Analysis: In education departments and ministerial offices around the Western world there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth. The OECD’s Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) test scores are out, and our children are failing. Pretty much all of them. All around the world.
About 690,000 pupils from 81 countries and economies took part in the 2022 Pisa assessment, and the results were released late last night. Likely as a result of Covid and lost schooling, the results for most countries were worse than three years previous.
“Math scores for US students hit all-time low,” shouts the Washington Post. “UK pupils’ science and maths scores lowest since 2006,” bemoans The Guardian. “OECD education survey shows unprecedented drop,” grieves France24. “Flatlining student scores,” scolds Australian Financial Review.
No surprises, then, to see New Zealand expressing similar concern about its “worst-ever” Pisa results. Even factoring in a decline worldwide, the performance of the 4700 Kiwi 15-year-olds who took part was significantly worse than our 2019 cohort in maths, placing us 19th equal of the 37 participating developed nations.
They’ve held up better in reading and science, at seventh equal.
New Education Minister Erica Stanford is in the enviable position of being able to blame the previous government for “continued poor outcomes”, and promise better results from her own “Teaching the Basics Brilliantly” policy.
That starts by banning cell phone use during the school day, followed by mandating that all primary students receive at least one hour of reading, writing and maths every day. “This Government has high aspirations for our learners, and we refuse to leave essential learning to chance,” she says.
Over the past eight years, my three kids have been going through the school system – I have one at the local high school, one at the intermediate, and one still at primary.
Mathematics
I’m pretty sure that, bar the odd school production rehearsal or sports day, they’ve done the 3Rs almost as much every day.
But with the removal of those “chance” sports days and school productions, perhaps they’ll do better in reading, writing and arithmetic. It’s true that the small number of countries that have done well in the Pisa tests, such as Singapore, have focused on basics – for example, learning times tables.
I’m going to be contrarian, though. Sorry, I can’t help myself. I have four questions about the Pisa tests.
1. Do they test the right stuff? I acknowledge arguments from the likes of Dr Michael Johnston, at the NZ Initiative thinktank, that basic number facts such as times tables need to be learned cold to support further learning. But I’m not convinced that Pisa tests the breadth of problem-solving skills that, as an employer, I value in team members.
Reading
That’s a pity, given Pisa’s stated objective is to “measure the extent to which students can use what they learned in and out of schools for their full participation in societies”.
2. Do they force schools to teach to the test? Some critics claim that Pisa helps generate the very inequalities it then reports. South American researchers Taut and Palacios say a culture of blame can develop when teachers and school leaders are unfairly blamed for disappointing Pisa results.
Educationalist Simon Breakspear warns of perverse incentives – that politicians and schools will construct policy targets to deliver better Pisa rankings, rather than delivering better-educated New Zealanders.
3. Are they a fair international comparison? Studies show translating the same question into different languages can change what is actually being asked in subtle ways. And students live in different contexts, giving some a comparative advantage. (The OECD recognises this problem.)
Science
The OECD gives advice about what nations should do next on the basis of their Pisa outcomes, sparking concern from organisations such as the NZ Council for Education Research that there is a drive to make everyone’s education systems basically the same, regardless of differences in national values.
4. Finally, are we reading the fine print? Pisa tests deliver some really useful findings that never make the headlines.
For instance, NZCER chief researcher Rose Hipkins (you may remember her son Chris) points out that Pisa data consistently shows New Zealand as having one of the widest spreads of achievement of all the nations – there’s a long tail of underachievement. “Our best students are right up with the best internationally, but the same is also true of those who are underachieving,” she says.
A greater proportion of New Zealand students experience food insecurity than the OECD average. Perhaps partly as a result, behavioural problems in our classrooms are among the worst. Many report safety risks. Last year’s teenage participants were more likely to feel lonely, awkward and out of place than previously.
Behavioural problems in classrooms are high
New Zealand girls were experiencing increased anxiety; so too more socially disadvantaged students. Being groomed then herded into a school hall for Pisa tests probably didn’t help that.
When I worked at The Times Educational Supplement in the UK, during an era of intensive, repetitive standardised testing across all schools, we had a saying: however much you weigh the pig, it doesn’t fatten it up.
