The survey, based on two-hour tests of a half million students in more than 70 economies, also tested mathematics and science. The results for 65 economies are being released today.
The next strongest performances were from Hong Kong-China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan. Full results here.
The province of Shanghai, China, took part for the first time and scored higher in reading than any country. It also topped the table in maths and science. More than one-quarter of Shanghai’s 15-year-olds demonstrated advanced mathematical thinking skills to solve complex problems, compared to an OECD average of just 3%.
The United States has fallen from top of the class to average in world education rankings, said a report Tuesday that warned of US economic losses from the trend.
The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.
In Canada, 15-year-olds are more than one school year ahead of their US peers in math and more than half a school year ahead in reading and science, said the report released hours after President Barack Obama urged Americans not to rein in education spending, even in a tough economy.
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said:
Better educational outcomes are a strong predictor for future economic growth,” . “While national income and educational achievement are still related, PISA shows that two countries with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different results. 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an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated countries is now out of date.
The OECD studied differing results between girls and boys, as well as the influence of class size, teacher pay and the degree of autonomy schools have in allocating resources. Findings include:
Girls read better than boys in every country, by an average of 39 points, the equivalent to one year of schooling. The gender gap has not improved in any country since 2000, and widened in France, Israel, Korea, Portugal and Sweden.
This is mirrored in a decline of boy’s enjoyment of reading and their engagement with reading in their leisure time.
How to improve school performance
What Makes a School Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices
Since school is where most learning happens, what happens in school has a direct impact on learning. In turn, what happens in school is influenced by the resources, policies and practices approved at higher administrative levels in
a country’s education system.
Successful school systems – those that perform above average and show below-average socio-economic inequalities –provide all students, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds, with similar opportunities to learn.
Systems that show high performance and an equitable distribution of learning outcomes tend to be comprehensive, requiring teachers and schools to embrace diverse student populations through personalised educational pathways.
In contrast, school systems that assume that students have different destinations with different expectations and differentiation in terms of how they are placed in schools, classes and grades often show less equitable outcomes without an overall performance advantage.
In countries where 15-year-olds are divided into more tracks based on their abilities, overall performance is not enhanced, and the younger the age at which selection for such tracks first occurs, the greater the differences in student performance, by socio-economic background, by age 15, without improved overall performance.
In school systems where it is more common to transfer weak or disruptive students out of a school, performance and equity both tend to be lower. Individual schools that make more use of transfers also perform worse in some countries.
These associations account for a substantial amount of the differences in the outcomes of schooling systems. For example, the frequency with which students are transferred across schools is associated with a third of the variation
Most successful school systems grant greater autonomy to individual schools to design curricula and establish assessment policies, but these school systems do not necessarily allow schools to compete for enrolment.
In countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better.
Within countries where schools are held to account for their results through posting achievement data publicly, schools that enjoy greater autonomy in resource allocation tend to do better than those with less autonomy.
However, in countries where there are no such accountability arrangements, the reverse is true.
What Makes a School Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices
Within many countries, schools that compete more for students tend to have higher performance, but this is often accounted for by the higher socio-economic status of students in these schools.
Parents with a higher socio-economic status are more likely to take academic performance into consideration when choosing schools.
In countries that use standards-based external examinations, students tend to do better overall, but there is no clear relationship between performance and the use of standardised tests or the public posting of results at the school level.
However, performance differences between schools with students of different social backgrounds are, on average, lower in countries that use standardised tests.
After accounting for the socio-economic and demographic profiles of students and schools, students in OECD countries who attend private schools show performance that is similar to that of students enrolled in public schools.
On average, socio-economically disadvantaged parents are over 13 percentage points more likely than socio-economically advantaged parents to report that they consider “low expenses” and “financial aid” as very important determinants in choosing a school.
If children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds cannot attend high-performing schools because of financial constraints, then school systems that offer parents more choice of schools for their children will necessarily be less effective in improving the performance of all students.
School systems considered successful tend to prioritise teachers’ pay over smaller classes. School systems differ in the amount of time, human, material and financial resources they invest in education.
Equally important, school systems also vary in how these resources are spent:
At the level of the school system and net of the level of national income, PISA shows that higher teachers’ salaries, but not smaller class sizes, are associated with better student performance.
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 tend to perform better, which corresponds with research showing that raising teacher quality is a more effective route to improved student outcomes than creating smaller classes.
Within countries, schools with better resources tend to do better only to the extent that they also tend to have more socio-economically advantaged students.
Some countries show a strong relationship between schools’ resources and their socio-economic and demographic background, which indicates that resources are inequitably distributed according to schools’ socio-economic and demographic profiles. The United States is a good example of this observation according to the notes on the US educational system.
In other respects, the overall lack of a relationship between resources and outcomes does not show that resources are not important, but that their level does not have a systematic impact within the prevailing range.
If most or all schools have the minimum resource requirements to allow effective teaching, additional material resources may make little difference to outcomes.
Students who had attended pre-primary school tend to perform better than students who have not.
Schools with better disciplinary climates, more positive behaviour among teachers and better teacher-student relations tend to achieve higher scores in reading.
Across OECD countries, 81% of students report that they feel they can work well in class most of the time, 71% report that they never, or only in some classes, feel that other students don’t listen, and 72% say that their teacher never, or only in some lessons, has to wait a long time before students settle down to learn.
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101207/ts_alt_afp/educationusoecd
PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary
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The next strongest performances were from Hong Kong-China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan. Full results here.
The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.
