PISA Secondary Education Reform
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Riyadh, 17 October 2011 Andreas Schleicher Special advisor to the Secretary-General on Education Policy Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division, EDU
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PISA Secondary Education Reform
- 1. Programme for International Student Assessment 1 1 Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Is the sky the limit to 18 October 2011 educational improvement Secondary educational reform PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Riyadh, 17 October 2011 Andreas Schleicher Special advisor to the Secretary-General on Education Policy Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division, EDU
- 2. 2 2 Then Now Learning a place Learning an activity Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Prescription Informed profession 18 October 2011 Delivered wisdom User-generated wisdom Uniformity Embracing diversity PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Conformity Ingenious Curriculum-centred Learner-centred Provision Outcomes
- 3. 3 3 PISA 2009 in brief PISA countries in 2001 2003 2000 2009 2006 1998 Over half a million of world economy 83% Coverage students… 87% 86% 85% 81% 77% Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher representing 28 million 15-year-olds in 74* countries/economies … took an internationally agreed 2-hour test… 18 October 2011 Goes beyond testing whether students can reproduce what they were taught… 65 … to assess students’ capacity to extrapolateRoutine manual they from what Changes in skill 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
- 4. PISA Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher OECD Programme for International Student Assessment 18 October 2011 4 4 What 15-year-olds can do
- 5. Shanghai-China High reading performance 5 5 Average performance of 15-year-olds in Korea 540.000 Finland reading – extrapolate Hong Kong-China and apply Singapore Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Canada New Zealand 520.000 Japan Australia 18 October 2011 Belgium Netherlands Poland, Switzerland Norway , Estonia United States Iceland 500.000 Germany, Sweden Liechtenstein France, Ireland Chinese Taipei Hungary, United Kingdom Denmark Portugal Macao-China Italy Latvia PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for Slovenia Greece 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 35 25 … 17 countries perform below this line Low reading performance
- 6. High reading performance 6 6 Average performance High average performance Highof 15-year-olds in average performance Large socio-economic disparities science – extrapolate High social equity and apply Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher 18 October 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
- 7. Australia High reading performance 7 7 Belgium 2009 2009 Canada Durchschnittliche High average performance High average performance Chile Czech Rep Large socio-economic disparities Schülerleistungen im High social equity Denmark Bereich Mathematik Finland Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Germany Greece Hungary 18 October 2011 Iceland Ireland 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 SwitzerlandLarge socio-economic disparities High social equity UK 55 45 35 25 15 US Low reading performance
- 8. Australia High reading performance 8 8 Belgium 2009 Canada Durchschnittliche High average performance High average performance Chile Czech Rep Large socio-economic disparities Schülerleistungen im High social equity Denmark Bereich Mathematik Finland Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Germany Greece Hungary 18 October 2011 Iceland Ireland 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 SwitzerlandLarge socio-economic disparities High social equity UK US Low reading performance
- 9. 9 9 High performing systems often prioritize the quality of teachers over the size of classes Contribution of various factors to upper secondary teacher compensation costs per student as a percentage of GDP per capita (2004) Salary as % of GDP/capita Instruction time 1/teaching time 1/class size Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Difference with OECD average Percentage points 15 18 October 2011 10 5 PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for 0 -5 -10 Belgium Sweden Greece France Iceland Hungary Switzerland Japan Korea Australia Norway Mexico Portugal Spain Finland Netherlands Italy Austria New Zealand Czech Republic Ireland Germany Denmark Poland Luxembourg United States United Kingdom
- 10. Australia High reading performance 10 10 Belgium 2009 Canada Durchschnittliche High average performance High average performance Chile Czech Rep Large socio-economic disparities Schülerleistungen im High social equity Denmark Bereich Mathematik Finland Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Germany Greece Hungary 18 October 2011 Iceland Ireland 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 SwitzerlandLarge socio-economic disparities High social equity UK US Low reading performance
- 11. Australia High reading performance 11 11 Belgium 2000 Canada Durchschnittliche High average performance High average performance Chile Czech Rep Large socio-economic disparities Schülerleistungen im High social equity Denmark Bereich Mathematik Finland Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Germany Greece Hungary 18 October 2011 Iceland Ireland 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 SwitzerlandLarge socio-economic disparities High social equity UK US Low reading performance
- 12. Australia High reading performance 12 12 Belgium 2000 Canada Durchschnittliche High average performance High average performance Chile Czech Rep Large socio-economic disparities Schülerleistungen im High social equity Denmark Bereich Mathematik Finland Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Germany Greece Hungary 18 October 2011 Iceland Ireland 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 SwitzerlandLarge socio-economic disparities High social equity UK US Low reading performance
- 13. 14 14 School performance and social background Score Canada Private school Public school in rural area Public school in urban area Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher 700 18 October 2011 Student performance 493 PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for 200 Disadvantage -1.3 PISA Index of socio-economic background -0.3 0.7 Advantage 1.7
- 14. PISA Secondary education reform OECD Programme for Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher International Student Assessment 18 October 2011 17 17 What does it all mean?
