Lessons from PISA: Strong Preformers and Successful Reformers
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Lessons from PISA: Strong Preformers and Successful Reformers
- 1. Programme for International Student Assessment 1 1 Strong performers and successful reformers Andreas Schleicher Strong performers and 7 July 2011 successful reformers Lessons from PISA PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Andreas Schleicher Special advisor to the Secretary-General on Education Policy Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division, EDU
- 2. Australia Austria Czech Republic A world of change – higher education Denmark Finland Germany Greece Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Cost per student Japan Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Spain Sweden United Kingdom Graduate supply United States Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 3. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Cost per student United States Finland Japan Graduate supply Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 4. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Australia United Kingdom Finland Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 5. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 6. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 7. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 8. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 9. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 10. A world of change – higher education Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) United States United Kingdom Australia Finland Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 11. 11 11 PISA 2009 in brief PISA countries in 2001 2003 2000 2009 2006 1998 Strong performers and successful reformers Over half a million of world economy 83% Coverage students… 87% 86% 85% 81% 77% representing 28 million 15-year-olds in 74* countries/economies … took an internationally agreed 2-hour test… Andreas Schleicher Goes beyond testing whether students can reproduce what they were taught… 7 July 2011 65 … to assess students’ capacity to extrapolate Routine what they from manual Changes in labour demand know and creatively apply their knowledge in novel situations 60 PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for … and responded to questions on… Nonroutine manual their personal background, their schools 55 Routine cognitive and their engagement with learning and school 50 Parents, principals and system leaders provided data on… Nonroutine school policies, practices, resources and institutional factors analytic 45 that help explain performance differences . Nonroutine interactive * 40 Data for Costa Rica, Georgia, India, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Venezuela and Vietnam will be published in December 2011 1960 1970 1980 1990 2002
- 12. PISA Strong performers and successful reformers OECD Programme for Andreas Schleicher International Student Assessment 7 July 2011 14 14 What 15-year-olds can do
- 13. Shanghai-China High reading performance 15 15 Average performance of 15-year-olds in Strong performers and successful reformers Korea 540.000 Finland reading – extrapolate Hong Kong-China and apply Singapore Canada New Zealand 520.000 Japan Performance distribution in US Australia Andreas Schleicher 18% do not reach baseline Level 2 Netherlands Norway , when excluding immigrants) (16% Suburban schools Belgium Northeast Poland, Switzerland Midwest Estonia 7 July 2011 Liechtenstein 6%, Canada 9%) (Finland United States Iceland 500.000 Germany, Sweden France, Ireland Chinese Taipei Hungary, United Kingdom DenmarkEconomic cost: 72 trillion $ Portugal Macao-China 10% are top performers Italy West Urban schools Latvia (Shanghai 20%) PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Slovenia Greece South Spain 480.000 Slovak Republic, Czech Republic Croatia Luxembourg, Israel Austria Lithuania Turkey 460.000 Dubai (UAE) Russian Federation Chile Serbia 440.000 55 45 … 17 countries perform below25 35 this line Low reading performance
- 14. High reading performance 16 16 Average performance Highof 15-year-olds in Strong performers and successful reformers High average performance average performance Large socio-economic disparities science – extrapolate High social equity and apply Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 Strong socio- Socially equitable economic impact on distribution of learning student performance opportunities PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Low average performance Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Low reading performance
- 15. Australia High reading performance 17 17 Belgium 2009 2009 Canada Durchschnittliche Strong performers and successful reformers Chile High average performance High average performance Czech Rep Schülerleistungen im Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Denmark Bereich Mathematik Finland Germany Greece Hungary Andreas Schleicher Iceland Ireland 7 July 2011 Israel Strong socio- Socially equitable Italy economic impact on distribution of learning Japan student performance opportunities Korea PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Luxembourg Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Spain Low average performance Low average performance Sweden Switzerland Large socio-economic disparities High social equity UK 55 45 35 25 15 US Low reading performance
- 16. High reading performance 18 18 2009 Durchschnittliche Strong performers and successful reformers High average performance High average performance Schülerleistungen im Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Bereich Mathematik Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 Strong socio- Socially equitable economic impact on distribution of learning student performance opportunities PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Low average performance Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Low reading performance
- 17. 19 19 High performing systems often prioritize the Strong performers and successful reformers quality of teachers over the size of classes Contribution of various factors to upper secondary teacher compensation costs Salary as % of student as a percentage of GDP per capita (2004) time per GDP/capita Instruction time 1/teaching 1/class size Difference with OECD average Percentage points 15 Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 10 5 PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for 0 -5 -10 Ireland Spain Poland Korea Norway Mexico Finland Belgium Denmark Italy Austria Sweden Greece New Zealand Germany France Iceland Luxembourg Hungary Australia Switzerland Japan Portugal Netherlands Czech Republic United States United Kingdom
