With the release of the latest PISA education rankings, countries all over the world are comparing their education systems to each other, some patting themselves on the back for their great maths results and improved reading scores, and others working hard to defend themselves against accusations of poor performance, usually justified by citing the differences between themselves and the ‘other’ societies whose students are excelling.
There are also many (justified) criticisms of the testing, ranging from the mental impact of testing on students to potential corruption, including the tendency of China to include only their high-performing provinces in their submission. And of course, there are cheeky jabs at the ‘fallen’, notably Finland, which has seen its results drop every year since 2006.1
In this most recent round of results, the UK results were mixed, but in general there were marginal improvements in academic achievements and England’s ranking increased in all subjects tested. In the area of wellbeing, however, the UK performed well below average, with British teens found to have among the lowest levels of life satisfaction in all countries tested. Andreas Schleicher, the author of the PISA report, attributes some of this low satisfaction to students not being inspired by their studies, which is in part due to the lack of collaboration and professional autonomy that comprises the work culture for teachers.2
Politically, the PISA rankings have been used in the past to support the Conservative agenda of academisation and Gove’s radical education reforms. Since the 2012 results were released, British schools have been trying to import Chinese teaching methods in order to improve their rankings. Maths mastery programmes have proliferated due to a £74 million investment that has also included exchange visits to Shanghai. However, analysis of the impact of these programmes has shown that there is little or no difference between schools that use it or not in their maths scores, with the principal researcher noting that the small improvements they’ve seen, which have only been in younger children (seven-year-olds) is equal to the gains that occur when schools implement a programme like philosophy for children.3
The PISA rankings also highlight that the quest for the perfect education system is complicated and that throwing money at education does not necessarily produce results. Those richer countries that spend more than $50k per students in terms of education budgets have seen relatively little movement upwards, whereas other factors seem more important, as demonstrated by the elevation of Estonia to the top of the OECD country rankings.
Researchers of the PISA tests suggest that a national commitment to learning, literacy and culture is much more likely to have more impact on learning outcomes than bigger budgets.