OECD Study puts England at bottom for Maths and Literacy

[missinglalaland]

A major study by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development puts England's 16 to 24 year olds at 22nd for Literacy and 21st for Numeracy out of 24 developed countries. Ouch!

What can we do to fix this? More money? Less permissiveness? Sorting by ability? Different teacher training? Longer school years? Different methods?

In Germany, the correlation is historically extremely high, as it is in Switzerland. In France, a great deal of dissection of previously under-analysed data shows that the "winning formula" for school success is to have one parent who is a teacher and one who is a high-responsibility, high-earner or to have one SAHP and one high-responsibility, high-earner. Two high-responsibility, high-earning parents are not a formula for school success in France - those DC tend to do less well than their parents.

Of course a SAHP by definition won't drive your kids to success. Nor will a wealthy parent by definition drive your kids to success. It depends on the circumstances behind your choices, or whether you have any choices at all. If you are wealthy you are more likely either to be well educated or to have an investment in society from which you benefit and which you wish to maintain, or both. You might actually be a hopeless drug addict who inherited or dealt their way to wealth, but you are more likely to have some kind of buy-in and, if you do have problems, the capacity to buy help to get out of them, so obviously you are almost always going to see benefits from that. There are a multitude of reasons for being a SAHP, though, some positive, some negative, some in which you do still feel you have a strong investment in the community around you and society in general and others in which you don't, so you are not going to see such a strong link between that and academic success. This doesn't mean that being a SAHP cannot be beneficial to all concerned. After all, it depends what you actually DO with your time, your motivations behind it and what you can afford to do.

Indeed, rabbitstew.

It isn't particularly difficult to imagine that a SAHP who works hard to bring up his/her DC and has a lot of skilled input is going to make a bigger difference than one who swans around all day not paying much attention (whatever the educational attainment level of that parent).

I really don't think in this day and age there are a lot of stay at home moms. Anyway If SAHP were the answer. Why are there so many dysfunctional families living in poverty and failing at school.

Maybe its a culture of handouts that has created this malaise in society. Im not sure but you will find people from the poorer countries with less hand outs seem to want their kids to work hard at school....and will give up their social life and even skip a meal to do that.

Although i do think having a parent who interacts with their children will have happier children. With the old age adage that a happy child learns quicker

Kenlee - what makes you think there is more malaise in society now than there was in the past? And where does all the hard work from people in poor countries, for example, actually get them? The poorest in those societies remain dirt poor, so far as I can see.

Squiff: "the worst-performing countries (us, Germany, UK)"

don't think Germany is one of the worst performing countries - place 11, directly before Denmark and Norway cf. UK - 22 and US - 24. There was a time when I was living there when a ripple of alarm went through Germany after one of these comparative tests showed German pupil attainment to be much lower than people would have expected. They must have done a good job of changing things in the meantime. Certainly there was a lot of talk and various attempts to change the situation. One major change was to increase the number of full-day schools (8-4) as opposed to the previous half-day school system (8-12) which was standard and based upon the assumption that mother was at home to cook lunch and supervise hours of homework. If that made a difference in itself I don't know.

Other than that I don't really know what major changes were introduced to the curriculum or teaching methods. One thing about German schools is that you would never find a teacher who could not use German correctly. German grammar is more complicated than English grammar, yet they master it. I really don't think it would be tolerated that a primary school teacher would make spelling mistakes in German. In fact it is a situation I really could not imagine ever happening.

just seen the figures I was looking at were for numeracy levels. Perhaps you were referring to an overall score combining literacy and numeracy. I haven't seen those.

I'm not surprised. Grew up in Flanders (Belgium) - 4th on the list.

Did my master's degree at a UK uni (red brick / Russell Group) 5 years ago. One of my housemates - who was doing a master's in some type of engineering!! - showed me the maths he had to do. I'd done the same level maths in secondary school aged 17 (and no, I'm not some sort of maths genius - didn't even do the "most difficult" option maths my school offered).

The differences I note between the 2 countries:

• In Flanders there is a higher emphasis on theory - in all subjects. Only once you know the theory are you allowed to form an opinion yourself.
• The entire school system is different. It is acknowledged that uni is not for everyone, so there are different options for those wishing to do a more vocational course. This allows those who ARE more academically minded to be pushed more.
• School starts at 2.5. Kindergarten first (2.5-5) which is more like nursery. Primary school starts at 6 - which is also when you learn to read/write. Reading and writing is taught at the same time.
• Teachers seem to have a higher level of numeracy / literacy themselves - sorry. I lived with a girl who was a NQ primary school teacher. She could not spell for the life of her. How is she supposed to teach children how to write? Also for secondary teachers - all secondary school teachers who teach over 14's HAVE to have a master's degree in their subject.
• No GCSE's/A-levels. Schools and teachers do their own exams, 2 or 3 times a year. Parents choose schools based on pupils' performance AFTER THEY LEAVE. So the more rounded their education is, the better they tend to do at uni. There is no teaching just to get kids to pass their exams. To me that's a major issue with English education.
• Schools seem to be a LOT stricter, even though they don't have uniforms.

