OECD - Pisa Study 2006 published November 2007
The international study is produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). These Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) performance tables, based on tests taken by 15-year-olds, are published every three years. In 2006, 57 countries (jurisdictions) participated in PISA, including 30 OECD and 27 non-OECD (or independent areas within countries - for example, Canadian provinces). However as nearly all participants were countries, rather than use the official term "jurisdictions" we shall use countries. The PISA rankings, based on tests taken by 400,000 students in 57 countries, is an attempt to measure the attainment of pupils in different education systems. First administered in 2000 to cover reading, math and science, each study focuses in depth on one of these subjects. The 2006 study emphasised science covering concepts in physics, chemistry, biology and earth and space science.

More bad news - UK schools fall down global table
Pupils in the UK have fallen from an international top league table of reading and maths standards. Based on test results in 2006, the UK has lost its position in the top 10 positions it held for both subjects seven years ago. The most successful countries in reading are South Korea and Finland and teenagers in Taiwan and Finland are the highest achievers in maths.

Downwards Comparisons instead are made with the UK's ranking positions based on tests taken in 2000. The UK is the only country which was in the top-performing group in 2000 to have slipped down into the lower group. In 2000, the UK was placed 7th in reading and 8th in maths - the UK in the latest table is 17th for reading and 24th place for maths. This time Britain is way down the league in all three subjects. The results have embarrassed a government that claims to have put education at the top of its agenda for a decade.

The countries which were ahead of the UK in reading in 2000 - Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Korea - remain in the top 10 for this year. But the UK has now been overtaken by countries including Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Japan. In maths, the UK has been overtaken by a group of improved performers, including Slovenia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria.

More bad news - USA students' scores worsen and USA down in global table
Results indicate that the average combined science literacy scale score for U.S. students to be lower than the OECD average. U.S. students scored lower on science literacy than their peers in 16 of the other 29 OECD countries and 6 of the 27 non-OECD countries.

On the mathematics literacy scale, U.S. students scored lower than the OECD average. 31 countries (23 OECD and 8 non-OECD) scored higher on average than USA in mathematics literacy in 2006. Only 4 countries had average lower scores than USA.

Regarding science, 10th grade USA students earned an average score of 489 on a 1,000 point scale, 11 points below the average. USA students were on par with those in 8 countries and outperformed those in 5. While the USA science score on PISA lagged statistically behind more than half the developed nations, it ranked in the same statistical category as 8 other industrialized countries, including Poland, Denmark, France, and Iceland.

USA outperformed such nations as Italy, Greece, and Mexico. In 2003, the last time PISA measured performance in science, USA students tallied an average of 491, 9 points lower than the average of 500 in industrialized countries. In math, which was tested in less depth on this PISA, USA teenagers fared even worse, producing an average score of 474, 24 points below the international average of 498 among the 30 participating industrialized countries.

As in science, U.S. teenagers’ math performance was roughly the same as in 2003, the last time PISA was administered. The USA was 17 points behind the average score for industrialized nations then, meaning the score gap has since widened slightly. 27 non-industrialized nations also took part in the 2006 PISA. USA scores in both math and science ranked below those of several countries considered non-industrialized, including Estonia and Slovenia.

USA - General
Finland, which has shone in worldwide comparisons in recent years, notched the top science score of 563, followed by Canada, Japan, and New Zealand. Finland also landed on top in math. The top-scoring American students’ averages were statistically worse than those for 23 of those nations, and equal to only those of Spain and Portugal. Just four countries - Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Mexico scored lower than USA.

Bad news for the USA was that average performance was poor by world standards. A quarter of 15-year-olds do not even reach basic levels of scientific competence (against an OECD average of a fifth). According to Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's head of education research, Americans are only now realising the scale of the task they face. Many American elected officials and policymakers in recent years have repeatedly voiced worries that USA will gradually lose its international economic edge if students’ math and science skills do not improve, given the flourishing school systems and growing economies in a number of other countries. Business and technology leaders have argued that more USA. students need to be encouraged to acquire, and be provided with, the necessary academic skills to enter math- and science-related professions.

Senta Raizen, who helped direct a recent revision of the science version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally sponsored testing program, said those concerns would likely echo once again with the latest PISA results. But Ms. Raizen said an equally important concern, particularly given the broad science skills PISA measures, was that USA students lack a strong grasp of the overall nature of science, and by extension, an understanding of its role in society.

