PISA Tests - UK falls outside of top 20

[sean99]

China's (Shanghai) results are so far ahead of the others we would do well to remember that they are almost certainly not representative of the country as a whole:

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/12/02/...s-the-world-on-international-tests-like-pisa/

Before we bemoan the awful results of the US and UK we should remember that it's possible to get an excellent, world class education in the US and UK, but you have to be a very involved parent.

 

[Joe Hutch]

politicians don't like to blame the parents though, they might not vote for them. Let teachers take the blame for everything.

There are and were some really shite teachers though. My maths teachers were, with one exception, totally unfitted for their job, and one of them should probably have been in a secure institution. And that was in a 'good' grammar school.

 

[Joe Hutch]

It will always be the same as long as Tarquins can laugh at their uselessness at maths around the dinner table.

We must arrest these Tarquins immediately. Maths is no laughing matter.

 

[Joe Hutch]

what does this even mean? How's your Mandarin?

Fine, thanks. How's your satsuma?

 

[Paul R]

China-Shanghai is clearly an outlier and not relevant. The result has been engineered for their own purposes.

What is relevant is that (for example) Poland is significantly outperforming the UK on these tests and is improving. The UK is bang on average and stable.

Paul

 

[Mescalito]

Fixed.

In the UK at least the primary motivation for companies to employ foreign nationals is because they can get them considerably cheaper. I've worked in more than one company that would only grudgingly employ people from the EU etc because they considered them "trouble", as in they knew their rights and stood up for them; and "too expensive", as in they knew their true value and wouldn't work for less. Indian sub continent employees are easy to manage. If they don't do what you want and accept the low wages you offer you just sack them, they lose their visa and have to go back home. Don't underestimate the power of a UK Work Visa to motivate employees to knuckle under and just work like dogs for low pay.

Not fixed, actually.

My company regularly employs engineering graduates. We pay the same whether the applicant is a brit or a furriner.

What we find is that the foreign applicants have a superior work ethic, are as well qualiofied if not better qualified than their brit counterparts.

So guess what? The foreign applicasnts get the job.

Chris

 

[Greg]

They don't. But even in our relatively 'nice' area they experience this.

I think that schools should spend less time and effort dealing with disruptive children. The most recent batch of disruption in the local school were taken to and fro in a taxi at public expense.

Paul

I wasn't suggesting yours did, but as a parent IF yours did, then the issue ought to be your responsibility as much as the schools; regardless that they would be in school.

 

[pcutter1]

Having tutored at a Post-graduate only college with world wide intake my observations are:
Between 1990 and 1997 the standards of, both general and specialist, education achieved by UK students deteriorated significantly, that of foreign students did not or in the case of some countries improved.
I always felt somewhat ashamed when it became apparent that a German student's standard of English was better than that of an English one.

My ex wife taught at one of the top specialist feeder colleges for the above, she resigned because she was not allowed to correct the students work either specialist or general, and felt that in reality this diktat meant that they would not be able to learn properly.

Another ex who had 3 teenagers (early 2000's) had a 15 year old boy who had been convinced by his school that he would pass, I think it was 8, all his gcse's, he applied to the local Uni and was given a provisional place, he failed all of them and ended up sorting the dirty linen for the laundry at a local hotel.

In the early 1980's I applied to take an evening course in Vehicle chassis design at Bolton tech, it was run in conjunction with Leyland Truck division for their trainee engineers (I was doing it just out of interest). The course was cancelled because no one from Leyland enrolled.

I work with a mother of 2 girls, one 34 and the other 14, asked if she notices a difference in educational standards she gazes skyward and sighs before saying yes massive (and not in the right direction).

I could go on and on but there's no point, successive governments have allowed or promoted the destruction of the UK educational system, aided and abetted by civil servants and a group of teaching unions that regard "teaching" as a fundamental breach of the children's human rights.

If the Ipod factory was staffed by workers who had a QC failure rate as high as our schools have then they would sack the lot and re-staff the factory, there's no way that can be done to the teachers as it is often their basic training that's the (politicised) problem.

 

[Paul R]

I wasn't suggesting yours did, but as a parent IF yours did, then the issue ought to be your responsibility as much as the schools; regardless that they would be in school.

I'd agree, except that expecting parents to take responsibility for being irresponsible doesn't seem to be a good basis for organising education. And the bulk of children from all sorts of backgrounds suffer as a consequence. There's nothing I can do about another's disruptive child, and I am compelled by law to send my child for to a place where there is nothing much they can do about it except react.