Make of that what you want, but personally I think it's a system that better allows children of all abilities to achieve the most.

Yes MissHC, I did engineering and we had French students over on exchange whose knowledge of maths put us to shame.

There needs to be "pushier" stream in our schooling for the academic and good technical schooling. (In fact I think the second of those is the more important for the country/economy as a whole.)

And yet France only comes in at no. 19 in the OECD numeracy tests - only 2 above the UK. So when looking at how France does by its entire population, it doesn't do too well in numeracy... perhaps better not to copy them.

My primary child is quite a bright one but he's not getting taught the basics thoroughly at school.

I've just realised he can't tell the time properly and that it's long been clear that it's up to me to really teach him times tables, meanwhile school is giving him (dubious) information about healthy eating and they are enjoying studying comparative religions,which I do think is worthwhile but perhaps not aged 7/8. I feel the responsibilities are the wrong way round.

Then the idea of doing maths and english at home is looked down on by so many parent's as being mean or even detrimental (hothousing) it's no surprise we are doing poorly overall.

I agree Autumn re the different streams.

In Flanders, there are 3 main streams: General Education (for those who want to go into higher education - it's useless for going straight into work), Technical Education (which is more specialised and can still be extremely difficult - e.g. options that focus on maths/engineering), Professional Education (wide range of vocational courses - hairdressing, woodwork, mechanics etc).

General education is just that - they expect you to do everything, and you choose some options that go deeper (e.g. languages, maths, economics, sciences, etc). However everyone within general education gets all of these subjects (+ more) to a decent level to start with.

Technical education is for those who really excel in something and are not very good at something else (e.g. great in maths/sciences but crap at languages) - they'll still get the other subjects but on a lower level.

Professional education is great if you are not very academically minded and would rather do a job rather than higher education - e.g. my cousin is a mechanic. You also get other things (like maths, languages) but it's more a basic level. In most of these subjects from 16 you do several days a week of work placement to learn on the job.

I get the impression everyone here is put through the same average stream - which is fine for average students but you end up with disruptive pupils as it's too hard for them whilst also basically neglecting the brighter ones.

Yes my experience was only with University level maths.

Living in France I was aware of a huge gulf between different groups, it felt more divided than the UK during the 80s. Then again I had some working-class mates who did like doing dictations for fun ! Surely a overhang from their schooling.

When it comes to "technical schooling," that tends to be better if connected with plenty of technical jobs. It works in Germany, where that is the case. Doesn't work so well here, because it's a big step to train people up for jobs you currently have to move country for to find in great numbers.

rabbitstew we could look at aspects from other countries without adopting their entire system.

I always thought I'd ensure my kid's got a better maths education than I had, it seems I hadn't started early enough!

The panellist on QTime last night seemed sure standards amongst her undergrads had gone down.

kenlee

skills.oecd.org/skillsoutlook.html

skills.oecd.org/SkillsOutlook_2013_KeyFindings.pdf

www.oecd.org/site/piaac/surveyofadultskills.htm

Depends which area you live in rabbitstew. And most areas support mechanics, decorators, plumbers and electricians.

Although I have come to the conclusion that if a country doesn't have a political class who understand the necessity of providing long-term power capacity let alone a manufacturing base then I should encourage my children to move elsewhere.

Autumn and Rabbit - I never said the system in Flanders is perfect - far from it. However I do think it's doing a better job than the English one.

Also re technical schooling - it's not only to create lots of engineers. My best friend is a midwife and she went through the technical stream as she wasn't very good at maths nor languages but quite good at sciences and too bright to do a vocational course. Also a lot of people who want to go into e.g. accountancy go through technical schooling.

I'm just trying to explain how the system works over there.

I agree that maths teaching is pretty dire in some UK primary schools. I also agree that some primary school teachers have poor spelling, punctuation and grammar. I like the idea of technical schools as a concept, if we can get past the snobbery in this country about an academic university education.

AutumnLeavesaGoGo - I think the political class understand the importance of providing long-term power capacity, good transport infrastructure, etc, etc, they just can't see the personal political gain in making the difficult decisions. They thought they could pass the buck by privatising everything, but that doesn't work, because private companies don't want to take the risks, either - they want those covered by the taxpayer.

technical schools in combination with apprenticeship systems lead people IME not only to be good at what they do but to take pride in being a qualifed worker. I think this is one point where Germany is ahead of the UK and where we could investigate the German system and adopt elements of it. It does limit you of course. You have to decide early on what you are going to do and then having completed an apprenticeship which is a combination of on the job learning and taught courses, it would be hard to switch to something else if jobs are scarce or you find you don't enjoy the work.

