LONDON — A respected international survey that found teenagers in Shanghai to be the best-educated in the world has prompted officials elsewhere across the globe to question their own educational systems, and even led the British education minister to promise an overhaul in student testing.
The results of the survey — the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA — issued early Tuesday, were also called “a wake-up call” by the U.S. education secretary.
PISA, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, is a set of standardized tests that weighs reading comprehension, mathematics and science, and is taken by half a million 15-year-olds in 65 countries.
U.S. officials and Europeans involved in administering the test acknowledged that the Shanghai scores are by no means representative of all of China. But still, the results upended some preconceptions about schooling.
“Two countries with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different results,” Ángel Gurría, the O.E.C.D. secretary general, said in a statement on Tuesday. “This shows that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly educated countries is now out of date.”
In Britain, where results showed students falling behind peers in Estonia and Slovenia, Education Minister Michael Gove promised to overhaul the examination system to make it tougher, using tests from China and South Korea as benchmarks. Britain will “explicitly borrow from these education tiger nations,” Mr. Gove said.
Andreas Shleicher, who directs the O.E.C.D.’s international educational testing program, had described Britain’s performance as “stagnant at best.”
Mr. Gove seemed to agree. “Today’s PISA report underlines the urgent need to reform our school system. We need to learn from the best-performing countries,” he said. “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, democratized access to knowledge and placed an uncompromising emphasis on higher standards all at the same time.”
The British schools minister, Nick Gibb, who oversees primary education, pointed to the proliferation of text messaging and social networks as one possible culprit. “I’m concerned that almost 40 percent of pupils in England never read for enjoyment,” he said. “The difference in reading ability between these pupils and those who read for 30 minutes per day was equivalent to a year’s schooling.”
In Germany, there was some sense of relief, as officials noted that children there have been making steady progress in recent years on the PISA study. But criticism remained.
“Germany has improved its status from ‘horrendous’ to ‘average’ — we are at least satisfied with that upward trend,” Ulla Burchardt, chairwoman of the German government’s education committee, said in a radio interview. “But I don’t think this is cause for celebration, rather continued reflection. We’re still struggling when it comes to literacy skills.”
Luc Chatel, the French education minister, said the study showed that France was, over all, “among the O.E.C.D. average and stable against previous studies.”
He stressed that there were two “significant weak points” in French education that the study had highlighted. First was polarization of performance: The French system had not been able to improve its number of top achievers, while the number of those struggling had increased. Second, Mr. Chatel cited a deterioration in the ability of those from socially difficult backgrounds to pursue education for an extended period.
“It’s a warning sign for us to mobilize and act,” he said. “We will reinforce our action to counter this.”
Mr. Chatel also said the government would announce by the end of January a plan to improve science education and opportunities for work experience for students.
The survey also showed Finland and South Korea far ahead of the United States in reading comprehension, mathematics and science, prompting stern words from the U.S. education secretary, Arne Duncan.
“We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.” Mr. Duncan said.
Designed to compare standards between different education systems around the world, the PISA survey is held every three years. PISA scores are on a scale, with 500 as the average. Two-thirds of students in participating countries score between 400 and 600.
In math, the Shanghai students performed in a class by themselves, outperforming second-place Singapore, which has been seen as an educational superstar in recent years. On the math test last year, students in Shanghai scored 600, in Singapore 562, in Germany 513.
Warwick Mansell, a British education expert, described PISA as “on the whole a quite good test.” Mr. Mansell, whose recent book “Education By Numbers” is highly critical of what he describes as “the tyranny of testing,” said in an interview that the PISA exams “test understanding of concepts — not just rote learning.”
But in a sign of how politicized any discussion of education has become in Britain, Mr. Mansell rejected Mr Gove’s suggestion that Britain’s poor result showed that the increased spending on schooling by the Labour government had been ineffective. He also warned that efforts to model British schools after Eastern models would face significant cultural barriers.
The report also included a finding that in every country surveyed, girls read better than boys — a gap that has widened since 2000. Also included was a finding that the best school systems are the most equitable — where students do well regardless of social background.
Source: The New York Times
No comments:
Post a Comment