Seeing learning outcomes in Israel through the prism of global comparisons Jerusalem, 13 May 2009 Prof. Andreas Schleicher Head, Indicators and Analysis.

Seeing learning outcomes in Israel through the prism of global comparisons
Jerusalem, 13 May 2009 Prof. Andreas Schleicher Head, Indicators and Analysis Division OECD Directorate for Education Some 10 years ago, we lived in a very different world in which education systems tended to be inward-looking , where schools and education systems typically considered themselves to be unique and to operate in a unique context that would not allow them to borrow on policies and practices developed elsewhere. Sort of, where practitioners and policy makers alike felt sometimes reluctant to take any medicine if they had not themselves participated in its clinical trial. International comparisons provide one way for education systems to look at themselves in the light of the intended, implemented and achieved policies elsewhere. This does not mean that you can cut and past education systems or reform ideas from one system to another. But what you can do is to look at what the best performing education systems, like Finland, do achieve, look at some of the policy levers that are associated with this success, and then think about how you might combine and deploy these policy levers in your own context. That is what I will be speaking about today.

Israel in PISA 2006 Compared with the 30 OECD countries, 15-year-olds in Israel… Rank 28th in science and reading, tie 28th in mathematics Perform similarly whether they have an immigrant background or not Report a positive general and personal value on science Report a higher level of self-concept in science Report a lower level of interest and instrumental motivation in science but a higher level of future-oriented motivation Report a lower level of engagement with environmental issues Are in schools that vary in their performance more so than on average in OECD countries, with half of that variation accounted for by social background (often jointly with school factors) Are in schools with significant ability grouping Perform similarly whether in public or private schools Are in schools that report significant pressure from parents for high academic standards

Israel in OECD’s 2008 edition of Education at a Glance
Among the 30 OECD countries plus Brazil, Chile, Estonia, Russia and Slovenia, Israel ranks… 5th in the proportion of adults in skilled jobs 5th in tertiary attainment among young adults (down from 2nd in older generation) 9th in upper secondary graduation rates 2nd in upper secondary graduation rates in programmes designed to prepare students for access to universities 16th in tertiary-type A entry rate, 14th in tertiary-type A graduation rates (but only 13th in annual growth since 2000) 9th in terms of the income benefits of tertiary education for males, 15th for females 4st in spending on school education relative to GDP, but only 23rd in terms of spending per student (primary through tertiary) 8th in terms of the volume of instruction time (9-14 year-olds) 4th in primary-grade class sizes 29th in salaries for experienced school teachers (US$ PPP)

1. There is nowhere to hide
This session 1. There is nowhere to hide Why the yardstick for educational success is no longer improvement by national standards but the best performing systems internationally 2. Benchmarking education internationally Where we are – and where we can be Where Israel and other countries stand in terms of quality and equity of schooling outcomes What the best performing countries show can be achieved 3. How we can get there Some policy levers that emerge from international comparisons . I will begin my presentation by showing how the global talent pool has changed over recent decades, in response to the forces of globalisation and technological change Then examine what international comparisons can tell us about this. I will show you where we see Israel and try to contrast this with the best performing education systems, that give you a sense of what is possible in education, terms of the quality of educational outcomes and equity in the distribution of educational opportunities. I will also try to tie the results to some of the policy levers that emerge from international comparisons. And I will conclude with some reflections on the challenges that international educational benchmarks face, those that are inherent in the limits of our current measurement instruments, but also those that are inherent in the approach to comparative education itself.

There is nowhere to hide
* Let me start by showing you how the global talent pool has changed There is nowhere to hide The yardstick for success is no longer improvement by national standards but the best performing education systems

A world of change in baseline qualifications Approximated by percentage of persons with high school or equivalent qualfications in the age groups 55-64, 45-55, und years % 14 1 13 1 14 27 Look at the proportion of individuals successfully completing secondary school in the 1960s, still sort of the minimum entrance ticket to the knowledge economy. You can see, that two generations ago, the United States was well ahead of everyone else, at the top rank, and evidence at the OECD suggests that today’s economic success of the US draws at least in part on its traditionally high standards of human capital. But already in the 1970s, some countries had caught up, in the 1980s, the expansion of education continued, and the relative standing of countries changed yet again in the 1990s. While the US was number one in the 1960s in terms of the proportion of individuals completing high-school, in the 1990s it was at rank 13, not because standards have fallen, but because they have risen so much faster elsewhere. Korea shows you what is possible. Two generations ago, Korea had the standard of living of Afghanistan today and it was among the lowest performers in education among OECD countries. Today it is the top performer in terms of successful school leavers. But there are many other successful countries as well. 1. Excluding ISCED 3C short programmes 2. Year of reference 2004 3. Including some ISCED 3C short programmes 3. Year of reference 2003.

