in order to enhance student learning outcomes.  In the same way, fellow peers learn from each other on how to improve their educational systems.

Since early 2012, the OECD Education Policy Outlook series has produced profiles for Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and Turkey. Today, four new country profiles are being added to the roundtable discussion: Denmark, Germany, Spain and France. While each of these countries face specific educational challenges, they each have successes that can serve as a lesson for others.

Every country assessed is concerned with similar reform domains. Vocational education and training programmes (VET) is a common area to all four countries that could stand to see improvements. According to the Education Policy Outlook on Denmark, for example, VET programmes see high enrolment rates, but also high dropout rates. In 2012, only 52% of VET students completed their programmes. Denmark responded with recent reforms that improved flexibility and attractiveness so that students can tailor the programmes to fit their needs. Further educational reforms will enter into force in 2015, which aim to improve the quality and attractiveness of current programmes through increased apprenticeships and professional development.

Germany also faces challenges to their long-established VET programmes. The dual functioning system consists of 3-4 days a week spent in hands-on training in a firm and 1-2 days a week spent in the classroom. Contrary to Denmark, where the challenge lies in students’ completion of programmes, the challenge in Germany lies in the transition from compulsory education to VET programmes. Germany has already implemented a few initiatives to address this challenge. A vocational orientation programme has been implemented early on in a students’ education path as preventative support. The goal is to facilitate job creation prospects, avoid early dropout and ensure a smooth transition into VET programmes.

Education in Spain has also been faced with some challenges regarding enrolment. Spain, similar to Denmark, is seeing high student dropout rates. In order to tackle this challenge, policy makers in Spain are proposing to introduce a new reform that will allow for greater flexibility in students’ educational path. At age 15 and 16, students could be able to choose to continue with general academic courses or pursue more vocationally oriented courses. At the end of the school year, the student, again, could have the choice to take an exam to earn a traditional diploma or choose to take an exam that would allow transitions into a VET programme.

France has also implemented educational reforms geared towards VET programmes. Social inequalities are a reality that France has been faced with and in order to level the playing field somewhat, these reforms aim for increased individualism in education. Accompanying the learning experience better prepares students for higher education, ensures academic success and allows for a better understanding of the appropriate career choice after school. France, similar to Denmark, Germany and Spain, also struggles with students’ transition from education to the labour market.

Denmark, Germany, Spain and France all face challenges to transitions in different ways. Among other hurdles discussed in the reports, each country is faced with challenges to their vocational education and training programmes, such as transitions to and from VET programmes, high dropout rates, or inflexible paths.  Each country has implemented note-worthy reforms, but would be well-served to make additional improvements. The Education Policy Outlook series are valuable because they  enable countries to learn from each other. But, more importantly, recognition from peers is a positive way in which we can congratulate others on their achievements, and encourage future progress.

Links:
Education Policy Outlook
Country profiles
OECD Work on Vocational Education and Training (VET)
Image credit: © Copyright Sasha Chebotarev

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

 

What teachers know and how that compares with college graduates around the world

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

Numeracy test scores of tertiary graduates and teachers 

The purple bar shows the middle-half of the numeracy skills of 16-64-year-old tertiary graduates (the end points are the 25th and 75th percentiles of the test scores) and the red segment shows the average numeracy scores of 16-64-year-old teachers (with a 95% confidence interval)

One of the most frequent claims I have heard from people trying to explain poor learning outcomes in their country is that their teachers come from the bottom third of their college graduates, while high-performing countries recruit their teachers from the top third. It sounds plausible, since the quality of a school system will never exceed the quality of teaching. And, surely, top school systems pay much attention to how they select their staff. They work hard to improve the performance of teachers who are struggling, they provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame good practice, and they establish intelligent pathways for teachers to grow in their careers.

But, again, does all that mean that in those countries the top third graduates chose to become teachers rather than lawyers, doctors or engineers? In the past, nobody really knew because it is very difficult to get comparative evidence on this. That has now changed. A few weeks ago, we published results from our first Survey of Adult Skills, which tested the skills of countries’ workforces – including teachers – in key areas such as numeracy, literacy and problem-solving. With a back-of-the-envelope calculation (teachers are only a small group of the 5000+ workers in each country who were tested) it is possible to compare the numeracy and literacy skills of teachers with those of other college and university graduates (see the chart above).

