Lee Elliot Major on ten lessons for the UK from a special Sutton Trust seminar with OECD education lead Andreas Schleicher.

‘Without data, you are just another person with an opinion,’ Andreas Schleicher likes to say. Schleicher is the world’s leading expert on international comparisons of education performance. Education ministers across the globe hang on his every word. He developed the PISA tests for the OECD which now assess the knowledge and skills of 15 year olds in over 70 countries in maths, literacy and science.

Earlier this week Andreas presented a dizzying array of data during a special Sutton Trust seminar. He showed which nations excel in education – and the reasons he thought why. I have listed ten lessons that emerged for the UK.

1. Enhancing equity and excellence

A host of East Asian countries, and Finland and Canada have shattered the received wisdom that mediocrity is the price for equity. According to Schleicher the very opposite is true: nations who have climbed the international rankings for education have done so by improving the results of poorer pupils as well as other children. Stand-out performers in the forthcoming 2012 PISA results will almost certainly have combined equity and excellence.

2. Culture is not an excuse

Tiger mums, rote learning, poverty – the different cultural contexts outside the school gates, while important, can’t explain away the differences in education performance between nations. High performing countries as culturally diverse as Finland and Singapore have adopted common reforms to their education systems. The UK could do the same.

3. The decline of the NEETs

Teenagers not in education, employment, or training (NEETs) 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. In the UK, there are too many NEETs.

4. Government’s critical role in a system of autonomous schools.

It is good for schools to be in charge of their own affairs, but Governments need to intervene to improve the system as a whole, argues Schleicher. In the stellar performing Shanghai province of China, teachers are required to turn around struggling schools before securing their cherished head-ship positions. Professional knowledge is sticky, says Schleicher, so spreading good practice through programmes is key. London Challenge was a good example of this.

5. Focus on teacher quality not class size.

Many of the best performing nations have larger class sizes than in the UK and US because they have focused on enhancing teacher quality rather than reducing class sizes. Schleicher says spend extra education pounds on quality not quantity.

6. More teacher time for professional development

Unlike the UK, a significant chunk of school time is ring-fenced for development, reflection on practice and peer learning in the best performing education systems. In Shanghai, each teacher has 240 hours of professional development within five years. In Singapore teachers are entitled to 100 hours of professional development each year. Professional development needs to be a bigger part of the working lives of  teachers in the UK even if the price is slightly larger class sizes.

7. Involve teachers in shaping the system

Ministers in Singapore would not dream of announcing a new education policy without consulting the teaching profession, represented by the National Institute of Education. Perhaps a role for a future national college of teaching?

8. Raise the status of teaching

Easier said than done. But better pay and development coupled with professional freedom are needed to make teaching the attractive profession it should be. In Finland, there are ten applicants for each teacher training place; in England currently there are barely two applicants per place.

9. Lasting legacy of the early years

Schleicher said that children who have benefitted from at least two year’s pre-school support on average do significantly better in the PISA tests at age 15 – many as much as two years ahead. The development of children’s centres during the last decade should improve the UK’s education performance in the long run.

10. Sharing good practice across the globe

Just as good teachers are open to the best practice of other professionals – through feedback and observation – so the best performing nations are those constantly seeking the lessons on what works from other countries. The UK needs to look seriously beyond its shores to learn from the best elsewhere, and develop a genuine evidence informed practice.

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