- 18. High reading performance 20 20 2009 Durchschnittliche Strong performers and successful reformers High average performance High average performance Schülerleistungen im Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Bereich Mathematik Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 Strong socio- Socially equitable economic impact on distribution of learning student performance opportunities PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Low average performance Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Low reading performance
- 19. High reading performance 21 21 2000 Durchschnittliche Strong performers and successful reformers High average performance High average performance Schülerleistungen im Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Bereich Mathematik Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 Strong socio- Socially equitable economic impact on distribution of learning student performance opportunities PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Low average performance Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Low reading performance
- 20. High reading performance 22 22 2000 Durchschnittliche Strong performers and successful reformers High average performance High average performance Schülerleistungen im Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Bereich Mathematik Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 Strong socio- Socially equitable economic impact on distribution of learning student performance opportunities PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Low average performance Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities High social equity Low reading performance
- 21. 23 School performance and socio-economic background 23 United States Strong performers and successful reformers Private school Public school in rural area Public school in urban area 643 700 Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 Student performance PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for 350 -2 -1 0 1 2 Disadvantage PISA Index of socio-economic background Advantage
- 22. 25 25 Policy Policies and practices R System R School E Equity What students know and can do Learning climate Discipline Teacher behaviour Andreas Schleicher 7 December 2010 Parental pressure Teacher-student relationships Dealing with heterogeneity PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Grade repetition Prevalence of tracking Expulsions Ability grouping (all subjects) Standards /accountability Nat. examination
- 23. PISA Strong performers and successful reformers OECD Programme for Andreas Schleicher International Student Assessment 7 July 2011 26 26 Does it all matter?
- 24. 27 Increased likelihood of postsec. particip. at age 19/21 27 associated with PISA reading proficiency at age 15 (Canada) Strong performers and successful reformers after accounting for school engagement, gender, mother tongue, place of residence, parental, education and family income (reference group PISA Level 1) Odds ratio higher Andreas Schleicher education entry 20 18 7 July 2011 16 14 12 10 PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for 8 6 4 2 Age 19 0 Age 21 Level 5 Age 21 Level 4 Level 3 Level 2
- 25. PISA Strong performers and successful reformers OECD Programme for Andreas Schleicher International Student Assessment 7 July 2011 28 28 What does it all mean?
- 26. 29 29 Strong performers and successful reformers Tools Standards Processes Curricula Selection People Andreas Schleicher Technology Teachers Preparation Practices Principals 7 July 2011 Assessments Instruction Recruitment/induction Design, Student implementation Support personnel Intervention Data systems andWork learningof policies organisation alignment Families Support systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Development Supervision Retention
- 27. 30 30 A commitment to education and the belief that competencies can be learned and Strong performers and successful reformers therefore all children can achieve Universal educational standards and personalisation as the approach to heterogeneity in the student body… Andreas Schleicher … as opposed to a belief that students have different destinations to be met with different Lessons from PISA 7 July 2011 expectations, and selection/stratification as on successful the approach to heterogeneity Clear articulation who is responsible for education systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for ensuring student success and to whom
- 28. 32 32 Clear ambitious goals that are shared across Strong performers and successful reformers the system and aligned with high stakes gateways and instructional systems Well established delivery chain through which curricular goals translate into instructional systems, instructional practices and student Andreas Schleicher learning (intended, implemented and achieved) Lessons from PISA 7 July 2011 High level of metacognitive content of instruction on successful education systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for
- 29. 33 33 Strong performers and successful reformers Capacity at the point of delivery Andreas Schleicher Attracting, developing and retaining high quality Lessons from PISA 7 July 2011 teachers and school leaders and a work organisation in which they can use their on successful potential education leadership and human resource Instructional systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for management in schools Keeping teaching an attractive profession System-wide career development
- 30. 34 34 Teacher in-service development Strong performers and successful reformers No matter how good the pre-service education for teachers is … it cannot prepare teachers for rapidly changing challenges throughout their careers High-performing systems rely on ongoing professional to… Andreas Schleicher … update individuals’ knowledge of a subject in light of recent advances 7 July 2011 … update skills and approaches in light of new teaching techniques, new circumstances, and new research … enable teachers to apply changes made to curricula or teaching practice PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for … enable schools to develop and apply new strategies concerning the curriculum and teaching practice … exchange information and expertise among teachers and others … help weaker teachers become more effective . Effective professional development is on-going… … includes training, practice and feedback, and adequate time and follow-up support
- 31. 36 36 OECD Teaching and Learning Relatively few teachers participate in the kinds of professional development which they find has the largest impact on their work Comparison of teachers participating in professional International Study (TALIS) development activities and teachers reporting moderate or high level impact by types of activity % TALIS Average 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments 30 20 10 0 Participation Participation Impact Participation Impact Participation Impact Impact Participation Impact Participation Impact Participation Impact Participation Impact Impact Participation Individual Qualification Informal Reading Courses and Professional Mentoring Observation Education and programmes dialogue to professional workshops development and peer visits to other conferences collaborative improve literature network observation schools and seminars research teaching
