10 key findings for primary school teachers from TALIS 2018
With findings on pay, working hours, job satisfaction and CPD
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 new Secretary of State for Education has backed plans to allow existing grammar schools to expand. This renewed interest in expanding selective education has [...]
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 the results closely watched by journalists, public policymakers and the general public from across the world. Conducted every three years, particular attention is now being [...]
Four things PISA tells us about after-school learning
A version of this blogpost also appears on the Sutton Trust website. When the PISA results are released, almost everyone is fixated upon the average scores children have achieved in reading, science and mathematics, and our latest position in the “international rankings”. However, a lot of other information is captured within the study, some of [...]
Why does Vietnam do so well in PISA? An example of why naive interpretation of international rankings is such a bad idea
A version of this post was first published in Research Intelligence, the British Educational Research Association’s termly magazine. When the PISA 2015 results were released in December last year, Vietnam was one of the countries that stood out as doing remarkably well. (PISA is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial assessment of 15-year-olds [...]
What PISA tells us about pupils from ordinary working families
Last week, we heard a lot from the government about their interest in children from ‘ordinary working families’. (For our initial take on the topic, see here and here.) In its new consultation document, the Department for Education has provided information on the GCSE grades and progress of these children – defined as those not [...]
Global Gaps: Comparing socio-economic gaps in the performance of highly able UK pupils internationally
Today the Sutton Trust have published Global Gaps, a report I produced for them considering gaps in performance between highly able disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children, using PISA 2015 data Read the full report here [PDF]. A blogpost on some of the findings can be found here.
What does PISA 2015 tell us about deprivation and highly able children?
There’s long been interest in socio-economic inequalities in educational achievement in England. Typically, most research in this area focuses on differences in average scores. Less attention has been paid to young people at the extremes of the distribution – for instance, how achievement varies between the most able pupils from advantaged and disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. [...]
The 10 key findings from PISA 2015
Today, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development releases results from the 2015 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Despite the ‘country rankings’ taking the headlines, there are many other - and often more interesting - findings once you scratch below the surface. In this blogpost, I provide a crash-course in 10 [...]