It’s true here too. We are subjecting our children to more and more tests, and more and more test preparation, that isn’t necessarily equipping them for the workplace, or for tertiary education, or for operating as smart, engaged, contributing members of our communities.
So yes, Stanford’s position is enviable – for now. That’s until the next Pisa report in 2026, when the success of her policy will be judged. Already, her ‘brilliant teaching’ policy’s reduced focus on science puts our 2026 teenagers at risks of failing the third leg of the Pisa test.
In reading and maths, the narrower focus on teaching to the test may well improve scores – but will our children emerge so well-rounded from school?
Perhaps it’s time to consider whether it’s our kids who are failing, or the Pisa tests themselves.
Thank you.
It has been said that it takes a village to bring up a child; in the West today there are no villages.
I’m retired after a lifetime of secondary teaching. Teachers carry out a lot of soul-searching about students who slip through the system and end up with no qualifications and a poor work attitude. SURELY there must be a way to unlock all that wasted human potential? This, of course, is the pot of gold at the end of the educational rainbow that we have all been seeking for generations. Of course, we should examine our programmes, our teaching methods, and ourselves to find ways to improve. Good teachers and good leaders always do that. However, if we think that this alone will bring about significant change, I suspect we are deluding ourselves. This thinking is based on the argument that if students are not keen and successful then it must be largely or entirely the fault of the system or the teachers. In over four decades years of teaching, I have seen initiative after initiative intended to change student motivation, introduced by wave after wave of enthusiastic innovators, with remarkably little demonstrable improvement in student motivation or achievement to show for it.
So, what do we do? A life spent in education leaves me firmly of the view that the limiting factor for the motivation of students is often the willingness of the student to be motivated. Student motivation is grounded in a variety of factors, some of which are deep-seated societal influences, largely beyond the control of teachers. These motivational factors include the desire to get into a well-paid career; the desire to have an interesting and fulfilling career; family expectation (unlikely to be of lasting influence); and intellectual curiosity.
By comparison with some other cultures, we in the West do not value intellectual curiosity, or education for its own sake, very much. This is particularly true in New Zealand where many families rate qualities like sporting ability and ‘standing up for yourself’ more highly than intellectual achievement.
There is also the influence of media-promoted ‘youth culture’ with its many distractions from reality, and its emphasis on personal freedom and self-gratification. The concepts of the ‘teenager’ and of youthful rebellion, fuelled by increasing affluence since the 1950s and manipulated by anyone who can see a dollar to be made from young people with cash to spare, are particularly Western, although they are now spreading worldwide.
If you don’t believe me, go and teach for a while in a country where education is generally valued more highly. When I was teaching in Africa, we had to put the classroom lights on a time switch to stop the students studying until three or four in the morning. Those teenagers had not yet been led to believe that their role was to sleep late, be disorganized, and be resentful – so they weren’t. They were almost all cheerful and hardworking. Colleagues of mine who have worked in a number of other countries have said much the same thing. Until this point is grasped, we in Western cultures will endure perpetual soul-searching and self-blame about our programmes and our teaching methods.
Politicians interfering and finger-pointing don’t help.
It is a morale-sapping waste of energy to blame ourselves as educators, or to say that our programmes are ‘failing students’. It is just as valid to say that “at-risk” students are failing themselves, or that society in general is failing us all. It has been said that it takes a village to bring up a child; in the West today there are no villages.
For these reasons I very much doubt that any structural change we choose to implement will achieve much in the way of improved outcomes. So what can we do? As far as it actually lies within our power to motivate and enthuse students, our energy would be better directed away from structural/organisational change and repeated self-analysis, and devoted instead to doing what is realistically with our power. As I have said above, this means teaching with clarity, enthusiasm and panache; by being enthusiastic about our subject, lively, humorous, supportive, challenging, demanding, and inventive in the classroom.
You could also ask if PISA is testing a similar spread of deciles, or is it skewed by the higher performing schools in some countries. Be that as it may, when it is reported that 40% of NZ adults struggle to fill a form, carpenters complain that apprentices cannot read a tape measure, and universities find first year students strruggle with concepts they should have been taught in school, something is wrong.