- 32. 37 37 OECD Teaching and Learning Relatively few teachers participate in the kinds of professional development which they find has the largest impact on their work Comparison of teachers participating in professional International Study (TALIS) development activities and teachers reporting moderate or high level impact by types of activity Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments
- 33. 38 38 Strong performers and successful reformers Incentives, accountability, knowledge management Aligned incentive structures For students How gateways affect the strength, direction, clarity and nature of the incentives operating on students at each stage of their education Andreas Schleicher Degree to which students have incentives to take tough courses and study hard Lessons from PISA 7 July 2011 Opportunity costs for staying in school and performing well For teacherson successful Make innovations in pedagogy and/or organisation Improveeducation systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for their own performance and the performance of their colleagues Pursue professional development opportunities that lead to stronger pedagogical practices A balance between vertical and lateral accountability Effective instruments to manage and share knowledge and spread innovation – communication within the system and with stakeholders around it A capable centre with authority and legitimacy to act
- 34. School autonomy, accountability 41 41 and student performance Strong performers and successful reformers Impact of school autonomy on performance in systems with and without accountability arrangements PISA score in reading 500 Andreas Schleicher 7 July 2011 495 490 PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for School autonomy in resource allocation 480 Schools with less autonomy Systems with more accountability Systems with less accountability
- 35. 42 42 Local responsibility and system-level prescription Strong performers and successful reformers Trend in OECD countries Andreas Schleicher System-level prescription 7 July 2011 ‘Tayloristic’ work organisation Schools today Schools Finland today The industrial tomorrow? Every school an PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for model, detailed Building capacity effective school prescription of what schools do Schools leading reform Teachers as ‘knowledge workers’
- 36. 44 44 Strong performers and successful reformers Andreas Schleicher Lessons from PISA 7 July 2011 on successful education systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Investing resources where they can make most of a difference Alignment of resources with key challenges (e.g. attracting the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms) Effective spending choices that prioritise high quality teachers over smaller classes
- 37. 45 45 Strong performers and successful reformers Andreas Schleicher A learning system Lessons from PISA An outward orientation of the system to keep 7 July 2011 the system learning, international benchmarks as the ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ onthe system of successful education systems Recognising challenges and potential future PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for threats to current success, learning from them, designing responses and implementing these
- 38. 47 Coherence of policies and practices 47 Strong performers and successful reformers Alignment of policies across all aspects of the system Coherence of policies over sustained periods of time Consistency of implementation Andreas Schleicher Fidelity of implementation Lessons from PISA 7 July 2011 (without excessive control) on successful education systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for
- 39. 49 49 Education reform trajectories Strong performers and successful reformers The old bureaucratic system Student inclusion The modern enabling system Some students learn at high levels All students need to learn at high levels Andreas Schleicher Curriculum, instruction and assessment Routine cognitive skills, rote learning Learning to learn, complex ways of 7 July 2011 thinking, ways of working Teacher quality PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Few years more than secondary High-level professional knowledge workers Work organisation ‘Tayloristic’, hierarchical Flat, collegial Accountability Primarily to authorities Primarily to peers and stakeholders
- 40. 55 55 Strong performers and successful reformers Find out more about PISA at… OECD www.pisa.oecd.org – All national and international publications Andreas Schleicher – The complete micro-level database U.S. White House www.data.gov Thank you ! 7 July 2011 Email: Andreas.Schleicher@OECD.org PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for … and remember: Without data, you are just another person with an opinion
Editor's Notes
- The pace of change is most clearly visible in higher education, and I want to bring two more dimensions into the picture here. Each dot on this chart represents one country. The horizontal axis shows you the college graduation rate, the proportion of an age group that comes out of the system with a college degree. The vertical axis shows you how much it costs to educate a graduate per year.
- *Lets now add where the money comes from into the picture, the larger the dot, the larger the share of private spending on college education, such as tuition.The chart shows the US as the country with the highest college graduation rate, and the highest level of spending per student. The US is also among the countries with the largest share of resources generated through the private sector. That allows the US to spend roughly twice as much per student as Europe. US, FinlandThe only thing I have not highlighted so far is that this was the situation in 1995. And now watch this closely as you see how this changed between 1995 and 2005.
- You see that in 2000, five years, later, the picture looked very different. While in 1995 the US was well ahead of any other country – you see that marked by the dotted circle, in 2000 several other countries had reached out to this frontier. Look at Australia, in pink.
- What do we see from this?- Every country has seen improvements in terms of output The example of the UK shows that you can set ambitious national targets and actually get close to them within a decade What you cannot do is prevent others from surpassing themAnd in a global economy, it is no longer simply improvement by national standards, but the best prepared individuals, companies and countries that are the benchmarks for success. What international comparisons can do is to show how the goal post keeps changing.
