PISA vs Politics
After a particularly tedious week and the prospect of a working weekend, Friday afternoon did not promise a lot. However, the last thing in the electronic in-tray today was to have a look at the entries for a competition Pontydysgu is sponsoring as part of the Learning About Politics project.
The competition was aimed at 8-14 year olds and asked them to write a story using any combination of digital media
“The theme for your story should be on a political event that has happened – or is currently happening – in Wales.
We are not just interested in the facts but on your opinions and impressions. For example, how do you feel about the event you are describing? Who do you agree with and why? What have been the consequences of the event you have chosen?”
Suddenly life got a lot better! The black and white world of education that I seem to have lived in for the last few weeks was in brilliant technicolour. The stories were variously funny, poignant, angry, persuasive and insightful. All of them were well researched, referenced, technically at a level that would put many class teachers to shame and above all, they entertained me and taught me a whole lot I didn’t know. Surely the definition of a good learning experience!
(And by the time I had settled down with a glass of wine and a cigarette, the learning environment seemed pretty good as well).
The thing that cheered me up the most was that these kids had opinions – well argued, well expressed and authentic. I was pretty rubbish at history (Was? ‘Am’ actually! More maths and physics, me…) but short of those exam questions which always started “Compare and contrast….” or “What arguments would you use to support …something ” I don’t ever remember being allowed to have a ‘real’ opinion on anything historical, still less encouraged to express them if I did. Especially not in primary school – I think I was doing post-grad before I earned that privilege.
Which brings me on to my main point! There is a great public panic at the moment about Wales’s performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) because they are two beans behind somewhere or other, half a Brownie point below an average or a nanopoint lower than last time. Puhlease!!
I am not being dismissive from a point of total ignorance here – some years ago I worked on the PISA statistics and the methodology for several months; I even remember doing a keynote presentation at European Conference for Education Research on PISA . Nor am I suggesting that standards do not matter. What I am saying is that the ‘Ain’t it awful’ media frenzy generated by the Smartie counting exercise that is PISA – and the politicians’ heavy-handed response – does a huge disservice to this generation of feisty, articulate and confident kids. And to the amazing generation of teachers that scaffold their learning.
Working in Pontydysgu, being a teacher trainer and a very active school governor means that I spend a lot of time in classrooms and my contention is that 99% of teachers are doing a fantastic job under pretty rubbish conditions. (Did I say this in a previous post? Yes? Well I don’t care – it needs to be shouted from the roof tops).
So what am I going to do about it? Firstly, I am tempted to rewrite the newspaper headlines showing that Welsh education is improving and is better than ‘average’. A claim I could easily back-up by a different manipulation of the PISA figures. Secondly, I could point out that the PISA survey takes place every four years but that changes at the lower age ranges – such as the introduction of the new 3-7 yr old Foundation Phase in Wales (which is awesome) will not impact on PISA results for another nine years so knee-jerk changes to ‘fix’ things seem a bit premature. Thirdly, I could argue that putting so much store on paper-based testing in Reading, Maths and Science as the measure of success of ‘a broad and balanced curriculum’ and ‘pupil-centred, experiential learning’ is a bit of an oxymoron. Fourthly, I could remind our government that Wales led the way on getting rid of SATs and league tables on the very valid grounds that comparisons are unfair because they are not comparing like with like. They funded research which showed standardised testing to be unhelpful, demotivating and did nothing to improve performance. So on a local and national level they don’t work – do they suddenly work on an international one? Or maybe I should become a politician and take on the establishment in the debating chamber – but Hey! I’ve just found there’s a whole new generation of politically astute, sussed and sorted 10year olds who are going to do that much better than I could. Fifteen years from now, it’s going to be move over Minister! Leighton Andrews – ‘your’ education system has much to be proud of.
P.S. I might put some of the entries on the Pontydysgu website over the next few weeks so that you can see for yourself. Any teacher interested in getting their kids to write and publish political stories too, have a look at the Learning About Politics website and get back to us.
Of course, when holding a contest, you are selecting for the most motivated and skilled students, and will not see any contributions from those less skilled and motivated, and so an opinion about student capacities based on contest entries will be skewed and therefore prejudiced.
Not that I’m disagreeing with the main point of this post. But the evidence offered, as they say, does not support the conclusion suggested.
Nice reply Steven and a point well made. However, for the most part the competition entries were compiled by whole classes or groups of kids. In some entries you could ‘see the joins’ where each child had made, say, 2 or 3 slides. In others they had divided the work up functionally – graphics, content, pictures etc. But the extent to which the less skilled pupils were as involved as the others, I really don’t know.
Some teachers used it as a class exercise, another used it as a group homework project where the brief was that everyone had to be involved.
I suppose several things impressed me. One was the way that kids were using multimedia – not in a highly technical sense but in the way they were so ‘fluent’ in juxtaposing image and text and using the combination of media to create the message. McLuhan would have been proud! The other thing was the degree of emotion they managed to convey over and above the cognitive stuff.
It was also a bit humbling to realise that the stories were typical of the sorts of stuff that most teachers do with ‘ordinary’ kids everyday. They were nothing ‘special’. So at one level I was impressed with the quality of each item but it was the ‘collective’ that got me – realisation that this is the quality that the average primary teacher achieves day in, day out in most every country.
Depressing to think that half of them will probably be completely disengaged over the next 5 years!
Thanks for your comments I’ll dig out your email address and send you a sample!