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Is PISA still a fair basis for comparison? Some serious questions have emerged
A version of this blogpost also appears on the Centre for Education Economics website. The OECD’s PISA study compares the science, reading and mathematics skills of 15-year-olds across countries, with...
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How much does private tutoring matter for grammar school admissions?
Before the 2017 general election, it seemed like grammar schools were about to make a widespread return to England. Although this didn’t happen after the Tories lost their parliamentary majority, the...
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10 key findings for primary school teachers from TALIS 2018
Today, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) releases results from the 2018 round of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). The focus of this blogpost is...
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10 key findings for secondary school teachers from TALIS 2018
Today, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) releases results from the 2018 round of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). The focus of this blogpost is...
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Are teenagers in England addicted to social media? (And does it matter?)
There have been lots of concerns raised recently about social media use among young people. This includes links found between time spent on social media and declines in mental health. Similarly, some...
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7 key findings about teachers’ working hours
Today, I have released a new paper about teachers hours of work, co-authored with Sam Sims and Becky Allen. This is part of a project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, investigating the health and...
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How well do we measure teacher workload?
Over the last five years, the Department for Education has taken steps to reduce teacher workload. This was spurred by results from the TALIS 2013 survey which illustrated how teachers in England work...
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England’s schools segregate by ability more than almost every other country...
In education systems across the world, children are separated into different groups based upon their academic achievement. This is done in different ways. Countries such as Germany, the Netherlands...
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Who are the world’s biggest bull****ters? A light-hearted look at PISA data
The PISA study is usually used to measure educational achievement across countries. However, as well as taking a two hour test covering reading, science and mathematics, young people are also asked to...
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If London were a country, how would it do in PISA?
Since 2009, parts of China have participated in the OECD’s triennial PISA testing. In 2009 and 2012, Shanghai topped the international rankings and by quite some distance, with 15-year-olds in this...
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How do headteachers in England use test data, and does this differ from other...
In England we are fortunate to have a lot of data available about school pupils and how they are achieving academically at school. Organisations such as FFT aim to make this data available and easily...
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Are all types of reading equal, or are some more equal than others?
It is widely considered important that children read regularly. A wide range of previous research has linked reading during childhood to improved language skills and higher levels of academic...
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How do GCSE grades relate to PISA scores?
When the reform to GCSEs was initially announced, under the watch of Michael Gove in 2014, the intention was to link performance on the new GCSE exams to the PISA test. Now, as far as I am aware, this...
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Is PISA ‘fundamentally flawed’ because of the scaling methodology used?
Every time PISA results are released, concerns are raised about the methodology that underpins the work. One area that has come in for repeated criticism is how the test scores of students are...
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Should we eat more fish or more ice cream to boost PISA scores?
If anyone has ever read one of the international PISA reports or seen Andreas Schleicher present they will know that the OECD is rather fond of cross-national scatterplots. These illustrate the...
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Is Canada really an education “superpower”? The evidence is not as clear-cut...
When the PISA results are released every three years it is now little surprise when a set of east Asian nations (e.g. Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea) dominate the top spots in the rankings....
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Should England continue participating in PISA?
PISA has now been going since 2000, with England participating in every cycle. Yet involvement in PISA does not come cheap. It costs more than £2m every three years for England, Wales and Northern...
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Five things to remember when the PISA 2018 results are released
The results from PISA 2018 are released tomorrow. And, as with every PISA release, there will be the usual media circus. There will, of course, be all the obvious things to look out for – have PISA...
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Nine key findings from PISA 2018
Results from the PISA 2018 study have just been released. This is the triennial update of how the UK has performed on these closely scrutinised (and highly politicised) tests. Given that this is...
View ArticleIs England’s PISA 2018 data reliable?
The PISA 2018 results are out today. PISA is supposed to test of a representative sample of 15-year-olds across more than 70 countries across the world. However, questions sometimes arise over how...
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