PISA 2022

[user1477391263]

Is anyone else reading the results?

England has done well again - huge improvement since 2009 though there does seem to have been a bit of a drop since COVID. Frustrated though I am with this wretched government, improving educational attainment is one thing that they do actually appear to have achieved during this period. England is notable for the success of both first and second generation immigrants, very different from most European countries.

Scotland and Wales are continuing to sink. Whatever they are doing over there isn’t working. Oz isn’t doing too well either. The US likewise.

China’s scores (they tested students from four provinces last time) don’t seem to have been reported. Perhaps there are doubts about the veracity of the data (wouldn’t surprise me).

Conservative education policy has been successful at raising standards and attainment. What is frustrating is how much higher attainment could be if other services were adequately funded. I hope a coming labour government retains the focus on knowledge and doesn't give into the clamour for "skills-based" curriculums, like Scotland has suffered. And stands firm on behaviour in schools, too. I am concerned the no more exclusions lot will get more of a hearing with a thumping labour majority.

Labour will hopefully reduce child poverty, so perhaps in the next few Pisa rounds we could get into the top 5 - not sure we'd get some of the kudos other top countries get though with our boring yet successful "let's tell them how to do stuff" approach...

@user1477391263 In Scotland, where the curriculum has been revised and has a left wing government spending money, it appears money doesn’t bring success. Look at the class sizes in the highest ranked countries! Fewer teachers but maybe high quality ones? Plus dc who have very different expectations from parents.

We associate money spent for quality. It’s not the same. Money is not always spent wisely and does not necessarily equate to higher standards. Although it could if schools spent wisely. The Sutton Trust did a study of PP children and looked at what works best for them in raising standards. It’s not a scattergun of expensive interventions. It’s learning from peers. That takes organisation but it’s not expensive.

Lastly: what’s going on in Wales? Is learning stalling by insisting on learning Welsh? Both Scotland and Wales spend more than England but not necessarily wisely it appears. Interesting results.

Hmm, Welsh Medium schools apparently do slightly better than EM in Wales, although it’s hard to separate that from the socio economic background of parents, of course. I think the main issue in Wales is that they’ve followed Scotland’s example (failure to do systematic synthetic phonics, and also lots of drippy “skills” stuff and de-emphasis of knowledge.)

@user1477391263 I had no evidence but as so many dc struggle with languages I just wondered if this pulled down achievement. However, as you say, other factors should be considered and curriculum changes don’t help.

Germany did very very badly, Holland also.

Germany's students fare worse than ever in PISA school tests – DW – 12/05/2023

The general state of global education has been slammed by the first PISA performance assessment report since the pandemic. German students fared particularly badly, but those in Asia performed highly.

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-students-fare-worse-than-ever-in-pisa-school-tests/a-67638952

https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1731989357270081703

As discussed here, the countries which have declined the most are the countries which have the biggest negative gap between immigrant and non-immigrant kids. That will explain Germany’s dismal performance in part, because as I understand, they still have that idiotic system of separating kids into “academic” and “non-academic” kids at secondary, which starts at an earlier age that then UK - 10, I think. That will hugely disadvantage immigrant kids, since anyone who starts school with gaps in their German will have very little time to catch up. I’d welcome comments from anyone who lives in Germany, though, in case my understanding is outdated.

@user1477391263 These are the German schools and numbers of each. As we have immigrants, I don’t see how in Germany they cannot catch up but here they can. The only difference might be if the dc here already speak English. I would expect though, that German dc learn English far better than dc learn any MFL.

Than dc here learn any MFL that should be!

Catching up takes time though. It looks like Germany is still tracking kids into different types of school at either 10 or 12 (we don’t do this in the UK, other than in a few 11 plus areas….which have poorer outcomes for the least well off students). They therefore will not have much time to try and plug gaps before they are tested and tracked.

Germany has traditionally encouraged women to stay at home with small children, so there may be more of a tendency for kids from Turkish etc. backgrounds to start school with very little German, and of course the compulsory school starting age will be a couple of years later than the UK. I’m not an expert on Germany, mind you, just speculating based on what I’ve heard from people who’ve lived there.