- We started to develop PISA in 1998 with 28 OECD countries, but since then country participation has grown and our latest PISA assessment covers 74 education systems that make up 86% of the world economy. Coverage in China and India is still patchy though, in China we have now covered 12 provinces and in India we are working in two states only.One aspect that makes PISA stand apart from traditional school tests is that PISA puts less emphasis on whether students can reproduce what they were taught, but focuses on their capacity to extrapolate from what they know and creatively apply what they know in novel situations. Some people complain that PISA is unfair, because it confronts students with tasks they have not dealt with before, but if you take that line, then you should consider life unfair, because in this fast-changing world, that is precisely what will expect students later in life. You will see that in the callout box.Students also provided data on their socio-economic context, their schools and their attitudes and engagement with school and learning.In addition, PISA collected data from parents, principals and system leaders to yield insights on school policies, practices, resources and institutional factors that help explain performance differences.
- The idea of PISA is to support governments in preparing students for life. In a sense, PISA provides schools and nations with a mirror in which they can judge their performance in light of what other systems show is possible to achieve.
- Let me conclude this introduction with a couple of factors that were key to the success of PISAAt the heart of PISA is not a bureaucracy but the largest international network of educators and researchers in which Japan is an active player. These experts develop and validate the assessment material and methodologies, guided by governments on the basis of shared policy interests.Whenever you engage in cross-national collaboration, you will run into the question of whether measures and policy lessons travels well across cultural and national contexts. That is an area where PISA has made unprecedented progress.Third, in the field of education, nobody really knows how learning occurs in the classroom, but everybody has a view on this. So in PISA, we approached the issues from many perspectives, collecting data from students, parents, school principals, experts and system leaders and then through triangulation tried to get to the bottom to the issues. Finally, PISA employs a range of methods to ensure adequate measurement at different grain size to serve different decision-making needs.
- With that introduction, let us turn to the results. The first thing you can do is to see how countries line up with regard to the competencies of their 15-year-olds.
- The red dot indicates classroom spending per student, relative to the spending capacity of countries, the higher the dot, the more of its GDP a country invests. High salaries are an obvious cost driver. You see Korea paying their teachers very well, the green bar goes up a lot. Korea also has long school days, another cost driver, marked here by the white bar going up. Last but not least, Korea provides their teachers with lots of time for other things than teaching such as teacher collaboration and professional development, which costs money as well. So how does Korea finances all of this? They do this with large classes, the blue bar pulls costs down. If you go to the next country on the list, Luxembourg, you see that the red dot is about where it is for Korea, so Luxembourg spends roughly the same per student as Korea. But parents and teachers in Luxembourg mainly care about small classes, so policy makers have invested mainly into reducing class size, you see the blue bar as the main cost driver. But even Luxembourg can only spend its money once, and the result is that school days are short, teacher salaries are average at best and teachers have little time for anything else than teaching. Finland and the US are a similar contrast.Countries make quite different spending choices. But when you look at this these data long enough, you see that many of the high performing education systems tend to prioritise the quality of teachers over the size of classes.
- Let me briefly summarise the influences that we have measured in PISA.
- You have seen very large performance differences among schools and countries, but how predictive are these for the success of students and nations?
- To what extent is performance in school predictive of success in later life?The best way to find out whether what students have learned at school matters for their life is to actually watch what happens to them after they leave school. This is exactly what we have done that with around 30,000 students in Canada. We tested them in the year 2000 when they were 15 years old in reading, math and science, and since then we are following up with them each year on what choices they make and how successful they are in their transition from school to higher education and work.The horizontal axis shows you the PISA level which 15-year-old Canadians had scored in 2000. Level 2 is the baseline level on the PISA reading test and Level 5 the top level in reading.The red bar shows you how many times more successful someone who scored Level 2 at age 15 was at age 19 to have made a successful transition to university, as compared to someone who did not make it to the baseline PISA level 1. And to ensure that what you see here is not simply a reflection of social background, gender, immigration or school engagement, we have already statistically accounted for all of these factors. The orange bar. …How would you expect the picture to be like at age 21? We are talking about test scores here, but for a moment, lets go back to the judgements schools make on young people, for example through school marks. You can do the same thing here, you can see how well school marks at age 15 predict the subsequent success of youths. You see that there is some relationship as well, but that it is much less pronounced than when we use the direct measure of skills. What this tells you how important reliable measures of student performance are, an area where the UK is leading the field since some years.
- I am going to present evidence on separate issues in turn, but it is their interdependence that is key to understanding the nature of the policy and implementation challenges. If you simply raise entrance standards for teachers, you will choke off supply unless compensation and working conditions are aligned. Raising pay and changing working conditions alone won’t automatically translate into improvements in teacher quality unless standards are raised. Teacher evaluation systems have limited impact where they only relate to compensation but not professional development and career advancement. Giving teachers more autonomy can be counterproductive if the quality and education of the teachers are inadequate.Education is ultimately about student learning outcomes……and these Learning outcomes are the result of what happens in the classroom.Instructional policies and practices, in turn, are shaped by people - teachers, principles and families. And that’s why the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.But it works the other way round too: The quality of teachers cannot exceed the quality of work organization, the quality of teacher selection and education, teacher careers and teacher evaluation.And it is those processes that we can shape with policy tools. And success depends on the design and implementation of effective policies.
