1 00:00:11,093 --> 00:00:16,044 If you read or listen to news reports about education you've probably noticed periodical surge of interest in wich country students do best in
2 00:00:16,044 --> 00:00:21,090 readings or mathematics or science and where your country fits into the grand scheme of things
3 00:00:22,001 --> 00:00:28,083 you have probably also heard, or read the word PISA, in connection with some of these reports. What
4 00:00:28,086 --> 00:00:34,098 is PISA? PISA is an achronym that stands for the Programme for International Student Assessment. It's
5 00:00:34,098 --> 00:00:44,037 the brain child of the OECD, and what's the OECD? It's another achronym that stands for the Organization
6 00:00:44,037 --> 00:00:51,065 for the economic cooperation and development. The OECD brings toghether 34 countries, with the aim of developing
7 00:00:51,065 --> 00:01:00,034 better policies for better lives. In the late 1990's countries that are members of the OECD came up with
8 00:01:00,034 --> 00:01:07,030 the idea to measure whether fifteen years olds around the world are well prepared to participate in society.
9 00:01:07,034 --> 00:01:14,030 We choose fifteen years olds rather than twelve or seventeen year olds because most fifteen years old are about
10 00:01:14,030 --> 00:01:21,059 to complete their compulsory education. Experts in the fields of education from around the world worked
11 00:01:21,059 --> 00:01:28,067 toghether to create a two hour test, that focuses on core subjects like reading mathematics and science.
12 00:01:28,067 --> 00:01:35,077 Participating countries deciced to administer this test every three years and to rotate the main focus
13 00:01:35,080 --> 00:01:45,030 of the test among the core subjects. All very well, but testing students is nothing new, so what's so
14 00:01:45,030 --> 00:01:51,032 special about PISA? PISA surveys are design to find out whethet students can use what they have learned
15 00:01:51,032 --> 00:01:58,058 in school, and apply that knowledge to real live situations and problems. PISA is less interested in
16 00:01:58,058 --> 00:02:04,080 knowing whether students can repeat like parrots what they have been thaught in class. Rather the survey
17 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:11,019 is designed to find out whether, for example, students can use their reading skills they have learned
18 00:02:11,019 --> 00:02:17,036 in schools, to make sense of the information they find in a book, a newspaper, on a government form,
19 00:02:17,036 --> 00:02:23,049 or in an instruction manual, but the point of PISA is not to tell each individual student how well he
20 00:02:23,049 --> 00:02:32,009 or she has mastered the set of skills. Instead, PISA results are extrapolated and analysed to the national
21 00:02:32,009 --> 00:02:40,052 level. Picture one student sitting at a desk, in a classroom somewhere, taking the PISa test, now zoom
22 00:02:40,052 --> 00:02:45,053 out as though you are on a space shuttle, and you can see the entire country in wich that student is
23 00:02:45,053 --> 00:02:53,098 sitting. That's what PISA does with its test results, PISA shows countries where they stand, in relation
24 00:02:53,098 --> 00:03:00,095 to other countries, and just by themself, in how effectively they educate their children. What PISA doesn't
25 00:03:00,095 --> 00:03:08,061 say: this education policy or practice causes that effect, it shows what's possible, and show similarities
26 00:03:08,061 --> 00:03:15,039 and differences between education systems around the world. That helps governments rethink their own
27 00:03:15,039 --> 00:03:22,022 policies and design new ones to improve their student performance in school. It also helps government
28 00:03:22,022 --> 00:03:30,041 educators, and parents track their country's progress towards a more succesful education system. In fact
29 00:03:30,041 --> 00:03:39,066 many countries now set national goals, and benchmarks based on PISA international results. Pisa considers
30 00:03:39,066 --> 00:03:45,058 and education system succesful not only if its students achieve high scores on the PISA surveys, but
31 00:03:45,058 --> 00:03:53,012 also if all students, from all backgrounds perform well on the test. Not just those who come from
32 00:03:53,012 --> 00:04:00,014 wealthier, or more intellectual, or more culturally sophisticated families. For example a relatively
33 00:04:00,014 --> 00:04:08,026 large percentage of disadvantaged students in places like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea, and Finland achieve
34 00:04:08,026 --> 00:04:15,079 some of the highest scores in PISA. Analysts there look at the PISA test results along with responses
35 00:04:15,079 --> 00:04:21,008 to questionnaires that are given to students and school principals, and try to determine the main characteristics
36 00:04:21,008 --> 00:04:28,056 of these succesful education systems. Are teachers in the system paid more? Are classes generally larger
37 00:04:28,056 --> 00:04:36,006 or smaller? Do individual schools get to decide what their teachers teach? Or is their curriculum determined
38 00:04:36,006 --> 00:04:43,074 by a central government authority? Once a profile of a of a succesful system emerges, it can be used
39 00:04:43,074 --> 00:04:52,015 as a model for others. So what's the test like? Here are a couple of problems that students have to solve.