So what do the results show? In short, among the countries with comparable data, there is no single country where, based on their average numeracy skills, teachers are in the top third of workers with a college degree; and there is no country where they are among the bottom third of college graduates. In fact, teachers tend to come out remarkably similarly to the average worker with a college or university degree. There are just a few exceptions: In Japan and Finland, for example, the average teacher has better numeracy skills than the average college graduate while in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, the Slovak Republic and Sweden it is the other way round.

But you can look at this another way. While, in each country, teachers tend to score similarly to college graduates on our numeracy test, the numeracy skills of the workforce themselves differ substantially across countries, and so the numeracy skills of teachers vary too: Teachers in Japan and Finland come out on top, followed by their Flemish (Belgium), German, Norwegian and Dutch colleagues, while teachers in Italy, the Russian Federation, Spain, Poland, Estonia and the United States come out at the bottom.
So, how then do the numeracy skills of teachers square with student learning outcomes in mathematics? We will all find out on 3 December when results from the next PISA round, the global metric of student performance, will be published.

In the meantime, we can turn our attention to the things we already know. Unless countries have the luxury of hiring teachers from Finland or Japan, they need to think hard about making teaching a well-respected profession and a more attractive career choice  - both intellectually and financially - and invest more in teacher development and competitive employment conditions. They can also learn from high-performing education systems how to transform the work organisation in their schools by replacing administrative forms of management with professional norms that provide the status and the high-quality training, responsibility and collaborative work that go with professional work. They can develop effective systems of social dialogue, and appealing forms of employment that balance flexibility with job security, and that grant sufficient authority for schools to manage their talent. And, perhaps most crucially, many countries need to do better in attracting the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms to ensure that every student benefits from high-quality teaching. The alternative is clear: a downward spiral - from lowered standards for entry, leading to lowered confidence in the profession, resulting, in turn, in more prescriptive teaching and thus less personalisation in learning experiences –that will risk driving the most talented teachers out of the profession, that will then lower the skills of the teacher population.

Links:
PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
First result of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)
TALIS (OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey)
Chart source: © OECD

Learning from other countries’ experiences in education

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

The data that the OECD collects can help countries map their strengths and weaknesses in education. But what’s the best way to address those weaknesses? Rather than prescribe actions, the OECD often prefers to show policy makers what everyone else is doing and how successful those initiatives have been. A new OECD series of individual Education Policy Outlook Country Profiles does just that: each profile describes how an individual country is responding to key challenges to improve the effectiveness of its education system. The idea behind the series is to offer policy makers easily accessible profiles of countries’ education systems, and the policies adopted to improve those systems, that could inspire reforms at home.

For example, the profile on Australia reports that, while the country is a top PISA performer and has high completion rates in upper secondary and tertiary education, its PISA scores have not improved since 2000. In addition to targeting teacher and school leadership quality and evaluation and assessment, the country has been focusing on defining a more transparent and fairer funding model for schools presented recently in a national plan for school improvement.

New Zealand, also a top PISA performer, has some of the most autonomous schools and universities of all OECD countries. A key challenge for the country has been better integrating the growing indigenous population in its schools. In response, the government has adopted targeted education strategies for Maori and Pasifika Islanders, and defined national standards and a national curriculum for English and Maori schools.

In a different hemisphere, Ireland, which is an average PISA performer and has a growing immigrant population, adopted a policy in 2005 to support low-performing schools, Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, which has helped to increase the number of students who complete secondary education in participating schools. A wider national literacy and numeracy strategy was introduced more recently to increase instruction time in reading and mathematics and offer professional-development activities for teachers and school leaders. Perhaps the country’s greatest challenge now is ensuring that these programmes do not suffer as public spending shrinks as a result of the financial crisis.

In the Czech Republic, where PISA performance in reading, mathematics and science has been deteriorating, the government has introduced evaluation and assessment initiatives that include national standardised tests. To improve the quality of teachers and school leaders, it has raised the salaries of young teachers, introduced a new teacher-career system, and changed the process for appointing and dismissing school leaders.

These four examples alone show how governments around the world are trying to improve their education systems to better prepare their young citizens for full participation in the global, knowledge-based economy. Every six months, the OECD will publish a new set of education policy country profiles as part of its Education Policy Outlook series. The series can be a valuable source of information – and inspiration – for policy makers everywhere.