- First, there is no question that most nations declare that education is important. But the test comes when these commitments are weighed against others. How do countries pay teachers, compared to other highly-skilled workers? How are education credentials weighed against other qualifications when people are being considered for jobs? Would you want your child to be a teacher? How much attention do the media pay to schools and schooling? What we have learned from PISA is that in high performing systems political and social leaders have persuaded citizens to make choices that show they value education more than other things. But placing a high value on education is only part of the equation. Another part is belief in the possibilities for all children to achieve success. In some countries, students are separated into different tracks at an early age, reflecting a notion shared by teachers, parents and citizens that only a subset of the nation’s children can or need to achieve world class standards. Our analysis shows that systems that track students in this way, based differing expectations for different destinations, tend to be fraught with large social disparities. By contrast, the best performing systems deliver strong and equitable learning outcomes across very different cultural and economic contexts. In Finland, Japan, Singapore, Shanghai-China and Hong Kong-China, parents, teachers and the public at large share the belief that all students are capable of achieving high standards and need to do so, and they provide great examples for how public policy can support the achievement of universal high standards.
- High-performing education systems also share clear and ambitious standards across the board. Everyone knows what is required to get a given qualification, both in terms of the content studied and the level of performance needed to earn it. Students cannot go on to the next stage—be it in work or in further education—unless they show that they are qualified to do so. They know what they have to do to realise their dream, and they put in the work that is needed to do it.As discussed in the 2009 edition of OECD’s Education at a Glance¸ over the past decade, assessments of student performance have become common in many OECD countries – and the results are often widely reported and used in both public and more specialised debate. However, the rationale for assessments and the nature of the instruments used vary greatly within and across countries. Methods employed in OECD countries include different forms of external assessment, external evaluation or inspection, and schools’ own quality assurance and self-evaluation efforts. One aspect relating to accountability systems concerns the existence of standards-based external examinations. These are examinations that focus on a specific school subject and assess a major portion of what students who are studying this subject are expected to know or be able to do (Bishop, 1998, 2001). Essentially, they define performance relative to an external standard, not relative to other students in the classroom or school. These examinations usually have a direct impact on students’ education – and even on their futures – and may thus motivate students to work harder. Other standardised tests, which may be voluntary and implemented by schools, often have only indirect consequences for students. For teachers, standardised assessments can provide information on students’ learning needs and can be used to tailor their instruction accordingly. In some countries, such as Brazil, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland and the Slovak Republic, such tests are also used to determine teachers’ salaries or to guide professional development (for data, see the 2009 edition of Education at a Glance ). At the school level, information from standardised tests can be used to determine the allocation of additional resources, and what interventions are required to establish performance targets and monitor progress.Across OECD countries, students in school systems that require standards-based external examinations perform, on average, over 16 points higher than those in school systems that do not use such examinations (Figure IV.2.6a). Among OECD countries, there are standards-based external examinations for secondary school students in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. In Australia, these examinations cover 81% of secondary students, in Canada 51% and in Germany 35%. In Austria, Belgium, Chile, Greece, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, such examinations do not exist or only in some parts of the system (Table IV.3.11).In PISA 2009, school principals were asked to report on the types and frequency of assessment used: standardised tests, teacher-developed tests, teachers’ judgemental ratings, student portfolios or student assignments. Some 76% of students in OECD countries are enrolled in schools that use standardised tests. Standardised tests are relatively uncommon in Slovenia, Belgium, Spain, Austria and Germany, where less than half the 15-year-olds attend schools that assess students through standardised tests. In contrast, the use of standardised tests is practically universal in Luxembourg, Finland, Korea, the United States, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where over 95% of students attend schools that use this assessment at least once a year (Table IV.3.10). In Japan, 65% of students are in schools that use standardised tests.
- Third, the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and principals. Just like companies, high quality school systems pay attention to how they select and train their staff. They watch how they improve the performance of those who are struggling; how structure teachers’ pay packets; and how they reward their best teachers. They provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame good practice. That is where teachers conduct field-based research to confirm or disprove the approaches they develop, and they judge their colleagues by the degree to which they use these practices in their classrooms. Listen to what the Finnish Minister had to say about that.
