What we can know from PISA

Pisa test results usually stir waves when published and countries complain that their education systems are not up to the mark. This is true in particular for countries with Prussian school systems, like Hungary (which started modernising but is now set to slip back to more rigid solutions). Fewer people take the pain to look behind the results. The European Commission organised recently a conference about performance auditing , and one of the presenters was Andreas Schleicher from the Pisa project of the OECD. He outlined (At 177.17 of the Day 2 the webstream or if this link does not work, select day 2 here ; you can watch his presentation) some results of the analysis which may surprise us: excellent results can be achieved in countries which spend a lot or which spend less (per student) on education, the real question is what this money is used for. Only twenty percent of the variation in results is explained by the amount of money spent. So they looked at how Where teachers are not paid well and technical and infrastructural conditions are weak, the results are worse. This seems plausible. However, this means that there will be larger class sizes for the same amount of money per student. That's why Korea performs better than Luxembourg where they spend both a lot on education and Finland better than the U.S. who both spend less. And this correlation was proven for a lot of other countries as well They bought a lot of tuition time and gave also a lot of time for teachers to develop, so the proportion of teaching time is smaller. Methodology you can hear from 180.00, the comparison from 187.00. Another interesting conclusion, not from that presentation but from the PISA report : Over the period, there was a decline of two percentage points in the share of students in OECD countries who reported that students cannot work well during their reading classes. However, some of the countries with the worst records in this respect showed large improvements. In 2000,69% of students in Israel and 74% of students in Hungary disagreed with the statement that students can “never” or “almost never” work well during their reading classes; by 2009, this proportion had increased to 77% in Israel and 80% in Hungary. And this challenges the traditional truth that class discipline is continuously deteriorating. Instead of conclusion, let me quote also fro the PISA report: "Many of the world’s best-performing education systems have moved from bureaucratic “command and control” environments towards school systems in which the people at the frontline have much more control of the way resources are used, people are deployed, the work is organised and the way in which the work gets done. They provide considerable discretion to school heads and scho ol faculties in determining how resources are allocated, a factor which the report shows to be closely related to school performance when combined with effective accountability systems. And they provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame what they believe to be good practice, conduct field-based research to confirm or disprove the approaches they develop, and then assess their colleagues by the degree to which they use practices proven effective in their classrooms. Last but not least, the most impressive outcome of world-class education systems is perhaps that they deliver highquality learning consistently across the entire education system, such that every student benefits from excellent learning opportunities. To achieve this, they invest educational resources where they can make the greatest difference, they attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classrooms, and they establish effective spending choices that prioritise the quality of teachers."

What some recent numbers tell about Hungarian education

According to a publication on Hunagrian education (2009 data), in Hungary, 84 percent of the 20-24 years old population has completed at least upper-secondary education (grammar school or vocational secondary school) compared to 78.6% in the 27 EU member states.

Early leavers (population aged 18-24 years with at most lower secondary education – equivalent to the classes 5-8 of the 8-years primary school - and not in further education and training) are 11.2% compared to the EU-27 average of 14.4%.

In the population between 25 and 64 years, Hungary has a high proportion of upper-secondary (grammar school or vocational secondary school) and post-secondary graduates (61 versus the Eu average of 47 %). The proportion of both lower and higher education is lower than in the EU overall.

Source: Spotlight on VET, Hungary, European Centre for the Development of Vocational training http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/spotlight-on-vet-pbTI3111147/downloads/TI-31-11-147-EN-C/TI3111147ENC_002.pdf?FileName=TI3111147ENC_002.pdf&SKU=TI3111147ENC_PDF&CatalogueNumber=TI-31-11-147-EN-C

Some recent results of the PISA tests also show an interesting picture. Just one graph from the EC press release:

Percentages of low-achieving 15 year-old students in reading (2009)

Source: OECD, PISA 2009 database

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/11/846&format=HTML&aged=0&language=FR&guiLanguage=en

Hungary has slightly higher proportion of low achievers than the EU target but lower than the EU average and scores better than its neighbours.

These figures raise interesting questions concerning the educational concept and changes in the school system:

Did the reforms yield a result in spite of scepticism? Hungarian students scored significantly better in the last two PISA tests than before. In the first one, two years age, the area investigated was one where Hungarians usually scored better (technical and scientific) but the latest one (late 2010) did show a significant improvement in areas where we did not score well before.

Is it justified to decrease the number of students in higher education? Are we really over-qualified?

Will the decrease of compulsory education age limits improve the rate of early school leavers (which is not high even with the present limit) or ont he contrary, yield more pupils who leave school without finishing their education to a level where they can find their place on the labour market?