Sometimes the specialisations seemed to be unnecessary. I know I saw job advertisements in the paper requiring a "trained and fully qualified shoe salesperson". I may be wrong but I do think really you can acquire any specialist knowledge without much difficulty by just doing the job.

Generally in terms of improving education , I think we should have a good look at the Netherlands as being amongst the highest achievers and yet from the structure of society closer to Britain than Japan or Finland. Finland and Japan do not have the number of dc from immigrant backgrounds that the UK and the Netherlands have, so we have some of the same difficulties - language barriers, parents without English/Dutch as a mother tongue. Class distinctions are not so obvious in the Netherlands and I have a feeling this plays a big role. Of the countries listed, possibly the UK and the US are the two countries where wealth inequality is the biggest problem and both are at the bottom of the list.

I don't think they do. We will have to agree to disagree!

I think Blair and Brown were too busy politicking to care about genuine uk interests. Not because they are wicked but because their thought processes don't go along those lines.
They are like a parent who wouldn't think of buying their kid's winter coats until it snows.

I think the current underwriting of mortgage lending is the act of a twit as well. Just to be equal opportunities about it!

I think the problems start early. We're at an outstanding Primary. The teachers are great. The problem is it's all about ensuring progress rather than enrichment, there's no overarching academic ambition and thrust for those children which would benefit. There seems to be too much teaching to the middle.

I think schools are too creative. Rote learning & traditional methods are frowned on etc but quite honestly point me to a state primary that has children sitting in rows discussing the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and children chanting daily tables for 15 minutes. I don't think you'll find one. My children hate to plan and want to put the roof on before they've built the foundations. They can't be bothered to apply the right spelling and grammar and develop these skills as they've beyond boring and the teachers tell them it is more important to get their ideas down on paper. Before long that habit becomes ingrained and it's a difficult habit to break. (Contrast to other countries where the spelling will be corrected in red and need to be written again three times, yes even in Maths! - we're told that's old hat and didn't work in the past for everyone. I think it worked for most hence the report's findings).

My Y3 finishes their work and then helps the other children which is good for consolidation (apparently). They do posters in literacy and those that work in the library encourage them towards the attractive, brightly coloured books rather than those that offer any challenge. You need to engage them early we're told...Well perhaps but personally I'd prefer school really pushed them and then they could pick out those great picture books when they got home and in their leisure time.

Everything is child led and they want the children to be enthusiastic about learning so teachers read books like Captain Underpants to make them laugh etc. Personally I'd prefer a more academic focus at school. Why not Schofield and Sims Mental Maths workbooks for all (for example) and children can work through at their own pace applying their tables knowledge. Set 5 mins a might for homework like many successful Preps seem to. Little and often. Before long most will be pretty good at mental maths. Simple. Use their comprehension books in literacy from Y3 for those that can manage them (and that should be most children). Can a 7 year old understand a comprehension passage from a children's classic? There is absolutely no reason why not.

These sort of tasks would help with discipline and focus. Whilst our average children are colouring in and dressing up as Roald Dahl characters etc those in other countries of a similar age are building word power through comprehension and reading at a more challenging level etc.

As someone said upthread any kind of 'hot housing' or enrichment out of school is seen as very negative. Also on the rote learning aspects (which I think can be positive) you need to understand the box first before you can think outside it. Or as someone else said on here 'rote learning is the trellis the free thinker can climb'.

I would say rote learning should be learnt at primary...but I think critical thinking should be taught in secondary....
I really disagree with teaching to the exam and wish the exans where more based on understanding than on short term memorization of exam questions.

Only then will standards increase....

I think a bit of balance would be good. I have one ds who is a fabulous rote learner, who enjoys memorising things for the sake of it - he would love a system in which rote learning was the be all and end all for the first few years of school. However, he has a non-verbal learning disability, which results in him relying too much on his memory and phenomenal verbal skills to make up for the deficits he has in other areas (which in the end will be more important than his rote learning skills). Not to work with him from an early age to help develop those other skills, which will never come naturally to him, would be to let him down. My other ds, on the other hand, has a good memory but is inclined to find making the effort of memorising things dull, so could do with a bit of a shove from school from time to time on that, but on the other hand, it's because he doesn't like making the effort to memorise things when he doesn't understand the point of them - if he understands the concept, then he automatically remembers, because he is interested and has been given a chance to apply his knowledge and understanding. He would therefore benefit from being made to do a bit more rote learning, but because he is extremely bright, can handle way more than just that NOW, not in a few years time.