- Now, so far so good, and we all get very exited when we talk about teacher recruitment and initial training. And the reason why we get exited is because public policy can easily shape these. Some claim that the best performing systems all recruit their teachers from the top third of school graduates. That’s true for Finland and Korea. But if I look around the table, how many more countries can really claim that teaching is the first choice of graduates? Singapore perhaps? But it simply does not hold for the majority of countries around the table here. If we wait for this marvellous spaceship that will arrive one day and bring us new teachers – and maybe send those who are not effective to the moon - then we will find ourselves in the same situation years from now. And you see that other sectors have acted in much smarter ways. Imagine Nokia, the Finnish technology leader. In the 1960s, Nokia produced car tyres and rubber products. Imagine where they would be now if they had said then: We would really like to produce something more advanced than car tyres, but our engineers are not up to the task. Lets wait until they are retired, then we will train new engineers, and when the new graduates trickle into the labour-market, we will start to do something great. And there is more to this. If you put great teachers into a poor system, the system will win every time. There are plenty of examples for this. No matter how good the pre-service education for teachers is, it cannot be expected to prepare teachers for all the challenges they will face throughout their careers. So let us move on to the second summit topic. [Slide – How teachers are developed] So as important as recruitment and selection of promising graduates is, it can only be one component of human resource management in education. Successful reform requires investment in quality professional development to continuously: Simply look at how significantly the profile of teacher requirements has changed in the last decade alone: They must now place much greater emphasis on integrating students with special learning needs. They need to make more effective use of information technologies. They are required to engage more in planning within evaluative and accountability frameworks. And they are asked to do more to involve parents in schools. I think we all recognize that education is still far from being a knowledge industry, in the sense that its own practices are being continuously transformed by greater understanding of their efficacy. While in many other fields, people enter their professional lives expecting that what they do and how they do it will be transformed by evidence and research, this is still not generally the case in education. Ongoing professional development is a crucial instrument to:update teachers subject knowledge; update teachers skills and approaches in light of new teaching techniques, new circumstances, and new research; enable teachers to master changes made to curricula or teaching practice; enable schools to develop and apply new strategies; and facilitate exchange of experience; In some countries, ongoing professional development already plays an important role. In Shanghai, each teacher is expected to engage in 240 hours of professional development within five years. Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of professional development per year. But there is a lot of variation in the incidence and intensity of teacher participation in professional development both across and within countries.
- There are some lessons we have learned about teacher development: Well-structured and resourced induction programs can support new teachers in their transitionMany countries carefully induct their teachers before they confer on them all the rights and responsibilities of full-time teachers. During that period, they are supervised by master teachers and they get additional instruction and coaching from their supervisory teachers, and observe other teachers. Typically, teachers in this induction period can be coached out of the profession, if, in the opinion of their supervisory teachers, they have not demonstrated that they have the knowledge and skills needed to be a competent professional. [Slide: percentage of teachers without mentoring or induction] But our data show a substantial share of teachers is left without induction - or mentoring. Effective professional development is on-going, include training, practice and feedback, and provide adequate time and follow-up supportSecond, we have learned that effective professional development needs to be on-going, include training, practice and feedback, and provide adequate follow-up. Successful programs involve teachers in learning activities that are similar to those they will use with their students, and encourage the development of teachers’ learning communities. Teacher development needs to be linked with appraisal and feedback practices and school evaluationTeacher development also needs to be linked with appraisal and feedback. And it’s important to provide sufficient room for teachers to employ inquiry- and group-based approaches, especially in the core areas of curriculum and assessment. Our data show that teachers’ participation in professional development goes hand-in-hand with their mastery of a wider repertoire of pedagogical practices. We also see a close relationship between professional development and a positive school climate, co-operation between teachers and teacher job satisfaction. But we also see that that schools and systems need to better match the costs and benefits of, and supply and demand for, professional development.
- Here you see the percentage of teachers that participate in various types of professional development across the countries that took part in our TALIS survey.
- When you now contrast this with the impact of such professional development, you see that relatively few teachers participate in the kinds of professional development that they believe has the largest impact on their work, namely qualification programs and individual and collaborative research. Teacher demand for professional development is often not met, sometimes for lack of time, sometimes for lack of opportunity…More than half the teachers surveyed also said that they wanted more professional development than they received. Of course, people never feel well enough prepared, but the extent of unsatisfied demand appears large. We have no data on the extent to which this undermines the effectiveness of these teachers. But the cost of providing additional professional development needs to be seen in relation to the cost of not providing it.
- Fourth, as you have seen, success has to do with incentives and accountability, and how these are aligned in the system. It has also to do with how vertical accountability to superiors is balanced with horizontal or professional accountability towards peers, how knowledge is shared and spread. For students this affects: How gateways affect the strength, direction, clarity and nature of the incentives operating on students at each stage of their education; as well as the degree to which students have incentives to take tough courses and study hard and the opportunity costs for staying in school and performing well.It also means providing incentives for teachers to make innovations in pedagogy and/or organisation, improve their own performance and the performance of their colleagues, and to pursue professional development opportunities that lead to stronger pedagogical practices.High performing systems tend to provide a balance between vertical and lateral accountability and have effective instruments to manage and share knowledge and spread innovation – and that means both communication within the system and with stakeholders around it.