A world of change – college education
Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Cost per student The pace of change is most clearly visible in college 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. Graduate supply Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) United States Cost per student Finland *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, Finland The only thing I have not highlighted so far is that this was the situation in And now watch this closely as you see how this changed between 1995 and 2005. Graduate supply Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) United States (2000) Australia Finland 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. Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Israel 5th in university attainment in the younger generation (but down from 2nd in the older generation) Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) United States Australia Finland That was all very quick, let us go through this development once again Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) United States Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Rising higher education qualifications seem generally not to have led to an “inflation” of the labour-market value of qualifications. In all but three of the 20 countries with available data, the earnings benefit increased between 1997 and 2003, in Germany, Italy and Hungary by between 20% and 40% Expenditure per student at tertiary level (USD) Finland United States The point I want to reiterate here is that, by national standards, every country has seen improvements. What international comparisons can do is to show how the goal post keeps changing. Now some people put the whole expansion into question by saying that this is all a zero-sum game, if education is expanding, there will be massive inflation on the labour-market value of degrees and qualifications, that is people with university degrees will simply be doing the work that used to be done by high-school graduates, sort of, one day, we might all have a university degree and work for the minimum wage. But that's not what our data show, at least not yet. Among the 30 OECD countries with the largest expansion of college education over the last decade, most still see rising earnings differentials for college graduates, suggesting that an increase in knowledge workers does not necessarily lead to a decrease in their pay as is the case for low-skilled workers. The earnings gap between the better-educated and those with lower qualifications is growing rather than shrinking and in most OECD countries and people without baseline qualifications face a significantly higher, and growing, risk of unemployment. Tertiary-type A graduation rate

Moving targets Future supply of high school graduates
What we have seen so far is just the beginning. The first, and easy phase of globalisation, the time that the industrialised world only had to compete against the China’s and India’s that offered a low skilled work force at a fraction at our labour costs is long gone. What we now see is, that we no longer compete with low skills at low costs, but that countries like China or India are starting to deliver high skills at low costs at an ever increasing pace. And that’s beginning to punch holes into the middle and high skills sectors. This is where China, the European Union, India and the US stood in terms of the number of high school graduates in This is how the picture is likely to look in 2010, and this is what we project for 2015.

Future supply of high school graduates
Future supply of college graduates

How the demand for skills has changed Economy-wide measures of routine and non-routine task input (US) Mean task input as percentiles of the 1960 task distribution Clearly, our countries will not compete with this by putting more graduates through schools and universities, it is the nature of skills, it is the quality of educational output that really counts. That brings us to benchmarking the quality of education and that, naturally, is much harder than looking at the quantitative output of education systems. Levy and Murnane show how the composition of the US work force has changed and I want to show one slides because it provides such a great introduction to our work on PISA. What they show is that, between 1970 and 2000, work involving routine manual input, the jobs of the typical factory worker, was down significantly. Non-routine manual work, things we do with our hands, but in ways that are not so easily put into formal algorithms, was down too, albeit with much less change over recent years – and that is easy to understand because you cannot easily computerise the bus driver or outsource your hairdresser. All that is not surprising, but here is where the interesting story begins: Among the skill categories represented here, routine cognitive input, that is cognitive work that you can easily put into the form of algorithms and scripts saw the sharpest decline in demand over the last couple of decades, with a decline by almost 8% in the share of jobs. So those middle class white collar jobs that involve the application of routine knowledge, are most at threat today. And that is where schools still put a lot of their focus and what we value in multiple choice accountability systems. The point that Levy and Murnane make is, that the skills that are easiest to teach and test are also the skills that are easiest to digitise, automatise and offshore. If that is all what we do in school, we are putting our youngsters right up for competition with computers, because those are the things computers can do better than humans, and our kids are going to loose out before they even started. Where are the winners in this process? These are those who engage in expert thinking – the new literacy of the 21st century, up 8% - and complex communication, up almost 14%. We have tried to use these message that emerge from the analysis of skill demands as an important starting point for conceptualising our assessments. The dilemma of schools: The skills that are easiest to teach and test are also the ones that are easiest to digitise, automate and outsource (Levy and Murnane)