Links:
Education Policy Outlook
Country profiles
Image credit: © Copyright Sasha Chebotarev

Does it matter which school a student attends?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Successful education systems guarantee that all students succeed at high levels. As this month’s PISA in Focus notes, some school systems not only do well on international assessments, like PISA, they also manage to minimise the difference between the best- and poorest-performing students.

In some education systems, most students have similar levels of proficiency; in others, student performance varies far more widely. Analyses of PISA results show that countries and economies can achieve high average performance without having wide disparities in student performance. In 10 out of the 17 countries and economies that have above-average performance in reading, variations in student performance are smaller than the average variation observed across OECD countries.

PISA finds that 40% of the variation in student performance is found between schools within an education system. What accounts for that variation?  A variety of factors. In Germany, large differences in the expected performance of students who attend different schools are related to the education systems’ policies of selecting students for different pathways through education, usually vocational or academic, based on students’ marks. In Italy, these variations are often related to differences in the profiles of the communities the schools serve, such as the socio-economic differences between students who attend urban schools and those who attend rural schools, and/or differences between the policies of federal and regional education systems. Variations can also be linked to characteristics of school systems that are more difficult to quantify, such as differences in the quality or the effectiveness of the instruction provided. Among high-performing countries, considerable between-school variation is found in only three countries: Belgium, Japan and the Netherlands. Between-school differences account for as little as 8% of the variation in student performance in Finland, 10% in Norway, and less than 20% in Estonia, Iceland and Poland.

PISA also tracks how variations in student performance have evolved over time. Across OECD countries, the average variation in student reading performance narrowed by 3% between 2000 and 2009, because most of the countries that improved their performance during that period did so by improving the performance of low-achieving students. Of the countries that saw improvements in performance during that period, only Poland recorded a marked decrease in between-school variation, while Sweden recorded a large increase.

We all know that students have different abilities, talents, interests and potentials (and vive la difference!). But the most successful and highest-performing school systems know how to elicit the best from every one of their students.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 27: Does it matter which school a student attends?
Photo credit: School coat rack / Shutterstock

Making education more equitable

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Most of us think of education as the great leveller; but are our education systems really doing all they can to ensure that boys and girls from all backgrounds have an equal shot at a high-quality education? As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, some countries have been more successful than others in levelling the playing field for their students.

PISA results consistently show that socio-economic disadvantage is linked to poor student performance. On average, an advantaged student scores 88 points higher – the equivalent of more than two years of schooling – on the PISA reading test than a disadvantaged student. But results from the assessment also show that countries and economies vary in the degree to which performance is linked to socio-economic status. That fact demonstrates that the link can be weakened, usually by putting the right policies and practices in place.

Even more encouraging, education systems don’t have to choose between equity in opportunity and high performance. In the PISA 2009 survey, many of the countries and economies with the greatest equity are also top performers. Students in Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Iceland, Korea, Liechtenstein and Norway score above the OECD average in reading while, at the same time, the difference in scores between advantaged and disadvantaged students is less than 70 points.

Many countries and economies have made notable progress in reducing the difference in performance between advantaged and disadvantaged students while simultaneously improving overall performance. For example, comparing results from the PISA 2000 and 2009 surveys reveals that, in Albania, Chile, Germany and Latvia the relationship between students’ socio-economic status and their reading performance weakened and students’ overall reading performance improved. In Germany, the performance gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students narrowed by more than 25 score points over the period while the average reading performance improved by 13 points. Canada, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong-China, Mexico and the United States also narrowed the performance gap between these two groups of students, but there was no concurrent improvement in overall performance between the two assessments.

Education policies than can foster improvements in equity and performance include giving more and better support to disadvantaged students who start school with deficits in their education; ensuring that all schools provide high-quality instruction; and offering additional educational opportunities to disadvantaged students, as their parents might not be able to provide them. Broader social policies that limit the differences in the life experiences between advantaged and disadvantaged students either at home – crucially, before students enter formal education – or in school can also promote both equity and high performance.

That some countries and economies have weakened the link between socio-economic status and performance in school proves that it is far from inevitable that students from disadvantaged families perform poorly in school. If disadvantage deprives a student of access to the educational opportunities advantaged students enjoy, then these opportunities should be provided by the school system. In other words, all students – regardless of their background – should have the same opportunities to succeed in school.

Links:

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/

PISA in Focus No. 25: Are countries moving towards more equitable education systems?

Photo credit:   Mark Herreid / Shutterstock.com