- The most impressive outcome of world class education systems is perhaps that they deliver high quality learning consistently across the entire education system so that every student benefits from excellent learning opportunity. To achieve this, they invest educational resources where they can make most of a difference, they attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classroom, and they establish effective spending choices that prioritise the quality of teachers. Let me come back to the example of Shanghai once more here. Let us have a look at the struggling schools six years later.Research usually shows a weak relationship between educational resources and student performance, with more variation explained by the quality of human resources (i.e. teachers and school principals) than by material and financial resources, particularly among industrialised nations. The generally weak relationship between resources and performance observed in past research is also seen in PISA. At the level of the education system, and net of the level of national income, the only type of resource that PISA shows to be correlated with student performance is the level of teachers’ salaries relative to national income (Figure IV.2.8). Teachers’ salaries are related to class size in that if spending levels are similar, school systems often make trade-offs between smaller classes and higher salaries for teachers. The findings from PISA suggest that systems prioritising higher teachers’ salaries over smaller classes, such as those in Japan and Korea, tend to perform better. The lack of correlation between the level of resources and performance among school systems does not mean that resource levels do not affect performance at all. Rather, it implies that, given the variation in resources observed in PISA, they are unrelated to performance or equity. A school system that lacks teachers, infrastructure and textbooks will almost certainly perform at lower levels; but given that most school systems in PISA appear to satisfy the minimum resource requirements for teaching and learning, the lack of a relationship between many of the resource aspects and both equity and performance may result simply from a lack of sufficient variation among OECD countries.
- Some of the most successful systems are also actively looking outward, realising that the benchmark for success is no longer simply improvement by national standards, but the best performing systems internationally. Whether Singapore is interested in designing a better sewer system, retirement system or school system, it sends key people in the relevant sector to visit those countries that are the world’s best performers in those areas with instructions to find out how they do it, and to put together a design for Singapore that is superior to anything that they have seen anywhere.
- This chart shows you that a fair proportion of teachers still remain without any form of appraisal or feedback. What is interesting is to see how the role of teacher appraisal has changed in recent years. In the past, it was mainly about compliance, about monitoring adherence to centrally established procedures, policies and practices. Almost everywhere, the focus has now shifted to teaching effectiveness. Effective teacher appraisal can help to improve teachers’ practices by identifying strengths and weaknesses for further professional development – the improvement function. That involves helping teachers learn about, reflect on, and adjust their practice. Teacher appraisal can also help to hold teachers accountable for their performance in enhancing student learning – the accountability function. That's often linked with performance-based career advancement or salaries. But when you look around the table here, you see that countries typically either focus on improvement, or on accountability. And the reason is that combining improvement and accountability functions into a single teacher-appraisal process is tough. When evaluation focuses on improving practice, teachers tend to be willing to reveal their weaknesses, in the expectation that conveying that information will lead to more effective decisions on developmental needs. That's what you see in Finland. But when teachers are confronted with potential consequences on their career and salary, they tend to be less inclined to reveal weaknesses in their performance, and the improvement function, which builds on trust in the relationship between appraiser and the appraised, can be compromised. But, again, there are good examples for how this works well. And teachers generally do see appraisal and feedback in positive terms. 80% of teachers in our TALIS survey said appraisal was helpful for developing their work as teachers; and almost half of teachers reported that it led to a teacher-development or training plan to improve their teaching. One way of ensuring that teachers see evaluation in positive terms is to involve them in school evaluations, in particular by organizing school self-evaluations as a collective process in which teachers take real responsibility. Effective appraisal requires the development of considerable expertise in the system, including training evaluators, establishing evaluation processes and aligning broader school reforms, such as professional development opportunities, with evaluation and assessment strategies. All of these require considerable resources, including time.The criteria used to evaluate teachers center on learning outcomes, although they also assess significant inputs, such as teacher qualifications and the learning environment created in classrooms… Also, our data show that where teachers receive feedback on their work, they are more likely to find it fair than threatening. On average, eight in ten teachers surveyed in TALIS who received feedback thought it was fair. More than three-quarters of teachers also considered it helpful for their work, and the majority said it improved their job satisfaction and development as teachers, without reducing job security. Most importantly, they reported that appraisal leads to changes in the specific aspects of their teaching on which it focuses.
- Last but not least, in high performing systems these policies and practices are aligned across all aspects of the system, they are coherent over sustained periods of time, and they are consistently implemented. And PISA shows, success is within the reach for nations that have the capacity to creating and executing policies with maximum coherence in the system. Of course, the path to reform is not easy and it can be fraught with political controversy. Moving away from administrative and bureaucratic control toward professional norms of control can be counterproductive if a nation does not yet have teachers and schools with the capacity to implement these policies and practices. Pushing authority down to lower levels can be as problematic if there is not agreement on what the students need to know and should be able to do. Recruiting high quality teachers is not of much use if those who are recruited are so frustrated by what they perceive to be a mindless system of initial teacher education that they will not participate in it and turn to another profession. Or if they become school teachers, but are so turned off by the bureaucratic forms of work organisation they find there that they leave teaching for some other occupation. So this is all about alignment.