OECD’s PISA assessment of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds
A three-yearly global assessments to… … examine the performance of 15-year-olds in key subject areas as well as a wider range of educational outcomes Including students attitudes to learning and their learning behaviour … collect contextual data from… … students, parents, schools and systems… … in order to identify policy levers shaping learning outcomes Coverage Representative samples of between 3,500 and 50, year-old students drawn in each country Most federal countries also draw state-level samples

Deciding what to assess...
looking back at what students were expected to have learned …or… looking ahead to how well they can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply their knowledge and skills in novel settings. Recognising the importance to shift the focus from inputs to quality in education, we have launched the PISA assessments at the OECD. Every three years, we test roughly half a million of children in OECD countries in key competencies, and we are not simply checking whether students have learned what they were recently taught, but we try to put the focus on the extent to which students can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply their knowledge and skills in novel settings. For the PISA assessment of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds, OECD governments chose the latter

Strengths and weaknesses in math
The real world The mathematical World Making the problem amenable to mathematical treatment A model of reality A mathematical model Understanding, structuring and simplifying the situation Using relevant mathematical tools to solve the problem A real situation Validating the results Let me illustrate that with the field of mathematics, which our 2003 assessment focussed on. Traditionally, mathematics is often taught in an abstract mathematical world, in ways that are removed from authentic contexts – for example, students are taught the techniques of arithmetic, then given lots of arithmetic computations to complete; or they are shown how to solve particular types of equations, then given lots of similar equations to solve. In the United States students can do those things often quite well, i.e. can apply mathematical routines to well-established mathematical problems. In PISA, OECD countries tried to give the usefulness of mathematics in the real world much more attention and to succeed in PISA, students had to be able to draw connections between the real world and the mathematical world. Behind this is the idea that assessment should not merely look at whether students have learned what they were taught, but also at what they can do with what they have learned in novel situations, how students can expand their own horizon. Tasks in our PISA assessments begin with real-life problems and, as a first step, students had to translate the situation or problem they faced into a form that exposes the relevance of mathematics. They then had to make these problems amenable to mathematical treatment, using the relevant mathematical knowledge to solve problems, and evaluating the solution in the original problem context. Mathematical results Real results Interpreting the mathematical results

OECD’s PISA assessment of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds
Coverage of world economy 87% 86% 83% 77% 81% 85%

Average performance of 15-year-olds in science – extrapolate and apply
High science performance Average performance of 15-year-olds in science – extrapolate and apply 14: The first thing that people usually do is with comparative data is they look at how countries line up. Let us see how countries came out in our assessment in science. … 18 countries perform below this line Low science performance

Increased likelihood of postsec. particip
Increased likelihood of postsec. particip. at age 19 associated with reading proficiency at age 15 (Canada) after accounting for school engagement, gender, mother tongue, place of residence, parental, education and family income (reference group Level 1) Does performance on PISA matter? We have tried to find out by tracking the 15-year-olds that we assessed in 2000 and see how successful they were in attaining access to higher education and in successful labour-market transitions. Here you see results for 30,000 Canadians.

Strengths and weaknesses of countries in science relative to their overall performance France
Science competencies Science knowledge But I want to look at the performance patterns in a bit more detail, to illustrate that comparisons are not just about showing where we stand overall, but also about where our relative strengths and weaknesses are. Take a look at science performance in France. You see that French students did relatively better in identifying scientific issues in a problem than explaining what they saw in scientific terms. They also had relatively better knowledge about the fundamental principles of science, than they had knowledge of subject matter fields such as biology, earthscience or physics. OECD (2007), PISA 2006 – Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World, Figure 2.13

