England ranks highly on PISA in reading, maths and science
New PISA data out England is now top ten in all three areas (reading, maths, science) and the second highest performing country outside of east Asia (after Estonia). This is a huge public policy success.
Sam Freedman93Devolution created a natural experiment here and we have the results. bsky.app/profile/tom-...
Steven King14What does PISA measure? Could it be that some countries do things that PISA likes and others do it differently? Serious question because I don't know but I do think it's a hard, perhaps subjective, thing to assess.
mwhoyle96.bsky.social13Cannot fathom how the gov want to dismantle this on the pretence that education is somehow driving youth unemployment.
PaulShrews339I started teaching in 2011 and I loathed Michael Gove. Looking back, he got so much right. Education is the single biggest ( maybe only) policy achivement of that 14 year era.
Auckland dweller5So to pass tests, they geared the teaching to passing tests?
Ellie Harris4What do you make of the caveat on sampling? “But the pupils who didn’t respond were “slightly more likely” to speak English as a first language, to have been eligible for free school meals in the last six years and to receive a form of special educational needs support.”
Sam Freedman634One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.
Stephen Bush71It continually blows my mind the sheer number of obviously crackers ideas and excuse-making for failure from the last government that Labour have gone “seems legit!”…while at the same time Labour refuses to acknowledge the real, measurable success in education.
Jack Tindale57"England's schools consistently outperform Finland's ones" is another one of those public policy things where people's priors are massively out of date, isn't it?
Tim Bale11On days like this, thank heavens for not-so-small mercies!
Chris Terry-Enescu10And, amazingly, every political party thinks education needs a huge shake-up
Hannah Fearn8This IS a huge success but we also have a staggering number of children unable to access this high quality education under the current system too. Feels like the two come as a pair.
thepig9938And yet Labour are messing with this as higher education falls over totally
John C7Fundamentally understated that, despite *gestures* we are a very well educated country
Iain Roberts4This is excellent and a challenge to those who think (as I used to) that we don't need a national curriculum. It has its faults, but has undeniably raised standards.
Jim Lauder4Fantastic news. Our education system is world leading. The result of two decades of hard work by teachers and students, and really good policy choices that many others are now emulating.
They'll be a lot of chatter about England's PISA results this morning, but we need to talk just as much about Wales. They rejected phonics and knowledge-rich curricula in favour of 'areas of learning', 'skills suites' and barely any testing. Wales is now 40 points below England in every domain.
Tom Richmond14I'm also pretty convinced that Wales allowing schools to design their own curriculum to encourage them to "build their own vision for their learners" and provide "space for practitioners to be creative" is not a sensible way to improve national standards or build pupils' knowledge and understanding.
mattevansc3.bsky.social11Unless they are teaching phonics at 12 years old, those changes wouldn’t have impacted 15 year olds in 2025. The new curriculum removed assessments for primary schools. The 15 year olds in 2025 weren’t in primary schools when the new curriculum was introduced.
Laura McInerney11I’m still interested in the so what for this, though… Do we think it will materially affect their GDP? Or is it possible they traded results for a more chill life and it has no real effect?!
Hib Bird3I'd be very worried about bilingualism being scapegoated in all this. That doesn't seem to be where the problem is but it won't stop some people trying.
Rob Aitken1Requiring primary schools to teach phonics and times tables can both improve overall results and fail a significant minority of pupils. For instance dyslexic children are taught they are stupid and failing as they cannot learn phonics or memorise times tables. Taught other ways they can excel.
Slnieckar1I'm guessing that these skills suites are things Pisa is not designed to measure, though?
Sam Freedman93Devolution created a natural experiment here and we have the results. bsky.app/profile/tom-...
Gerry Doyle10wales aside... I guess having some point of comparison is better than none, but I think pisa scores (and standardized testing in general) are kind of silly -- you can absolutely study for the test, and many countries are laser focused on this
LeithMotive4Devolved governments really fuck up education, don't they? Why? Default rejection of what works because England does it and they have a political need to differentiate from the national government?
Mark Wallace3You couldn’t get a better and more comparable mass experiment in the real world than this. The conclusions are clear, and yet the action is going in the wrong direction. bsky.app/profile/tom-...