- Whether and how long students are enrolled in pre-primary education is also an important resource consideration. Many of the inequalities that exist within school systems are already present once students enter formal schooling and persist as students’ progress through school. Earlier entrance into the school system may reduce these inequities. On average across OECD countries, 72% of today’s 15-year-old students reported that they had attended pre-primary education for more than one year. Attendance in more than one year of pre-primary education was practically universal in Japan (97%), and in the Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Iceland and France, over 90% of 15-year-old students reported that they had attended pre-primary school for more than one year. More than 90% of students in 27 OECD countries had attended pre-primary school for at least some time, and 98% or more of students in Japan (99%), Hungary, France and the United States reported having done so. Pre-primary education is rare in Turkey, where less than 30% of 15-year-olds had attended pre-primary school for at least a year. More than one year of pre-primary education is uncommon in Chile, Ireland, Canada and Poland, where less than 50% of students attended pre-primary school for that length of time (Table IV.3.18).PISA 2009 results show that, in general, students who had attended pre-primary education perform better in reading at the age of 15 than students who had not (Figure II.5.9 and Table II.5.5). In 32 OECD countries, students who had attended pre-primary education for more than one year outperformed students who had not attended pre-primary education at all – in many countries by the equivalent of well over a school year. This finding holds in most countries even after accounting for students’ socio-economic backgrounds. However, across countries, there is considerable variation in the impact of attendance in pre-primary education and reading performance when students are 15 years old. Among OECD countries, in Israel, Belgium, Italy and France, students who attended pre-primary education for more than one year perform at least 64 score points higher in reading than those who did not, which corresponds to the equivalent of roughly one-and-a-half school years. This was the case even after accounting for students’ socio-economic background. On the other hand, in Estonia, Finland, the United States and Korea, there is no marked difference in reading scores between those who attended pre-primary school for more than one year and those who did not attend at all, after accounting for students’ socio-economic background. In Japan, the students who had attended pre-primary education for one year or more scored an average of 39 points higher on the PISA reading scale than those who did not – roughly the equivalent of one school year – and after accounting for students’ socio-economic background, the performance advantage is 24 score points. These results underline the importance of pre-primary education, and international comparisons of primary-school children show high pre-primary enrolment rates among both advantaged and disadvantaged Japanese children. The next challenge will be to increase the positive impact of pre-primary education on performance later on in students’ school careers.One factor that may explain the variations in the impact of pre-primary education on later school performance is the quality of pre-primary education. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the impact tends to be greater in education systemswhere pre-primary education is of longer duration, has smaller pupil-to-teacher ratios or benefits from higher public expenditure per pupil (Table II.5.6). When this impact is compared according to socio-economic background, in most OECD countries, there is no significant difference in the impact between students from socio-economically disadvantaged and advantaged backgrounds (Table II.5.8). Students benefit equally from attending pre-primary school in 31 OECD countries including Japan and 25 partner countries and economies. The United States is the only OECD country where PISA shows that disadvantaged students benefit more from pre-primary education. Part of the difference in the impact of attendance in pre-primary education on the performance of students from different socio-economic backgrounds may be due to the fact that many factors other than pre-primary education (e.g. education in and out of school that students received between the ages of 6 and 15) may influence 15-year-olds’ performance.
- I want to conclude with what we have learned about successful reform trajectories In the past when you only needed a small slice of well-educated people it was efficient for governments to invest a large sum in a small elite to lead the country. But the social and economic cost of low educational performance has risen substantially and all young people now need to leave school with strong foundation skills.When you could still assume that what you learn in school will last for a lifetime, teaching content and routine cognitive skills was at the centre of education. Today, where you can access content on Google, where routine cognitive skills are being digitised or outsourced, and where jobs are changing rapidly, the focus is on enabling people to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers cannot take over easily.In the past, teachers had sometimes only a few years more education than the students they taught. When teacher quality is so low, governments tend to tell their teachers exactly what to do and exactly how they want it done and they tend to use Tayloristic methods of administrative control and accountability to get the results they want. Today the challenge is to make teaching a profession of high-level knowledge workers. But such people will not work in schools organised as Tayloristic workplaces using administrative forms of accountability and bureaucratic command and control systems to direct their work. To attract the people they need, successful education systems have transformed the form of work organisation in their schools to a professional form of work organisation in which professional norms of control complement bureaucratic and administrative forms of control.
- I am delighted to share our analysis of the latest PISA findings with you, and I am particularly pleased to do this in Japan, a country which has maintained its high levels of student performance, and which has seen important improvements in student engagement since 2000, an area that traditionally was one of Japan’s weaknesses.I want to start with a brief overview of the objectives and origins of PISA, then analyse where Japan stands on measures ranging from student performance up to student attitudes to learning and engagement with school, and then conclude with what we have learned about effective policies and practices that may help Japan to further raise its already impressive educational performance.