- 15. 20 20 A commitment to education and the belief that competencies can be learned and therefore all children can achieve Universal educational standards and Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher personalisation as the approach to heterogeneity in the student body… … as opposed to a belief that students have 18 October 2011 different destinations to be met with different Lessons from PISA 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
- 16. 23 23 Clear ambitious goals that are shared across the system and aligned with high stakes gateways and instructional systems Well established delivery chain through which Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher curricular goals translate into instructional systems, instructional practices and student 18 October 2011 learning (intended, implemented and achieved) Lessons of metacognitive content of High level from PISA instruction on successful education systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for
- 17. 24 24 Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Capacity at the point of delivery 18 October 2011 Attracting, developing and retaining high quality Lessons from PISAand a work teachers and school leaders 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
- 18. 25 25 Incentives, accountability, knowledge management Aligned incentive structures For students Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher How gateways affect the strength, direction, clarity and nature of the incentives operating on students at each stage of their education 18 October 2011 Degree to which students have incentives to take tough courses and study hard Lessons from PISA 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
- 19. School autonomy, accountability 30 30 and student performance Impact of school autonomy on performance in systems with and without accountability arrangements PISA score in reading 500 Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher 18 October 2011 495 490 PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for School autonomy in resource allocation Schools with more autonomy 480 Schools with less autonomy Systems with more accountability Systems with less accountability System’s accountability arrangements
- 20. 33 33 Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher 18 October 2011 Lessons from PISA 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
- 21. 34 34 Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher A learning system 18 October 2011 Lessons from PISA An outward orientation of the system to keep 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
- 22. 36 Coherence of policies and practices 36 Alignment of policies across all aspects of the system Coherence of policies Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher over sustained periods of time Consistency of implementation 18 October 2011 Fidelity of implementation (without excessive control) from Lessons PISA on successful education systems PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for
- 23. 40 40 Education reform trajectories The old bureaucratic system Student inclusion The modern enabling system Some students learn at high levels All students need to learn at high levels Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher Curriculum, instruction and assessment 18 October 2011 Routine cognitive skills, rote learning Learning to learn, complex ways of 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
- 24. 41 41 Find out more about PISA at… OECD www.pisa.oecd.org Secondary education reform Riyadh, Andreas Schleicher – All national and international publications – The complete micro-level database 18 October 2011 U.S. White House www.data.gov Thank you ! Email: Andreas.Schleicher@OECD.org PISA International Student Assessment OECD Programme for … and remember: Without data, you are just another person with an opinion
Hinweis der Redaktion
- 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.
- This is going to be a perspective from 30,000 feet above, which does not allow us to see much detail, but rather to get an impression of the big picture of changes in education that we are seeing around the world.Some of these changes are profound. In the past, learning was considered a place, we brought kids to school. Now learning is an activity that cuts through everything children do at all stages of our lives.In old bureaucratic education systems, teachers were often left alone in classrooms with a lot of prescription what to teach. The most successful systems now set ambitious goals, are clear about what students should be able to do and then provide teachers with the tools to establish what content and instruction they need to deliver to their individual students. The past was about delivered wisdom, the challenge now is to enable user-generated wisdom.In the past, different students were taught in similar ways, today the challenge is to embrace increasing diversity with differentiated pedagogical practices. The goal of the past was standardization and conformity, now it’s about being ingenious, about personalizing educational experiences, about realising that ordinary students have extraordinary talents. Education systems have always talked about equity, now we measure their success by how well they deliver equity, in terms of moderating the impact which social background has on learning outcomes.The past was curriculum-centered, the future is learner centered. In the past, the policy focus was on the provision of education, today it’s on outcomes, shifting from looking upwards in the bureaucracy towards looking outwards to the next teacher, the next school, about creating networks of innovation In the past we emphasized school management, now it is about leadership, with a focus on supporting, evaluating and developing teacher quality as its core, which includes coordinating the curriculum and teaching program, monitoring and evaluating teacher practice, promoting teacher professional development and supporting collaborative work cultures.In the past, we considered social background and culture as obstacles to learning, the best performing systems capitalize on the diversity of learners; see diversity not as the problem, but as the potential of the knowledge society. And Ontario is actually a great example in this respect.
- 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.
- With that introduction, let us turn to the results. The firstthingyou 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.
- In my view, one of the most important improvements in Japan has been the significant rise in the performance of Japanese students on open-ended tasks, the kind of tasks that require students to create an answer, rather than to just reproduce an answer from a multiple-choice task. In other words, Japan is advancing fastest on the kind of ‘new skills’ that I spoke about at the beginning.
- 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 actuallywatch 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.
- Let me briefly summarise the influences that we have measured in PISA.
- 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.
- 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. Forstudentsthisaffects: 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.
- Figure II.5.8
- Figure II.5.9
- 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.