Strengths and weaknesses of countries in science relative to their overall performance Czech Republic Scientific competencies Scientific knowledge * Contrast this with an Eastern European country, such as the Czech Republic So the data show that countries differ substantially in their approaches and their relative strengths and weaknesses in a subject such as science. So if the relative standing of countries on international rankings depends on their relative strengths and weaknesses, how then do we interpret international benchmarks? Well, when a country discovers that their students are unable to do things that students in other countries can do, the crucial question is: do our students need these things too, to be able to survive in our modern society? If the answer is yes, then it would probably be wise to have a serious look at our curriculum -- to improve it in case these things are covered but not learnt, or to include them if they are not covered (since apparently our students do not have enough opportunity to learn them out of schools!). Benchmarking has opened up the spectre of international collaboration on curriculum. Comparisons are not about an international common denominator, they are about learning from our differences. You can argue, and legitimately so, that the very nature and design of PISA penalises countries in Eastern Europe or East Asia. These countries do much better on tests that focus more on rote learning, such as TIMSS. But many of these countries are taking the lessons from PISA to heart, because the are aware that the weaknesses in their education systems are relevant for their labour markets. 20 OECD (2007), PISA 2006 – Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World, Figure 2.13

Strengths and weaknesses of countries in science relative to their overall performance Israel
Science competencies Science knowledge OECD (2007), PISA 2006 – Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World, Figure 2.13

Average performance of 15-year-olds in science – extrapolate and apply
High science performance Average performance of 15-year-olds in science – extrapolate and apply High average performance Large socio-economic disparities High average performance High social equity Strong socio-economic impact on student performance Socially equitable distribution of learning opportunities But I do want to introduce a second dimension into this picture, that we pay great attention to. When you look at the distribution of student performance within each country, there are some countries in which social background has a strong impact on student performance, in other words, where educational opportunities are very unequally distributed, where there is a large gap between winners and losers and where a lot of the potential that children bring with them is wasted. There are other countries, where it matters much less into which social context students are born, where outcomes are socially equitably distributed. If you look at this, it is clear where we all want to be, namely where performance and equity are both strong. And nobody, and no country, can accept to be where performance is low and opportunities are very unequally distributed. Whether it is better to have high performance at the price of large disparities, or better to invest in small disparities at the price of mediocracy, that is subject to debate. Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities Low average performance High social equity Low science performance

Durchschnittliche Schülerleistungen im Bereich Mathematik
High science performance Durchschnittliche Schülerleistungen im Bereich Mathematik High average performance Large socio-economic disparities High average performance High social equity Strong socio-economic impact on student performance Socially equitable distribution of learning opportunities What you see is that countries like Canada, Finland, or Japan have been able to combine high performance levels with an exceptionally moderate impact of social background on student performance, you can see from these countries that poor performance in school does not automatically follow from a disadvantaged socio-economic background of students. Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities Low average performance High social equity 15 Low science performance

School performance and socio-economic background Germany
Student performance and students’ socio-economic background within schools School performance and schools’ socio-economic background Student performance and students’ socio-economic background Student performance Schools proportional to size Advantage PISA Index of socio-economic background Disadvantage

School performance and socio-economic background Israel
Student performance and students’ socio-economic background within schools School performance and schools’ socio-economic background Student performance and students’ socio-economic background Student performance Schools proportional to size Advantage PISA Index of socio-economic background Disadvantage

School performance and socio-economic background Finland
Student performance and students’ socio-economic background within schools School performance and schools’ socio-economic background Student performance and students’ socio-economic background Student performance Schools proportional to size Impact of PISA in Germany: Many people would have thought that socio-economic disparities are inequitable. PISA has shown that the impact of social background on learning outcomes differs widely across countries. Advantage PISA Index of socio-economic background Disadvantage

Some policy levers that emerge from international comparisons
The comparisons also indicate a way forward. They demonstrate what can be done with a combination of the right strategy and courageous, sustained leadership. Singapore’s story over 40 years is truly inspirational. So, in an entirely different culture, is Finland’s over 30 years. Poland made remarkable progress in the last decade by raising the average performance of 15-year-olds by almost a school year in the last six years alone. The reforms in Alberta and Ontario, just across your northern border, are working too. How to get there Some policy levers that emerge from international comparisons

A framework for analysis
Domain 1 Domain 2 Domain 3 Outputs and Outcomes impact of learning Policy Levers shape educational outcomes Antecedents contextualise or constrain ed policy Individual learner Level A Quality and distribution of knowledge & skills Individ attitudes, engagement and behaviour Socio-economic background of learners Instructional settings Level B Quality of instructional delivery Teaching, learning practices and classroom climate Student learning, teacher working conditions Schools, other institutions Level C Output and performance of institutions The learning environment at school Community and school characteristics We have tried to organise our data and benchmarks in a framework that distinguishes between the individual students, the classrooms in which they learn, the service providers and of course the education system. Country or system Level D Social & economic outcomes of education Structures, resource alloc and policies National educ, social and economic context 20

