A better metric for judging a nation’s education system

Leah Gunn Barrett

It’s rich for English Education minister Gillian Keegan to claim English schools are superior when English school buildings are literally crumbling. Her own department admitted that England had cherry-picked better performing schools with more affluent students to take part in the PISA exams, violating a rule that each participating nation should select pupils of average academic background.[1] England cheated, which won’t come as a surprise to most Scots. 

Keegan fails to mention another little detail. Just 4.7% of English secondary schools took part in the PISA exams, whereas 32.8% of all Scottish did.[2] This should invalidate any attempts to make direct comparisons between the two nations, but we already know Keegan is about as sharp as a marble. 

A 2-hour standardised test emphasising a narrow range of measurable aspects of education, fails to capture important educational objectives such as physical, moral, civic and artistic development and a capacity for critical thinking, noticeably lacking in the UK’s political leadership. Such a narrow test also fails to account for socio-economic inequality, which has grown under the Tories, and the impact this has on the education attainment of poorer students. 

A better metric for judging a nation’s education system is the proportion of students going on to higher education. In 2021/22, more Scottish students were on Higher Education courses than in any year in the past decade, a 4% year-on-year increase.[3]

The real failure lies with the UK government. It has relentlessly slashed public spending not just on education but on healthcare. A nation’s primary resource is its people. Without a well-educated, healthy population, economic growth isn’t possible. 

For Scottish children to realise their full human potential and contribute to a thriving nation, their parents and grandparents must leave this failing union.

[1] https://www.thenational.scot/news/23980483.tory-minister-failed-mention-england-cheated-pisa-tests/

[2] https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2023/12/06/pisa-33-of-scotlands-schools-took-part-but-only-4-7-of-englands-schools-were-confident-enough-to-do-so-scotland-did-far-better/

[3] https://www.thenational.scot/news/23980483.tory-minister-failed-mention-england-cheated-pisa-tests/

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5 thoughts on “A better metric for judging a nation’s education system”

  1. ‘A 2-hour standardised test emphasising a narrow range of measurable aspects of education, fails to capture important educational objectives ..’

    Indeed! There was a Radio 4 Today programme interview this morning with Lord Johnson, chair of the House of Lords ‘Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee’. It was on the occasion of the publication of the committee’s major report on England’s education system entitled ‘Requires improvement: urgent change for 11–16 education.’

    When asked by the BBC interviewer ‘why reform England’s education system given how well England performs in PISA assessments?’, Lord Johnson simply brushed aside the challenge with (in terms): ‘PISA is very reductive’ i.e. it reduces complex things to simple elements!

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  3. ‘It’s rich for English Education minister Gillian Keegan to claim English schools are superior ..’

    That’s an understatement! However, no doubt she feels able to do this because of the dire state of the mainstream media that supposedly ‘serves’ Scotland. Scotland on Sunday accepted her opinion piece but will it undertake ANY critical assessment on behalf of its readers of Ms Keegan’s claims ?

    It is in this context that it seems wholly relevant to highlight a recent report on the education system THAT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of Ms Keegan and her predecessors as Secretaries of State in Westminster.

    Source: NESTA and Education Policy Institute (December 2023) Education: the fundamentals – eleven facts about the education system in England. Report from NESTA’s UK 2040 Options study (https://options2040.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Education_the-fundamentals.pdf )

    Here just some extracts (with my emphasis):
    – ‘There are persistent gaps in attainment between pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers. IN 2022, THIS GAP WAS EQUIVALENT TO AROUND 19 MONTHS OF LEARNING BY THE TIME PUPILS SAT THEIR GCSEs.

    – ‘Around 40 per cent of the gap at age 16 is already visible at age 5 ..

    – ‘For pupils in primary and secondary schools, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers had stopped closing even before the pandemic.

    – ‘The gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers widened over the course of the pandemic such that THE DISADVANTAGE GAP IN 2022 WAS THE HIGHEST IT HAD BEEN IN A DECADE IN THE EARLY YEARS (4.8 MONTHS), AT THE END OF PRIMARY SCHOOL (10.3 MONTHS), AND AT GCSE (18.8 MONTHS).

    – ‘Based on the trend in closing the gap up until 2016, WE WERE ABLE TO PREDICT THAT THE GAP WOULD CLOSE WITHIN AROUND 50 YEARS. That would have meant that, by 2040, we would be around halfway to fully closing the gap. However, THE WIDENING OF THE GAP OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS HAS MEANT WE CAN NO LONGER PREDICT WHEN IT WILL CLOSE IF, INDEED, IT EVER WILL.

    – ‘THERE ARE STARK DIFFERENCES IN THE OUTCOMES OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE COUNTRY. In summer 2022, AROUND A QUARTER OF STUDENTS IN LONDON COMPLETED COMPULSORY SCHOOLING HAVING NOT ACHIEVED A GRADE 4 (CONSIDERED TO BE A STANDARD PASS) IN ENGLISH AND MATHEMATICS. Across the north of England this increased to a third, and in some parts of the country, as many as a half of students did not achieve this threshold, that is critical to many opportunities of further study or employment.

    – Going into the pandemic we could see well established geographic variation in the outcomes for pupils from low-income backgrounds. IN SOME AREAS, POORER PUPILS WERE OVER TWO FULL YEARS OF EDUCATION BEHIND THEIR PEERS BY THE TIME THEY SAT THEIR GCSES, including in Blackpool (26.3 months), Knowsley (24.7 months) and Plymouth (24.5 months).

    – ‘Per pupil spending in schools is not yet back to levels from 2010.

    – ‘England has relatively low literacy and numeracy scores amongst non-tertiary educated young adults compared with other OECD countries.

    – ‘The government is recruiting fewer than two-thirds of the secondary teachers it needs, and a third of teachers leave within five years.

    Perspective is a valuable thing. It is a crucial counter to the gaslighting of Scotland.

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