Secretary of State comments on PISA study of school systems

Michael Gove has today commented on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study of schools systems from around the world.
 
Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove said:

Today’s PISA report underlines the urgent need to reform our school system. We need to learn from the best-performing countries.

Other regions and nations have succeeded in closing the gap and in raising attainment for all students at the same time. They have made opportunity more equal, democratised access to knowledge and placed an uncompromising emphasis on higher standards all at the same time. These regions and nations – from Alberta to Singapore, Finland to Hong Kong, Harlem to South Korea – should be our inspiration.

While each of these exemplars has their own unique and individual approach to aspects of education, their successful systems all share certain common features. Many have put in place comprehensive plans for school improvement which involve improving teacher quality, granting greater autonomy to the front line, modernising curricula, making schools more accountable to their communities, harnessing detailed performance data and encouraging professional collaboration. It is only through such whole-system reform that education can be transformed to make our nation one of the world’s top performers.

The headline results for England are:

 
The full report, including a UK note, can be found on the OECD website.

Further details on England’s performance in the assessments can be found on the NFER website. 
 

Further information

Key quotes form the report include:

Recruit and develop the best teachers

From the UK briefing note, para 76:

Effective school systems require the right combination of trained and talented personnel, adequate educational resources and facilities, and motivated students ready to learn. But performance on international comparisons cannot simply be tied to money, since only seven OECD countries spend more per student than the United Kingdom. Among the successful PISA countries, Canada, Finland and Shanghai-China invest the money where the challenges are greatest rather than making the resources that schools get a function of the wealth of the local communities in which schools are located, and they put in place incentives and support systems that attract the most talented school teachers into the most difficult classrooms.

Vol IV, p106

The bottom line is that the quality of a school system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.

Allow greater freedoms for schools and leaders
Have clear standards, high expectations, and external exams

Vol IV, p105

In countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better.
 
...schools that enjoy greater autonomy in resource allocation tend to do better than those with less autonomy.

From the UK briefing note under, para 30:

Results from PISA suggest that, across OECD countries, schools and countries where students work in a climate characterised by high performance expectations and the readiness to invest effort, good teacher-student relations, and high teacher morale tend to achieve better results, on average across countries.

From Vol 1V, p104/105

Setting standards and showing student how to meet them matters.
 
Most high-performing countries have developed world-class academic standards for their students and almost all have incorporated those standards into a system of external examinations that are used to construct clear paths into the workforce and good jobs or to the next stage of education or both. Indeed, PISA shows that the existence of such external examinations is positively associated with overall performance of school systems.

Have effective identification and sharing of best practice

From the UK briefing note, para 57

Many of the successful countries have developed elaborate support systems to foster the motivation of the full diversity of students to become independent and lifelong learners. They tend to train teachers to be better at diagnosing learning issues so that they can address them by personalised instruction methods. Second, they help individual teachers to become aware of specific weaknesses in their own practices, which often means not just creating awareness of what they do but also changing the underlying mindset. Third, they then seek to provide their teachers with an understanding of specific best practices and, last but not least, motivate them to make the necessary changes with instruments that go well beyond material incentives.

Have clear, transparent and proportionate assessment and accountability systems

From Vol 1V, p105

Autonomy matters when combined with Accountability
 
Within countries where schools are held to account for their results through posting achievement data publicly, schools that enjoy greater autonomy in resource allocation tend to do better than those with less autonomy.  However, in countries where there are no such accountability arrangements, the reverse is true.
 
In countries that use standards-based external examinations, students tend to do better overall.