Paul

 

[Steven Toy]

I'd agree, except that expecting parents to take responsibility for being irresponsible doesn't seem to be a good basis for organising education. And the bulk of children from all sorts of backgrounds suffer as a consequence. There's nothing I can do about another's disruptive child, and I am compelled by law to send my child for to a place where there is nothing much they can do about it except react.

Paul

Disruptive kids tend to have unsupportive and shit parents.

 

[Steven Toy]

Having tutored at a Post-graduate only college with world wide intake my observations are:
Between 1990 and 1997 the standards of, both general and specialist, education achieved by UK students deteriorated significantly, that of foreign students did not or in the case of some countries improved.
I always felt somewhat ashamed when it became apparent that a German student's standard of English was better than that of an English one.

My ex wife taught at one of the top specialist feeder colleges for the above, she resigned because she was not allowed to correct the students work either specialist or general, and felt that in reality this diktat meant that they would not be able to learn properly.

Another ex who had 3 teenagers (early 2000's) had a 15 year old boy who had been convinced by his school that he would pass, I think it was 8, all his gcse's, he applied to the local Uni and was given a provisional place, he failed all of them and ended up sorting the dirty linen for the laundry at a local hotel.

In the early 1980's I applied to take an evening course in Vehicle chassis design at Bolton tech, it was run in conjunction with Leyland Truck division for their trainee engineers (I was doing it just out of interest). The course was cancelled because no one from Leyland enrolled.

I work with a mother of 2 girls, one 34 and the other 14, asked if she notices a difference in educational standards she gazes skyward and sighs before saying yes massive (and not in the right direction).

I could go on and on but there's no point, successive governments have allowed or promoted the destruction of the UK educational system, aided and abetted by civil servants and a group of teaching unions that regard "teaching" as a fundamental breach of the children's human rights.

If the Ipod factory was staffed by workers who had a QC failure rate as high as our schools have then they would sack the lot and re-staff the factory, there's no way that can be done to the teachers as it is often their basic training that's the (politicised) problem.

One of the worst aspects of education in the nineties was the anti-competitive culture. It was a game of 32 grey pawns all on the same size and no prospect of failure.

The comprehensive system is a essentially persistence with a failed social engineering experiment that did nothing to prioritise learning.

Ironically it is the clever kids with supportive parents who are the only ones to do ok in this system and even they could do better.

Politics has played too big a part in education for too long.

 

[clivem2]

Whilst schools and government policy swinging between extremes are bad news the majority of blame is with parenting. We have multiple generations now who do not value education and good behaviour. No matter how good the schools are the battle is already lost before the kids show up at school.

 

[Jonathan Ribee]

Having tutored at a Post-graduate only college with world wide intake my observations are:
Between 1990 and 1997 the standards of, both general and specialist, education achieved by UK students deteriorated significantly, that of foreign students did not or in the case of some countries improved.
I always felt somewhat ashamed when it became apparent that a German student's standard of English was better than that of an English one.

My ex wife taught at one of the top specialist feeder colleges for the above, she resigned because she was not allowed to correct the students work either specialist or general, and felt that in reality this diktat meant that they would not be able to learn properly.

Another ex who had 3 teenagers (early 2000's) had a 15 year old boy who had been convinced by his school that he would pass, I think it was 8, all his gcse's, he applied to the local Uni and was given a provisional place, he failed all of them and ended up sorting the dirty linen for the laundry at a local hotel.

In the early 1980's I applied to take an evening course in Vehicle chassis design at Bolton tech, it was run in conjunction with Leyland Truck division for their trainee engineers (I was doing it just out of interest). The course was cancelled because no one from Leyland enrolled.

I work with a mother of 2 girls, one 34 and the other 14, asked if she notices a difference in educational standards she gazes skyward and sighs before saying yes massive (and not in the right direction).

I could go on and on but there's no point, successive governments have allowed or promoted the destruction of the UK educational system, aided and abetted by civil servants and a group of teaching unions that regard "teaching" as a fundamental breach of the children's human rights.

If the Ipod factory was staffed by workers who had a QC failure rate as high as our schools have then they would sack the lot and re-staff the factory, there's no way that can be done to the teachers as it is often their basic training that's the (politicised) problem.