High ambitions and universal standards Rigor, focus and coherence
Great systems attract great teachers and provide access to best practice and quality professional development Once you look beyond resources, our analysis suggests, first of all, that schools and countries where students work in a climate characterized by high performance expectations, good teacher-student relations and high teacher morale tend to achieve better results. What our comparisons show is that most of the high performing countries place great value on raising standards, giving curricula more focus and coherence, and placing greater emphasis on external exams. At the same time, clear, specific and universally high standards that define a shared vision of good performance often go together with access to best practice and professional development in schools, in ways that support teachers to expand their repertoire of pedagogic strategies to personalise learning for all students. When you look at some of the top performing education systems, you often see that they do three things well: (1) First, they get the right people to become teachers, realising that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and that bad selection decisions can result in 40 years of poor teaching. You can see countries like Finland or Korea recruiting their teachers from the top 10 percent graduates. (2) Second, they develop these teachers into effective instructors, (3) And third, they put in place incentives and differentiated support systems to ensure that every child is able to benefit from excellent instruction. This is not about money alone.

Improvements idiosyncratic
Challenge and support Strong support Poor performance Improvements idiosyncratic Strong performance Systemic improvement Low challenge High challenge Poor performance Stagnation Conflict Demoralisation Let me summarise this by contrasting the dimensions of challenge and support in the following diagram: Where our ambitions are low and teachers and schools are poorly supported, nobody would expect much. But increasing the challenges through new standards, new tests, new school inspection, new publication of school test scores and so on without backing them up with a better support often just leads to conflict and demoralisation. Among OECD countries, we find countless tests and reforms that have resulted in giving schools more money or taking money away from them, developing greater prescription on school standards or less prescription, making classes larger or smaller, often without measurable effects. On the other hand, strong support systems without clear ambitions tend to just strengthen schools that are already good while not raising performance systemically. What we see in many of the best performing education systems is a combination of challenge and support that characterises the best performing education systems. Weak support

Human capital International Best Practice The past
Principals who are trained, empowered, accountable and provide instructional leadership Attracting, recruiting and providing excellent training for prospective teachers from the top third of the graduate distribution Incentives, rules and funding encourage a fair distribution of teaching talent The past Principals who manage ‘a building’, who have little training and preparation and are accountable but not empowered Attracting and recruiting teachers from the bottom third of the graduate distribution and offering training which does not relate to real classrooms The best teachers are in the most advantaged communities

Human capital (cont…) International Best Practice The past
Expectations of teachers are clear; consistent quality, strong professional ethic and excellent professional development focused on classroom practice Teachers and the system expect every child to succeed and intervene preventatively to ensure this The past Seniority and tenure matter more than performance; patchy professional development; wide variation in quality Wide achievement gaps, just beginning to narrow but systemic and professional barriers to transformation remain in place

Devolved responsibility, the school as the centre of action
High ambitions Devolved responsibility, the school as the centre of action Accountability and intervention in inverse proportion to success There is another trend among many of the best performing education systems, and that is about efforts to enable schools to become the driver of educational improvement. In Finland, for example, strategic thinking and planning takes place at every level of the system. Every school discusses what the national vision along with desired standards might mean for them, and every decision is made at the level of those most able to implement them in practice. Again, there are two things that our analysis show to go hand in hand, and that is devolved decision-making which makes schools the main drivers of educational development, combined with intelligent accountability and what I mean by this is the move from nationally determined approaches to external accountability to building capacity and confidence for professional accountability in ways that emphasises, within clearly defined national objectives, the importance of formative assessment and the pivotal role of school self-evaluation. When you look at some of the countries doing these things well, you see that intervention and support do not mean applying pre-packaged interventions in mechanical sequence, instead, the approach implies diagnosing problems in each school and tailoring solutions accordingly. It also means ensuring that the schools facing the toughest challenges have access to the most talented teachers and leaders. To do that some countries have fundamentally reformed inherited, traditional and bureaucratic systems of recruiting and training teachers and leaders, of paying and rewarding them and of shaping their incentives, both short-term and long-term. External accountability systems are often a key part of the agenda, but they are not enough. Among OECD countries, we find countless tests and reforms that have resulted in giving schools more money or taking money away from them, developing greater prescription on school standards or less prescription, making classes larger or smaller, often without measurable effects. What distinguishes the top-performer Finland is that it places the emphasis on building various ways in which networks of schools stimulate and spread innovation as well as collaborate to provide curriculum diversity, extended services and professional support. It fosters strong approaches to leadership and a variety of system leadership roles, that help to reduce between- school variation through system- wide networking and to build lateral accountability. Access to best practice and quality professional development

