World education rankings : which country does best at reading, maths and science?
An interesting article in the NZ Principals magazine by Ivan Snook, 'Charter Schools: An Investigation' left me feeling concerned that we are about to adopt a system and model used in the UK, USA and Sweden.
After watching Campbell Live on Thursday 7 June, and being surprised by the comments the Minister made about one out of five children failing, I thought it would be interesting to find out just where NZ education is ranked internationally.
Google was very accommodating and according to the world education rankings from the OECD - a study of 65 countries - around 470,000 15-year-olds across the world sat a numeracy, literacy and science test in 2009, the results of which inform the latest Pisa study by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
According to this chart it appears NZ is doing rather well. So why then would we choose to be following rather than leading, especially when those countries whose systems we are going to follow are doing so much worse than New Zealand?
The OECD's comprehensive world education ranking report.
Really interesting thoughts you have shared. The data is clear - we need to keep doing what we are doing as it is working well!
ReplyDeleteWe are one of the small school proposed to close at the end of 2013, however for the past few years our school data shows more than 80 % of our children are achieving at and above the National Standard, particularly our Maori children. This shows that small schools serve our Maori and low decile communities. The fear of National creating super schools and the looming threats of charter schools our children will be overwhelmed and may fall between the cracks. The irony is the that Ministry is using international data to back their decision to go with Charter schools but was unwilling to accept the international data we presented in our proposal to stay open that supports the effectiveness of small school's in low income and multi-ethnic communities such as ours.
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