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During a 23 year career with the BBC, and 43 years in journalism, (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor Welshman Phil Parry, education stories, and where Wales sat internationally have always been fundamental, and this is now underlined by last week’s publication of the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results which a Welsh Government (WG) minister dubbed “catastrophic”.
They are always important.
Education stories may sound a little dull, but they are vital because they show how well (or not well) policies are working, and quite apart from their relevance now to the boys and girls concerned, they will affect EVERYONE in years to come because productivity will be hampered in the knowledge-based economy.
It is all the more important in the modern era of international ranking, when it can be clearly seen how Wales is doing (tables of rankings wake people up because while they may be completely uninterested in schools, they DO NOT want to be faring badly against other countries!).
So it is that the reaction to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), should be taken very seriously.
Tuesday’s publication showed Welsh teenagers’ scores had fallen further behind 15-year-olds in other UK nations, and the Welsh Education Minister Anna Brychan stated that Wales’ scores were “not where we want them to be”.
A measured, diplomatic, response it would seem, but Ms Brychan also proclaimed darkly: “…I believe that these results are really catastrophic for Wales”.
The Sunday Times said at the weekend: “England is…comprehensively outperforming not just Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but almost all of its international rivals”.
In reading, 31 per cent of the Welsh pupils who took the test scored below what is considered to be the required level to participate effectively in society – a significantly larger proportion than in other UK nations.
Ms Brychan was damning, warning that young people: “…are going to struggle if there are so many in Wales who can’t participate (in the jobs and universities markets) through their reading”.
In maths, 36 percent were below baseline levels.,
Overall, Pisa had shown a general decline in performance.
The much-vaunted Welsh-language educational system (and I declare an interest here because both of my children have been educated through the medium of Welsh), didn’t do very well either.
John Jerrim, Professor of Education and Social Statistics at University College London (UCL), said that over several rounds of Pisa, tests taken in Welsh had scored much lower.
But, this time, they had been about 70 marks lower in Welsh, with scores about 400 on average, he said.
He has called Wales’ Pisa results “sobering”, and he said there was a substantial gap between Wales and England’s top-scoring pupils.
“Those higher achievers seem to be doing much, much better in England than their equivalents in Wales“, he warned.
It is, possibly, small consolation, that some nations (notably France) did just as badly as Wales, while others did EVEN WORSE!
Wales performed below Sweden and Slovenia, yet above Malta in science; below Italy and Turkey, and above the Netherlands in reading; and below Belgium or New Zealand, and above Vietnam in maths.
Predictably, perhaps, teaching unions warned against seeing the Pisa results as the only measure of Welsh education.
Nicola Fitzpatrick, secretary for the National Education Union Cymru (NEUC), said the results “represent just one narrow measure and they should not be seen or used as a definitive benchmark for education quality across Wales”.
It may be a ‘narrow measure’, but the honest answer is that Wales is not doing very well, and stories about education or international rankings MATTER!
Just do the, er, sums…
The memories of Phil’s decades long award-winning career in journalism (when education stories were crucial) as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’, Order it now!
Tomorrow – news that Russian hacking is increasing, Vladimir Putin has declared Ukraine opened a “Pandora’s box” with its successful drone attacks, and that the country’s polls suggest anxiety is growing, all highlight once again how The Eye has also been targeted.