School autonomy, standards-based examinations and science performance School autonomy in selecting teachers for hire PISA score in science

Local responsibility and national prescription
Towards system-wide sustainable reform National prescription Schools today The industrial model, detailed prescription of what schools do Schools tomorrow? Building capacity Finland today Every school an effective school But the balance between national prescription and schools leading reform is not an all-or-nothing. In fact, most school systems have started out with highly prescriptive education systems. But gradually the have moved towards building capacity and enabling schools to assume greater responsibility. Schools leading reform

Public and private schools
% Score point difference Private schools perform better Public schools perform better The last point I want to make is that local responsibility, as measured by PISA, should not be confused with whether schools are privately financed or privately run.

Pooled international dataset, effects of selected school/system factors on science performance after accounting for all other factors in the model School principal’s positive evaluation of quality of educational materials (gross only) Schools with more competing schools (gross only) Schools with greater autonomy (resources) (gross and net) School activities to promote science learning (gross and net) One additional hour of self-study or homework (gross and net) One additional hour of science learning at school (gross and net) School results posted publicly (gross and net) Academically selective schools (gross and net) but no system-wide effect Schools practicing ability grouping (gross and net) One additional hour of out-of-school lessons (gross and net) 20 Each additional 10% of public funding (gross only) School principal’s perception that lack of qualified teachers hinders instruction (gross only) Effect after accounting for the socio-economic background of students, schools and countries Measured effect OECD (2007), PISA 2006 – Science Competencies from Tomorrow’s World, Table 6.1a

The future of education systems is “knowledge rich”
Creating a knowledge-rich profession in which schools and teachers have the authority to act, the necessary knowledge to do so wisely, and access to effective support systems The future of education systems is “knowledge rich” Informed professional judgement, the teacher as a “knowledge worker” Informed prescription National prescription Professional judgement Uninformed prescription, teachers implement curricula Uninformed professional judgement, teachers working in isolation The tradition of education systems has been “knowledge poor”

Devolved responsibility, the school as the centre of action
Strong ambitions Devolved responsibility, the school as the centre of action Integrated educational opportunities From prescribed forms of teaching and assessment towards personalised learning Accountability * Third, in virtually all the countries that performed well in PISA it is the responsibility of schools and teachers to engage constructively with the diversity of student interests, capacities and socio-economic contexts, without having the option of making students repeat the school year, or transferring them to educational tracks or school types with lower performance requirements. Such features often exist in poorer performing countries, where teachers or school principals can say to themselves that they do the right things, but have the wrong students. If you look at some of the best performing countries in PISA again, you will see that they have established bridges from prescribed forms of teaching, curriculum and assessment towards an approach geared to enabling every student to reach their potential. They have good support systems so that individual teachers become aware of specific weaknesses in their own practices, and that often means not just creating awareness of what they do but changing the underlying mindset. They also provide their teachers with an understanding of specific best practices and they are able to motivate teachers to make the necessary changes and that is something that goes well beyond simplistic material incentives. Access to best practice and quality professional development

