PISA RESULTS AND WORLD CLASS SKILLS!!

Our children are no different to children anywhere in the world and I was looking at the latest PISA results and they make interesting reading. The UK has made "positive" progress in international school rankings, based on tests taken by 15-year-olds in 79 countries and regions. The tests, run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, show the UK results improving in reading, maths and science. But we lag behind top performers such as China, Singapore and Estonia as well as Finland, Canada, Ireland, Sweden and Poland. 

Worryingly, the UK's teenagers were also found to have among the lowest levels of "life satisfaction" and happiness, which is not surprising in a country where we test, check and monitor our children more than most other countries across the world. Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's education director, said there were "positive signs" from the UK's results for the tests taken in 2018 - which he said showed "modest improvements". Still it's good news that:

• In reading, the UK is 14th, up from 22nd in the previous tests three years ago
• In science, the UK is 14th, up from 15th
• In maths, the UK is 18th up from 27th

The next PISA tests will also focus on creative thinking in 2021 and digital learning in 2024, although the UK is apparently not going to take part!! Sad really in a world where the kind of things that are easy to teach and test have also become easy to digitise and automate. And especially, when the skills that will be required to thrive and succeed at school at work and in life in general are the skills that underpin the arts and culture and sport.... teamwork, communication, planning, creativity, problem solving, organisation, imagination, awareness and a sense of responsibility. Skills that our children need to enable them to harness the opportunities of the 21st century and to shape our world for the better.

If our children are to thrive and succeed, tomorrow’s schools will need to help them think for themselves and work as team members with empathy and understanding. What will it take for schools to be able to do this? Andreas Schleicher, initiator of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and an international authority on education policy, has accompanied education leaders in over 70 countries in their efforts to design and implement forward-looking policies and practices. While improvement in education is far easier to proclaim than achieve, in this book Schleicher examines the many successes from which we can learn. This does not mean copying and pasting solutions from other schools or countries, but rather looking seriously and dispassionately at good practice in our own countries and elsewhere to understand what works!