This is pretty much my experience in interviewing for jobs at all levels over c20 years.

Additionally - my recently retired science teacher parents are of a similar view. The most telling remark was "The book you used for O Level, that's the one we now mostly use for A Level."

 

[Jonathan Ribee]

Whilst schools and government policy swinging between extremes are bad news the majority of blame is with parenting. We have multiple generations now who do not value education and good behaviour. No matter how good the schools are the battle is already lost before the kids show up at school.

The parents have a dilemma.

25 years ago, little Jemima (the apple of their eye) would have failed her A Levels and gone to do a vocational college course or worked her way up in the local bank, supermarket or factory. Today she has a 2:2 in Something Studies or an -ology that you have to look up to see what it means. Unemployed, mind you.

She was probably better off 25 years ago. But she has an -ology. So it all seemed oK at the time.

 

[Jonathan Ribee]

Although (obviously) educational standards in the UK are at a local nadir, didn't a recent Radio 4 programme rip PISA a new one and show that the tests weren't very good?

 

[clivem2]

I don't agree that subjects are easier nowadays, actually judging by what my kids have studied I feel the exams are harder and the subject matter wider and deeper The HUGE difference in recent times was the ability to re-take exams many times over. Lots of small modules too. This is stopping now though and as usual we're going to far to the other extreme.

 

[Jonathan Ribee]

I don't agree that subjects are easier nowadays...

<cough, splutter, choke>

 

[PsB]

Several factors are often overlooked in the PISA results:
- The number that is quoted is the average for the whole country (or city in the case of Shanghai, or city-state in the case of Singapore). The greater the inequality levels in the country, the worse it will fare on the PISA scale. If a country has a seriously underprivileged class that is sufficiently big, this drags down the average score even if the best students are stellar (there are more mediocre students than stellar ones). Examples: the US, the UK, France, etc. The overall US score is dire, but if Massachussets were rated as a single country it would be 6th. The best French students score roughly as high as the best anywhere else, but the overall score is mediocre. Countries that do well tend to be more socially equal. Small countries tend to do better for the same reason.
- This may not be very PC, but high immigration rates do seem to make it more difficult to get high scores: a student taking a reading comprehension test in his/her second or third language has a handicap irrespective of his/her educational level.
- The PISA tests focus on certain abilities and not on others. This gets debated endlessly by educational authorities anxious to explain away poor results, but there must be some truth to this because of the variations in curricula: what do 15 year-olds learn versus what can wait until they are 17?
- Countries where students have more subjects to take because the syllabus favours a broad generalist education (e.g. forces everyone to take 6 or 7 A-level equivalents) are at a disadvantage versus those that focus just on maths + native language.

The things that stand out for me in the latest results:
- Massive progress in countries like Poland, Vietnam and even Germany. The Germans have been very schockiert by previous PISA results and seem to be doing something about it. Wonder what that is.
- The curious drop in countries like Sweden and even Finland that used to lead Europe. The Finns are a bit shocked by the maths result.
- Continued massive over-representation of Asian countries in top science scores and the worrying scores from West Europe in general. This is in line with my other anecdotal evidence, such as the undergrad organic chemistry course my daughter is currently taking at a good US university: she is the only West European female student, surrounded by lots of kids from Korea, China, Singapore, India, etc. Not too many Americans, either.

 

[clivem2]

<cough, splutter, choke>

It's populist to trash the current levels of knowledge but there's so much more information and knowledge today, the internet has massively changes access to facts and understanding too. Curriculae reflect the greater knowledge mostly too. Some softer subjects are quite easy and just require a good level of work, eg Geography.

I'm comparing the Maths, Physics and Chemistry I did vs the very similar A levels my son took last year. The knowledge requirements were much greater for my son and the depth of thinking greater. What people have only recently realised is that taking an exam 5 to 8 times allows kids to get better results vs the 2 attempts I was allowed (dual attempts were rare too).

I come back to my main point, it's the recent high level of re-takes that has skewed results.

 

[Joe Hutch]

I'm comparing the Maths, Physics and Chemistry I did vs the very similar A levels my son took last year. The knowledge requirements were much greater for my son and the depth of thinking greater. What people have only recently realised is that taking an exam 5 to 8 times allows kids to get better results vs the 2 attempts I was allowed (dual attempts were rare too).

Isn't it mostly coursework these days? It is for degree subjects.