Part One: The Global Umbrella
In the global economy, the benchmark for educational success is no longer merely improvement by local or national standards, but the best performing education systems internationally
Andreas Schleicher 2014
Education remains one of the key battlegrounds for any government in the build up to an election. Candidates in government or in opposition lay claim to having the answer to solve educational concerns, usually countering any policies that have been put in place over the last term in office. However, now education is no longer a national battleground for politicians but a global one. Stakeholders and global education providers such as Pearson, OECD, UNESCO and McKinsey & Company and research by sources such as CEM and Fischer Family Trust in England, NCATE and the NRC in the United States are providing policy makers with data provision that profess to have the answer to any presumed educational mishap or failure. As such, governments and politicians are entering the educational battleground armed with massive amounts of analytical detail and statistical evidence that claim to provide the correct pathway out of perceived national educational poverty to the Valhalla of international educational acclaim.
The most successful of these provisions is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which triennially examines the comparative performance of educational systems across the world. Grek, 2009 p.1 states that PISA ‘through its direct impact on national education systems… has become an… influential tool of the new political technology of governing’.
Andreas Schleicher, the Deputy Director of the Directorate for Education at the OECD, is a key player in the development of PISA becoming a significant tool for governments to measure educational success. It is his belief that ‘knowledge and skills have become the global currency in the 21st Century’ and states on Pearsons ‘Five Things I’ve Learned’ website that ‘[t]he goal of the past was standardization and conformity; now it’s about being ingenious, about personalizing education experiences.’ In theory this is encouraging – an educational approach that breaks away from conformity, promotes individual learning and supports inventiveness. However in practice this seemingly freewheeling approach has seen a greater focus by many educational systems on exactly the opposite; conformity, standardisation and an educational model, driven by global educational reformists that is impoverished in it’s application of holistic and creative learning as they try to attain high scores on the PISA tables.
This essay will explore some of the global education reforms that are currently being implemented across the world and try to make sense of the seemingly contradictory remarks made by such policy advisors that are resulting in educational austerity, at least in the places where they are being strictly adhered to. First, however, it is important to consider in greater detail the process that has taken the implementation of transnational education ‘to be a concern of the highest political priority’. (Hingel 2001 p.10)
[W]e are witnessing across the globe a robust anticipatory and proactive interest in OECD’s Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA). PISA is no longer just a ‘results phenomenon’. PISA leaders are increasingly getting at what lies behind the numbers and are thus generating key insights and questions.
Michael Fullan (McKinsey 2010)
The OECD’s PISA study, alongside the data from PIRLS, TIMSS and other studies, have transformed our understanding of what works
Michael Gove 2014
[T]he last round of QCDA-led changes… remain informed by a nationally-introspective approach and appear under-informed by lessons from transnational comparisons
Oates 2010 p.5
The sources that organisations use to glean their information are vast. McKinsey refers to 20 different school systems from around the world, PISA/OECD have access to 65 countries and represent ‘more than 80% of the world economy’ (PISA Results Summary 2012), whilst Oates refers to 3 large-scale international surveys – PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS. It would seem to be the case that their extensive research is worthy of listening to as so much evidence, from so many global sources, must provide significant findings regarding answers to successful educational reform. Indeed the provision of knowledge regarding an education systems performance in relation to another; be it a study of students attainment of literacy or mathematics, pedagogy delivery models or teacher and school accountability can be seen as an excellent source for planning and preparation for a country’s personal contextualisation. Yet the narrowing band of analytical performance, with its focus on mathematics, reading and scientific literacy is meaning governments and policy makers are focusing their research and subsequent demand for reform on a particular classification of educational attainment. An example of such an approach can be seen in two separate quotes from Andreas Schleicher regarding educational analysis in Wales and the United States:
1. Mr Schleicher criticised Wales for a lack of long-term vision for education. He said: ‘Your education system today is your economy tomorrow. There's a very, very close linkage between the skills that people develop in school and what they're able to do later in life. Our economies are evolving very rapidly. The demand for better skills, for the right skills. The knowledge economy no longer pays you for what you know... it pays you for what you can do with what you know.’ He also criticised the mindset of Welsh students.