Durchschnittliche Schülerleistungen im Bereich Mathematik
High science performance Durchschnittliche Schülerleistungen im Bereich Mathematik High average performance Large socio-economic disparities High average performance High social equity Strong socio-economic impact on student performance Socially equitable distribution of learning opportunities Let me illustrate this with the PISA data. One thing is important: Comprehensive education systems are not a guaranteed recipe for success. If you look at some of the best performing countries in PISA, you will see that these countries have combined comprehensive schooling with highly individualised learning opportunities. That enables them to compensate for differences in abilities and learning dispositions, and thus to avoid and counter disadvantage on the one hand, but also to identify and develop talents. They have established bridges from prescribed forms of teaching, curriculum and assessment towards an approach geared to enabling every student to reach their potential. They know that ordinary students have extraordinary talents. Of course, many schools around the world are doing this. But what distinguishes the education systems of, for example, Victoria in Australia, Alberta in Canada or Finland is the drive to make such practices systemic, through the establishment of clear learning pathways through the education system and fostering the motivation of students to become independent and lifelong learners. Looking at support systems and teacher development in some of the best performing countries shows that effective support systems are located at individual school levels or in specialised support institutions, the training of pre-school personnel is closely integrated with the professional development of teachers, continuing professional development is a constitutive part of the system and special attention is paid to the professional development of school management personnel Early selection and institutional differentiation High degree of stratification Low degree of stratification Low average performance Large socio-economic disparities Low average performance High social equity 6 Low science performance

Paradigm shifts Hit & miss Universal high standards Uniformity
The old bureaucratic education system The new enabling education system Hit & miss Universal high standards Uniformity Embracing diversity Provision Outcomes Bureaucratic – look up Devolved – look outwards Talk equity Deliver equity Received wisdom Data and best practice Prescription Informed profession Demarcation Collaboration

Money matters - but other things do too
I have not talked much about resources so far, and the reason for this is that performance cannot simply be tied to average spending, at least not average spending, as this chart shows, in representing spending per student up to age 15 on the horizontal axis and the performance of systems at age 15 on the vertical axis. That point is reinforced by the fact that in international comparisons of primary grade school children the US does relatively well which, given the country’s wealth, is what you would expect. The problem is that as they get older, children make less progress each year than children in the best performing countries. We are not just talking about poor kids in poor neighbourhoods, we are talking about most kids in most neighbourhoods. And it won’t get easier to mobilise additional resources. In these times, sceptical citizens will not continue to invest precious tax dollars into a system that does not seem to be working. Nor will talented people flock into a profession with lockstep conditions and a beleaguered image. It is noteworthy that spending patterns in many of the world’s successful education systems are often markedly different. These countries invest the money where the challenges are greatest, and they put in place incentives and support systems that get the most talented school teachers into the most difficult classrooms.

Spending choices on secondary schools Contribution of various factors to upper secondary teacher compensation costs per student as a percentage of GDP per capita (2004) Percentage points What you see, however, that countries spend their money quite differently. Average spending – some of the most successful education systems know how to invest their money where the challenges are greatest, and how to attract the brightest teachers into the most difficult classrooms.

Why care? Progress Fairness Value for money
Concerns about skill barriers to economic growth, productivity growth and rates of technological innovation One additional year of education equals to between 3 and 6% of GDP Rising tertiary level qualifications seem generally not to have led to an “inflation” of the labour-market value of qualifications (in all but three of the 20 countries with available data, the earnings benefit increased between 1997 and 2003, in Germany, Italy and Hungary by between 20% and 40%) Fairness Concerns about the role of skills in creating social inequity in economic outcomes Both average and distribution of skill matter to long-term growth (high percentages of low skill impede growth) Value for money Concerns about the demand for, and efficiency and effectiveness of, investments in public goods

The cost of inaction Improved GDP from achieving the goal of being first in the world by 2000
Percent addition to GDP 10-year reform 20-year reform 30-year reform Total U.S. K-12 spending Note: *K-12 education expenitures are assumed to be constant at the level attained in These data show that economic benefits from a 1989 reform that raised the U.S. to the highest levels of test performance would cover the cost of K-12 education by 2015 Source: Eric Hanushek

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Seeing learning outcomes in Israel through the prism of global comparisons Jerusalem, 13 May 2009 Prof. Andreas Schleicher Head, Indicators and Analysis.

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Presentation on theme: "Seeing learning outcomes in Israel through the prism of global comparisons Jerusalem, 13 May 2009 Prof. Andreas Schleicher Head, Indicators and Analysis."— Presentation transcript:

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Seeing learning outcomes in Israel through the prism of global comparisons Jerusalem, 13 May 2009 Prof. Andreas Schleicher Head, Indicators and Analysis.

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Presentation on theme: "Seeing learning outcomes in Israel through the prism of global comparisons Jerusalem, 13 May 2009 Prof. Andreas Schleicher Head, Indicators and Analysis."— Presentation transcript:

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About project

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