40 00:04:52,015 --> 00:04:58,053 The first one was part of the reading assessment. Students were shown a graph and an accompanying text.
41 00:04:58,053 --> 00:05:12,058 that read: figure one shows changing levels of Lake Chad, in Saharan Nord Africa. Lake Chad disappeared completely in about 20000 B.C. during the last ice age. In about 11000 B.C. it
42 00:05:12,058 --> 00:05:20,059 reappeared. Today its level is about the same as it was in A.D. 1000. Students whare asked why has the
43 00:05:20,059 --> 00:05:27,058 author chosen to start the graph at this point. This was considered a rather difficult question. In fact,
44 00:05:27,058 --> 00:05:35,085 across OECD countries, only 37% of students answered it correctly. Those students showed ana ability
45 00:05:35,085 --> 00:05:42,023 not only to read, but to think about what they read, and draw some conclusion from it. They figured out,
46 00:05:42,023 --> 00:05:48,092 that the reason the graph starts at around 11000 B.C. is because that's when Lake Chad reappeard after
47 00:05:48,092 --> 00:05:56,049 having disappeared completely, during the ice age. The second problem was part of the mathematics assessment,
48 00:05:56,049 --> 00:06:04,055 it sets the scene. In a pizza restaurant you can get a basic pizza, with two toppings: cheese and tomato.
49 00:06:04,055 --> 00:06:12,097 You can also make up your own pizza with extra toppings, you can choose from four different extra toppings.
50 00:06:12,097 --> 00:06:21,076 Olives, ham ,mushrooms and salami. Ross wants to order a pizza with two different extra toppings. Students
51 00:06:21,076 --> 00:06:28,049 where then asked: how many different combination can Ross choose from? Now this is a problem we can all
52 00:06:28,049 --> 00:06:34,046 relate to. To answer the question students had to show their ability to make connections. In this case
53 00:06:34,046 --> 00:06:41,003 juggling several food stuff and realize that the choices are not, in fact, infinite, much as the students
54 00:06:41,003 --> 00:06:48,092 might like them to be. This was also a relatively tought problem for students to solve. Just 49% of students
55 00:06:48,092 --> 00:06:56,072 could calculate that only six different variation where possible. So when we take individuals score in
56 00:06:56,072 --> 00:07:03,024 PISA and the responses to those questionnaires that we circulate with the test and then zoom out to see
57 00:07:03,024 --> 00:07:09,080 a whole country, what kinds of things do we learn. Well, one thing we've learned is girls do better in reading
58 00:07:09,080 --> 00:07:16,030 than boys in every country that participates in PISA, and among the countries that are members of the OECD
59 00:07:16,030 --> 00:07:22,073 girls do so much better than boys in reading, it's as if they have gone through an additional year of
60 00:07:22,073 --> 00:07:30,063 school. We also find out that boys generally do better than girls in mathematics, and that there is no
61 00:07:30,063 --> 00:07:36,092 real difference between boys and girls in how they do in science. We also found out that some school
62 00:07:36,092 --> 00:07:44,067 policies may not be very good for students. For example, early tracking of students, wich means deciding that
63 00:07:44,067 --> 00:07:49,099 some students should go through an academic program, while others should go through a vocational program
64 00:07:49,099 --> 00:07:56,070 is not associated with better overall performance, tracking is also related to greater inequalities
65 00:07:56,070 --> 00:08:03,085 between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Students are often tracked in the mistaken believe that
66 00:08:03,085 --> 00:08:09,080 not everyone can learn the same things, that only some children are gifted and reach for the stars, but
67 00:08:09,080 --> 00:08:18,013 PISA results show that if given the opportunity and support to excel, all children have the potential
68 00:08:18,013 --> 00:08:26,071 to do so. Having students repeat grades is also not associated with high scores in PISA. School system
69 00:08:26,071 --> 00:08:32,070 that invest in helping strudents learn their subjects the first time around do much better than those
