PISA test chat anyone?

[Piggywaspushed]

Come on noble you know you want to!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50563833

Reading whole article is very interesting. Tories claim we have got miles better and that rigour is paying off. However, despite rise in rankings actual scores are about the same.

Ant the wellbeing stuff is shocking! At what emotional and mental health cost all this??

Time to stop looking to Asia (failed already in maths with this) and look genuinely closely at Estonia? But the Tories don't want to know about that because it goes against every single agenda : no school til 7, no Ofsted, no grammar schools, no testing regimes. no setting at all (sorry noble) and-lo- high scores and high wellbeing.

However, they are having some recruitment issues in Estonia.

I would like to note that we do do better at post 16 and university than lots of these countries, especially Asia, so there is something to be said for our teaching of independent thought.

Totally.

Finland’s raw PISA scores. Another couple of PISA cycles and I reckon whichever party is in charge can take responsibility for all the headlines about us outperforming Finland.

Of course we might be all about Estonia by then.

I'd still rather my child was educated and brought up there in many many ways.

I don’t really disagree with you there and personally I’d much rather take some of the reading/writing elements out of the EYFS and start them later.

Perhaps the biggest problem is assuming that the academic and wellbeing results are down to schools/systems alone and assuming that we can improve things by just copying what the schools in another country do.

Yes, definitely agree. But I think it's a shame we have never really looked to the 'hippier' countries because it doesn't suit the discourse.

I think we did, we just had a change of government before we got anywhere with it.

I think the Rose curriculum was going in that direction. It just never made it through Parliament before the 2010 election.

Curious as to why children in Wales are scoring so much lower than the rest of the UK?

Disproportionately white-working-class (fairly white, poorer than other parts of the UK). Lots of kids living in rural areas, in coastal towns, in ex mining communities. People in Wales do not seem to be as educationally anxious/ambitious as in Englandless pushiness, tutoring, school-place competition etc. Maybe makes both childhood and parenthood more relaxing, mind you! The Welsh language issue is probably not an issue "per se" but it probably uses up quite a bit of political bandwidthif a lot of time and energy is spent pushing the language issue, it may mean that there is less of a push to improve other areas.

They are about to introduce a curriculum modeled on Scotland's, so don't expect improvement any time soon.

Surely they’ll be having second thoughts having seen Scotland’s results?

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anybody say anything positive about the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence. If that didn’t put them off I’m not sure these results will.

I love how they called it the “Curriculum for Excellence” and it turned out to be shite.

Gove never named his reforms, which is a bit disappointing.

Surely they’ll be having second thoughts having seen Scotland’s results?

Sadly, I don't think there will be a rethink.

The momentum seems to be very strong and the thing is being presented as a fait accompli.

There really hasn't been that much discussion at the ordinary public levelTwitter, Mumsnet et alabout the new curriculum in Wales. Being relaxed about education is OK up to a point, but perhaps the Welsh need to start worrying a bit more.

OK, I am obviously being a data dimwit but Scotland's results went up (quite a lot?)

I may be being over protective because that's where I went to school and it is a far superior education system - and far more egalitarian.

@Kokeshi123 thank you for your response - you have given me lots of thoughts to investigate. I had looked into the new curriculum but thought it sounded more focused on educating welsh citizens of the future rather than academic performers? I wonder whether wellbeing in Wales is higher (with the more relaxed education and parenting) and that the lower Pisa scores are the payoff for happier children?

There might be a difference between the curriculum when you were in school and the CfE, Piggy. I think the education system there used to be quite well regarded and did have better results than in England.

Piggy here’s the Scottish graph. Reading has gone up but maths and science look bad.

Sam Freedman points out Scotland was ahead of England in 2009 in maths and science but is now behind.

twitter.com/samfr/status/1201786069932527616

I saw a tweet that claimed it was now better to be a poor pupil in England than in Scotland which must be pretty galling to the Scots, but I’m not sure of the data there.

I wonder whether wellbeing in Wales is higher (with the more relaxed education and parenting) and that the lower Pisa scores are the payoff for happier children?

Entirely possible. There does seem to be a tradeoff between wellbeing measures and good academic outcomes, in the PISA data. Which is a bit depressing if true, but I guess we just have to make informed decisions about how we want to handle the tradeoff.

Of course, things like "more efficient teaching" (example, teaching phonics really well) can boost results without impacting negatively on wellbeing (unlike, say, "more homework and tutoring" I would imagine). So there is also some potential for improving both wellbeing and academic outcomes at the same time.

This is an interesting counterpoint :

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50658216

That just seems obvious, piggy. We know that disadvantaged pupils underperform compared to advantaged pupils, so putting more grades in at the top end and fewer at the bottom end will obviously see them lose out.

Plus the English GCSEs rely on a good deal of cultural capital

When did general knowledge start being called cultural capital?

A long time ago! It's been hijacked by rather right wing leaning teachers but it's a term coined by Marxist Bourdieu!

Gove didn't give a shiny shit about disadvantaged kids anyway so he is probably happy.

Probably stating the obvious, but if the problem is worst among middle attainers- those who got 4 at ks2 - I wonder whether it’s worst at the bottom end of that. Disadvantaged children who’ve been massaged over the 3/4 boundary in year 6 by endless ‘interventions’ and a very restricted curriculum.

I am pretty convinced that has a lot to do with it.