2. The increasing impact of advanced skills on people's life chances -- whether it is employment, earnings or social participation, makes it a priority to do better in providing all talented students, regardless of their background, with access to advanced education…. it is also clear that an increasing number of countries have approached and surpassed U.S. graduation levels and others are bound to follow over the coming years.
Schleicher is quick to use the same rhetoric for two completely different education systems at different levels (one secondary and one higher education), both of which appear to need to address aspects of its approach to learning and student success. The threat of failure in comparison to other nations is the stick he uses to drive home his point and the evidence he presents is PISA data. Yet in the case of Wales at least a viable and alternative PISA run test presents the argument, as claimed by TLTP Education Recruitment (April 2014), where ‘[a]ccording to the OECD, the UK school system is producing kids that are teeming with cognitive fluidity and equipped with fully developed transferrable thinking skills’. Yet nothing was made of this contradictory and quite significant compliment by the British government. Indeed as Grek, 2009 p.5 cites, PISA ‘does not examine students’ mastery of school curricula nor does it pay attention to less explicit educational aims that resist measurement (e.g. democratic participation, artistic talents, understanding of politics, history etc)’, which then ensnares any national reforms to follow the PISA status quo.
The history and demand for the global knowledge economy, at least in European terms, can be traced back to the implementation of the European Space of Education; co-operation between member states to deliver quality education with the intention ‘to enhance the quality and relevance of human capital development’. In 1976 what Hingel 2001 p.5, describes as the ‘Eurydice action in the field of documentation and statistics’ was set up. It’s intention, in the longer term, was to measure pupil achievement, external evaluations and self-appraisal in schools through the form of quality evaluation and the involvement of stakeholders. Hingel, 2001 p.6, shares with us that in the development of a European Model of Education:
the increasing knowledge on national educational systems have played a central role. The Eurydice collection and analysis of data and information, in close co-operation with Eurostat, has been primordial.
Almost simultaneously in the United States the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 targeted the American system of schooling with remarkably similar language to that used by Mr. Schleicher in its fears of being left behind in a global education race and claimed the ‘unimaginable [in the fact that] others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments’. It used in its reforms what were only described as ‘notable programs and promising approaches [and] existing analyses of problems in education’ sensationally stating on page 1:
[i]f an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Aronson & Anderson 2013, make it clear that this report, where ‘reformers were able to legitimize their belief that only by tightening control over curriculum and teaching… and making education more disciplined and competitive’ has led to the implementation of market-based reforms that connect globalisation and economic competition. This ‘governance by comparison’, as called by Martens 2007 and cited in Grek 2009, through the quality evaluation of educational measurement, particularly by external sources, has paved the way for stakeholders such as the OECD and it’s subsequent PISA programme where, ‘[t]hrough its statistics, reports and studies, it has achieved a brand which most regard indisputable; OECD’s policy recommendations are accepted as valid by politicians and scholars alike.’ Grek 2009 p.3.
The educational reforms in China and Asia followed later than in Europe and the United States but they have not been any less aligned to global capitalism. China launched their New Curriculum Reform in 2001 and S. Guo et al. 2013 p.259 state that ‘[u]nder China’s market economy, education is also undergoing the process of marketisation, and privatisation in terms of orientation, provision, curriculum and financing.’
The 34 nations that are members of the programme, and 31 additional other countries that refer to the results have created a competitive global umbrella that currently covers all 65 educational systems desperate to nurture student excellence in mathematics, reading and science to ensure they have the 'positive learning climate' required to 'produce the vanguard of a competitive, knowledge-based global economy' (PISA Results Summary 2012). In the mean time the less explicit educational aims, regarded as so by PISA, leave a generation of students at risk of a lack of creativity, awareness of social justice and cultural learning.
The second of three parts of this essay will be posted soon and will explore 'The Economy of Performance versus Ecologies of Practice' - the conflict between the new educational objectives aligned to economic focused outcomes and the traditional social, moral and cultural status of teaching.
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