In Canada, 15-year-olds are more than one school year ahead of their US peers in math and more than half a school year ahead in reading and science, said the report released hours after President Barack Obama urged Americans not to rein in education spending, even in a tough economy.
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said:
Better educational outcomes are a strong predictor for future economic growth,” . “While national income and educational achievement are still related, PISA shows that two countries with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different results. 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.
The OECD studied differing results between girls and boys, as well as the influence of class size, teacher pay and the degree of autonomy schools have in allocating resources. Findings include:
Girls read better than boys in every country, by an average of 39 points, the equivalent to one year of schooling. The gender gap has not improved in any country since 2000, and widened in France, Israel, Korea, Portugal and Sweden.
This is mirrored in a decline of boy’s enjoyment of reading and their engagement with reading in their leisure time.
How to improve school performance
- The best school systems were the most equitable - students do well regardless of their socio-economic background. But schools that select students based on ability early show the greatest differences in performance by socio-economic background.
- High performing school systems tend to prioritise teacher pay over smaller class sizes.
- Countries where students repeat grades more often tend to have worse results overall, with the widest gaps between children from poor and better-off families. Making students repeat years is most common in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain.
- High performing systems allow schools to design curricula and establish assessment policies but don’t necessarily allow competition for students.
- Schools with good discipline and better student-teacher relations achieve better reading results.
- Public and private schools achieve similar results, after taking account of their home backgrounds.
- Combining local autonomy and effective accountability seems to produce the best results.
What Makes a School Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices
Since school is where most learning happens, what happens in school has a direct impact on learning. In turn, what happens in school is influenced by the resources, policies and practices approved at higher administrative levels in
a country’s education system.
Successful school systems – those that perform above average and show below-average socio-economic inequalities –provide all students, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds, with similar opportunities to learn.
Systems that show high performance and an equitable distribution of learning outcomes tend to be comprehensive, requiring teachers and schools to embrace diverse student populations through personalised educational pathways.
In contrast, school systems that assume that students have different destinations with different expectations and differentiation in terms of how they are placed in schools, classes and grades often show less equitable outcomes without an overall performance advantage.
In countries where 15-year-olds are divided into more tracks based on their abilities, overall performance is not enhanced, and the younger the age at which selection for such tracks first occurs, the greater the differences in student performance, by socio-economic background, by age 15, without improved overall performance.
In school systems where it is more common to transfer weak or disruptive students out of a school, performance and equity both tend to be lower. Individual schools that make more use of transfers also perform worse in some countries.
These associations account for a substantial amount of the differences in the outcomes of schooling systems. For example, the frequency with which students are transferred across schools is associated with a third of the variation
Most successful school systems grant greater autonomy to individual schools to design curricula and establish assessment policies, but these school systems do not necessarily allow schools to compete for enrolment.
In countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better.
Within countries where schools are held to account for their results through posting achievement data publicly, schools that enjoy greater autonomy in resource allocation tend to do better than those with less autonomy.
However, in countries where there are no such accountability arrangements, the reverse is true.
What Makes a School Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices
Within many countries, schools that compete more for students tend to have higher performance, but this is often accounted for by the higher socio-economic status of students in these schools.
Parents with a higher socio-economic status are more likely to take academic performance into consideration when choosing schools.
In countries that use standards-based external examinations, students tend to do better overall, but there is no clear relationship between performance and the use of standardised tests or the public posting of results at the school level.
However, performance differences between schools with students of different social backgrounds are, on average, lower in countries that use standardised tests.
After accounting for the socio-economic and demographic profiles of students and schools, students in OECD countries who attend private schools show performance that is similar to that of students enrolled in public schools.
On average, socio-economically disadvantaged parents are over 13 percentage points more likely than socio-economically advantaged parents to report that they consider “low expenses” and “financial aid” as very important determinants in choosing a school.
If children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds cannot attend high-performing schools because of financial constraints, then school systems that offer parents more choice of schools for their children will necessarily be less effective in improving the performance of all students.
School systems considered successful tend to prioritise teachers’ pay over smaller classes. School systems differ in the amount of time, human, material and financial resources they invest in education.
Equally important, school systems also vary in how these resources are spent:
At the level of the school system and net of the level of national income, PISA shows that higher teachers’ salaries, but not smaller class sizes, are associated with better student performance.
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 tend to perform better, which corresponds with research showing that raising teacher quality is a more effective route to improved student outcomes than creating smaller classes.
Within countries, schools with better resources tend to do better only to the extent that they also tend to have more socio-economically advantaged students.
Some countries show a strong relationship between schools’ resources and their socio-economic and demographic background, which indicates that resources are inequitably distributed according to schools’ socio-economic and demographic profiles. The United States is a good example of this observation according to the notes on the US educational system.
In other respects, the overall lack of a relationship between resources and outcomes does not show that resources are not important, but that their level does not have a systematic impact within the prevailing range.
If most or all schools have the minimum resource requirements to allow effective teaching, additional material resources may make little difference to outcomes.
Students who had attended pre-primary school tend to perform better than students who have not.
Schools with better disciplinary climates, more positive behaviour among teachers and better teacher-student relations tend to achieve higher scores in reading.
Across OECD countries, 81% of students report that they feel they can work well in class most of the time, 71% report that they never, or only in some classes, feel that other students don’t listen, and 72% say that their teacher never, or only in some lessons, has to wait a long time before students settle down to learn.
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101207/ts_alt_afp/educationusoecd
PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA
Netcraft rank: 7373 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
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