OECD at a glance

I managed to catch Andreas Schleicher in London yesterday on the latest stop of his whirlwind world tour presenting the latest OECD international comparisons of education. This is now a truly global event. Andreas had just flown in from a trip that included Shanghai, Japan, Seattle and Washington among others. Afterwards he was off to Whitehall to brief Minsters. For an hour we were treated to the usual array of colourful graphs from the OECD’s director of education and skills in the cosy confines of the library of St Marylebone Church of England School, a secondary comprehensive school for girls in Marylebone.

Arguably the most pressing question for England (as well as other countries) is how well the education system is performing for children from poorer backgrounds. What could we do to narrow the stark social gap in attainment that still blights our nation? What can we learn from other countries? What are we doing well? Schleicher’s headlines from Education at a Glance 2015, OECD’s mammoth glossary of international data, should provide some vital clues.

Here are ten key messages I took away:

1. Everyone’s a winner from improved education: graduates continue to earn more than non-grads; the Government attracts more tax revenue. It makes it all the more tragic that the children who need our help most lose out. Schleicher reminded us that it doesn’t have to be that way: the poorest 10% of pupils in Shanghai perform as well as the most privileged 20% of teenagers taking the international test in England.
2. University fees in England are now the highest in the world. Yet Schleicher is positive about our private/public funding mix for higher education and points to healthy graduation rates. Two in five 25-34 year olds now have some form of degree.
3. Believe it or not our university professors are among the highest paid in the world. No wonder university heads are so supportive of the funding boost increased fees have ushered in.
4. England continues to fall short when it comes to providing quality apprenticeships. Employers could do more to support them. Schleicher quipped that in Germany where he is from the Government offers to pay young people to go to university, yet they still don’t go. They would rather enrol on a highly sought after apprenticeship programme at BMW.
5. We still have too many NEETs, that nasty sounding acronym for teenagers not in education, employment, or training. Nearly one in ten young children are still in this category. And they don’t just lag behind those in school and work in the race to gain knowledge and skills, they actually go backwards: tests scores decline with age.
6. Schleicher is a big fan of academies in England. But this support for more autonomous schools comes with a big caveat: we also need outside checks and balances to improve our schools as well. It’s not at all clear that this ‘middle tier’ is functioning well here. Professional knowledge is sticky, says Schleicher, so spreading good practice through programmes is key.
7. England’s secondary school teachers are characterised by having large class sizes and spending a lot of their time teaching in class. They should be spending more time on professional learning and development if they are to replicate some of the successes seen in Asian education systems.
8. England is lauded for its Pupil Premium funding for disadvantaged pupils. However Schleicher urges us to be more radical: paying teachers higher salaries to teach in the most challenging schools. In the stellar performing Shanghai province of China, teachers are required to turn around struggling schools before securing their cherished head-ship positions.
9. Schleicher says that children who have benefitted from at least two year’s pre-school support on average do significantly better in later life. The development of children’s centres during the last decade is a great story for England, and early years provision for three year olds and above is now universal.
10. However, early years provision for two year olds remains patchy: we should expand quality provision for the most disadvantaged toddlers.

Finally a caveat to all these findings: one critical factor in education is that the quality over quantity counts. It is the type of degree that matters or how good the early years teacher is or how well spent the pupil premium grant is. That matters more for poorer children than anything else.