Ms. Raizen said, "The scores call into question American students’ support for the enterprise of science - their understanding of the importance of the field ...... It’s not just about having more people go into those fields ..... Can kids apply the science knowledge to problems that confront them as citizens?” Gerald F. Wheeler, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, in Arlington, VA., said recent test results have carried the same message: Science is not being emphasized strongly enough in USA. classrooms, and teachers need more resources and skills to deliver sound lessons to students. “Why are we surprised?” Mr. Wheeler said of the scores. “It’s a sad state to be in.”

Conclusion
Average spending in OECD countries on primary and secondary schooling rose by almost two-fifths in real terms between 1995 and 2004. Many wonder why this has had little measurable effect; those who read these pages it is expected! Until content and methodology relate to phases and stages of neurological development, test scores will remain disappointing or worse!

The most improved country went to Poland, an also-ran in 2000. This reflects not increased spending, but successful reforms in 1999, which ended the practice of early selection on ability. By the second study, in 2003, the gains were already noticeable and so marked that OECD statisticians cautioned privately that two data points do not make a trend, and decided to wait and see what happened next time. Further improvements have dispelled all doubts, making Poles the poster children for the proposition that early “tracking” - allocating pupils to different sorts of schools or programme's - hurts weak ones without benefiting the rest. “We have learnt that you can really make a change by bringing weaker performers into more demanding streams,” says Barbara Ischinger, the OECD's director of education.

Letting schools run themselves seems to boost a country's position in this high-stakes international tournament: giving school principals the power to control budgets, set incentives and decide whom to hire and how much to pay them. One of the most important determinants is attracting high-quality teachers: a common factor among all the best performers is that teachers are drawn from the top ranks of graduates. No apologies for stating that dis-empowering teachers as per present UK and USA policies dictates, only produces disastrous results but again administrators refuse to acknowledge this!

It gives me no satisfaction to state that I first described the inevitable consequences of the then present system in the UK as long ago as 1971; similarly in USA, 1981. As I have said repeatedly, at some point administrators in the UK and USA need to examine their own mindsets and realize the policies they are implementing are negating the very freedoms that are necessary to rectify what can only be described as the present horrific situations.

Will this occur? My experience of the last forty years in the UK and USA indicates that the mindsets are so inflexible that changes will not be implemented. The result is that the present damage to children will continue and that UK and USA, as far as students scores are concerned will not increase but will probably fall compared with other OECD countries. Tragically, as far as children's wellbeing is concerned, the UK and USA will remain the worst countries in which to raise children (See http://members.cox.net/tei/teiPages/UK%20UNICF%20Report.htm). Considering that it will take something between 20-30 years for the necessary changes to work through, the situation can be described as desperate and, of course, the present direction is totally the opposite one of the one required so currently the course is still in disaster mode with no improvement in sight.

There is a great deal of information available to clearly indicate that the politicizations and centralization, as per UK and USA, is exactly the wrong direction to take if the objective is to optimize children's wellbeing and learning. It would be uplifting to see the present UK and USA doing better rather than worse but it will not happen until administrators show enough courage to admit what is happening is disastrous for their students but if the present mindsets continue (as they are certain to do) then I will be describing, as I have done for the last thirty years, surveys and reports clearly indicating that the children in both countries are faring badly when compared with the children from other OECD countries.

Tragically for their children, UK and USA administrators continually fail to show the necessary vision and insight that are urgently needed. Obviously, I would like to relate that at some point their mindsets will change from their present state of denial but I see not the slightest movement. UK and USA students do not belong to a different human race; they fare badly because of the UK and USA education systems in which they are educated. Having tried to receive,without success, a positive response for nearly 40 years in UK and 27 years in USA, I am not hopeful.

As Toynbee, the famous British historian, said, “Civilizations decline, not so much because of invasions or other external forces, but because of an internal hardening of ideas…. and there is a loss of creative power in the souls of creative individuals and, in time, the differentiation and diversity that characterized a dynamic civilization, is replaced by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.” UK and USA are examples where this is occurring. What is difficult to understand is that although many administrators in the UK and USA acknowledge the research referenced above they do nothing to help their own countries' children but as Toynbee says that is the story of the decline of civilizations!