Would love to hear from any German residents, my nieces are in school in Germany & my sis in law claims it is a very rigorous system with reams of homework..

not sure if i read it correctly but in canada the immigrant children (first generation) scored 12-15 points higher than canadian kids of the same age in both math and reading.

I haven’t had a chance to look at the results in detail, but I am not surprised. New Canadians bring their families to Canada to give them a better life, and have high expectations of their kids academic achievements. It is common for the children of new Canadians here in Toronto to attend academic weekend school, while children of not-new Canadians to spend the weekend playing (ice) hockey or soccer (football).

Immigrants to Canada tend to be from East Asian countries (not all of it, obviously, but a lot) and there’s a lot of focus on academics among parents, so that does not surprise me at all.

i'm not surprised as i don't get the impression it's easy to immigrate here but i found the results confusing. sadly a drop in most area's since 2018.

England haven’t done well in science. The report says science in the U.K. has been in ‘steady decline’ since 2000. Despite rising a little in the rankings, the average score has dropped significantly. In maths we are ‘flat’ while others rise.

The sample that England used also didn’t meet the PISA technical standards. Our sample had a higher proportion of higher attaining students and fewer students eligible for free school meals than the actual proportion in the population. So the results were skewed in our favour.

Most of Europe seems to have dropped though. Is there other factors at play eg school prioritising metal health over pushing academics? Too much time gaming? Too much social media?

Or lots of the brighter people who could have dc are not having them. Birth rates are falling amongst higher educated people so this won’t improve. We have also double the number of sen pupils we used to have.

@user1477391263 I don’t think Bucks has poorer outcomes for least well off Dc. Where is the data on this?

If the standards of education have improved you are going to praise the government and not the teachers who have had to deal with the detritus that the government has made of the education system.

“Or lots of the brighter people who could have dc are not having them. Birth rates are falling amongst higher educated people so this won’t improve. We have also double the number of sen pupils we used to have.”

SEN can be linked to having children later in life and premature births.
Childcare should be high quality and tax deductible for all and clever women with high earning potential should be supported more. However, if you say that kind of thing on Mumsnet you might be accused of being sexist/Eugenics bandied about etc.
And of course there is a difference in the type of immigrant child. This is exactly why our government wants to distinguish between good and bad immigrants aka let’s let in a ton of students who bring in their families and fund our unis at the same time. Poor Muslim people from Africa not welcome, rich educated people from Hong Kong, yes please…
The Germans did well morally to take in so many poor Syrians. I do not think we should judge on how they do at 15. It is long term integration into life that matters.

‘Most of Europe seems to have dropped though. Is there other factors at play eg school prioritising metal health over pushing academics? Too much time gaming? Too much social media?”

I just read it as the Covid effect. Covid will have exacerbated all of that.

But surely how those kids in Germany do at 15 will be an indication of how they may achieve later in life. Obviously like in any scenario there will be some outliers who will buck the trend.
But this PISA result should be taken seriously as it is a sign that integration into the German education needs to be more robust.

@Araminta1003 Serious academics are looking at who is having babies. Certainly in the USA and here and definitely around Sen. It’s vital we maintain the birth rate and sen going up is a fairly recent trend. If you don’t know trends you cannot plan.

In the 80s, I remember dire schools. Many have improved a great deal. We haven’t had a golden age of education for all!

OK, this is interesting re Wales, mentioned by PP upthread.

https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/12/were-pisa-reading-scores-in-wales-as-bad-as-they-first-seemed/

The Welsh results may be awful in part as a result of taking the test in Welsh! I had assumed that language impacts would be minimal, as Welsh Medium schools generally do about as well as English Medium in terms of other tests such as GCSEs etc. But perhaps there is a specific issue with the PISA tests, or perhaps the school closures had a disproportionate impact on Welsh speakers, which might make sense - if you are doing your education in a language which you are not speaking at home (which is probably true for a slight majority of Welsh Medium kids these days), time off school is going to really impact your outcomes.

So why do the test in Welsh? One assumes they elected to.