Tag: literacy

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Former head teacher says ‘PISA has very little statistical rigour and offers nothing in the way of improving educational practice’

johnrobertson834

By Alasdair Macdonald The issue is with PISA. It has very little statistical rigour and offers nothing in the way of improving educational practice. I was a secondary school head teacher at the time it and other ‘measures’ were introduced in education in Scotland in other places. I and my colleagues argued against it. Educational provision, like everything else, ought to be continuously evaluated, partly to get evidence on whether it is achieving the aims set out for it and partly to get information on areas which require attention. However, there are, literally, hundreds of aspects to be measured and … Continue reading Former head teacher says ‘PISA has very little statistical rigour and offers nothing in the way of improving educational practice’

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Only 3.6% of Scots ‘face serious challenges’ in literacy but BBC Scotland and Prof Paterson lie to all UK viewers that it’s 26%!

johnrobertson834

On BBC Breakfast at 06:25 this morning, the Reporting Scotland team were allowed to share with the rest of the UK, their disgracefully inaccurate report claiming that 26% of Scots were illiterate and that meant 1.9 million! The claim was supported by Professor Lindsay Paterson. It’s a lie. The facts: From the University of Glasgow’s full report, in 2009: around one-quarter of the Scottish population (26.7%) may face occasional challenges and constrained opportunities due to their literacies difficulties, but will generally cope with their day-to-day lives; and within this quarter of the population, 3.6% (one person in 28) face serious challenges in … Continue reading Only 3.6% of Scots ‘face serious challenges’ in literacy but BBC Scotland and Prof Paterson lie to all UK viewers that it’s 26%!

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Far fewer in Scotland have ‘serious’ or ‘very poor’ literacy problems than across the UK

johnrobertson834

The appearance of Prof Lindsay Paterson on Reporting Scotland today is, once more, fraught with the kind of misunderstandings this statistician with zero experience of teaching regularly brings. Prompted by the numbers-obsessed prof’s strop on the fact that Scotland doesn’t take part in an international study of no use, like Pisa, to compare our adult illiteracy with theirs, they claim: The last Scottish government survey was in 2009 and put the number of people in Scotland who have problems with literacy at around 26%. As with drug deaths, they desperately hope they have found the only kind of whitabootery that … Continue reading Far fewer in Scotland have ‘serious’ or ‘very poor’ literacy problems than across the UK

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Pisa seems unlikely to be valid basis upon which to compare and rank countries, regions and economies.

johnrobertson834

stewartb Yet another, recently encountered critique of Pisa rankings with those readers of TuS who have developed an interest in this famed OECD initiative in international comparative education (with my emphasis): From Sjøberg, S. & Jenkins, E. (2022) PISA: a political project and a research agenda, Studies in Science Education, 58:1 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057267.2020.1824473 ) ‘Conclusion: As a major international comparative study, PISA differs from much earlier work in the field of comparative education. It is quantitative rather than qualitative and is UNDERPINNED BY A PRIORI ASSUMPTIONS about the relationship between science and mathematics test scores and economic development. As noted above, those … Continue reading Pisa seems unlikely to be valid basis upon which to compare and rank countries, regions and economies.