70 00:08:32,070 --> 00:08:39,068 where teachers know that they can ,if necessary drill the same material, year after year, after year
71 00:08:39,069 --> 00:08:46,050 into the heads of the same struggling students. As we mentioned before the most successful schools according to
72 00:08:46,050 --> 00:08:53,012 PISA are the ones whose students do well regardless of where they come from. Still results from PISA
73 00:08:53,012 --> 00:09:01,021 show that home background has a major influence on student success in school. In many ways this finding
74 00:09:01,021 --> 00:09:06,078 is all too obvious. We know for example that by the time they are three, children in advantaged families
75 00:09:06,078 --> 00:09:15,034 are exposed to many more word than their less advantaged peers. In fact, a recent study in USA put their
76 00:09:15,035 --> 00:09:21,048 number at around thirty million more words, and in general if there are no books at home, or if their
77 00:09:21,048 --> 00:09:28,058 children don't see their parents reading they'll be less inclined to read themself. Pisa results alo
78 00:09:28,058 --> 00:09:35,059 show that regardless of their own background, student who attend schools that have a largely disadvantaged
79 00:09:35,059 --> 00:09:43,075 population tend to do worse than students who attend schools with relatively advantaged peers. Why would
80 00:09:43,075 --> 00:09:50,039 this be so? Well, there are many possible reasons, for example PISA found that in most OECD countries
81 00:09:50,039 --> 00:09:56,038 disadvantaged students have access to the same number of teachers and to sometimes even more teachers than their more advantaged peers.
82 00:09:56,038 --> 00:10:08,052 The problem though is that more isn't necessarily better. In fact, the best teachers are often found in
83 00:10:08,052 --> 00:10:15,089 schools attended by advantaged students who generally do well on their subjects anyway, but not in disadvataged
84 00:10:15,089 --> 00:10:24,034 schools where high quality teachers are most desperately needed. Governments around the world can be inspired
85 00:10:24,034 --> 00:10:29,062 by two significant finding from PISA. The first is that a country doesn't have to be wealthy to provide
86 00:10:29,062 --> 00:10:36,087 high quality education to its students. Shanghai and Poland , for example, score well above the OECD average inreading,
87 00:10:36,087 --> 00:10:44,098 but rank below OECD average in measures of national wealth, and the countries PISA ranking is not carved in
88 00:10:44,098 --> 00:10:52,092 stone. Trends in PISA have revealed a great capacity for all countries to improve. Countries as diverse
89 00:10:52,092 --> 00:11:00,010 as Chile, Germany, Poland and Portugal among others, showed improvements in student reading performance
90 00:11:00,010 --> 00:11:08,006 between 2000 and 2009, although it seems obvious, it's still worth reminding ourselves. Successful education
91 00:11:08,006 --> 00:11:15,037 systems make education a priority, they share the belief that skills can be learned and that all students
92 00:11:15,037 --> 00:11:21,045 can achieve at high levels. They show that they value the teacheing profession by investing in it, so
93 00:11:21,045 --> 00:11:29,012 that they can attract highly qualified candidates, train them well and retain the best teachers among
94 00:11:29,012 --> 00:11:34,020 them. Just as every student has the potential to achieve, every country has the potential to raise the
95 00:11:34,020 --> 00:11:42,089 standards of their education, so PISA is about a lot more than test scores. Sure countries that participate
96 00:11:42,089 --> 00:11:49,023 in the PISA survey are keen to know where their students rank compared to students in other countries.
97 00:11:49,023 --> 00:11:57,003 but PISA's ultimate aim is not to create a competition for its own sake, its aim it's to encourage
98 00:11:57,004 --> 00:12:03,011 all participating countries to use the survey findings to improve their own teaching and student performance.
99 00:12:03,011 --> 99:59:59,000 To give their students the best opportunities to achieve the best possible results.