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  All the parts of a system need to be consistent with each other: even if you have a fantastic central curriculum, carefully designed for mastery of concepts, few will pay any attention to it if there are high-stakes exams which can be aced by rote learning and teaching to the test. The principles above are mutually reinforcing, and though they were addressed in different ways in the different places I visited, they acted together in these systems to bring about high-quality, equitable education in the subjects of maths, reading and science.255

  In general, it is better to pursue these principles in a way that suits your context, and to take inspiration from the particular methods that other countries have used, rather than copying them outright. One example of this that has proved successful is the use of a ‘Maths Mastery’ programme by a group of English primary and secondary schools, which is based on the approach to mathematics teaching in Singapore. What distinguishes this from a normal British maths programme is that fewer topics are covered in greater depth (Principle 2), every child is expected to reach a certain level before the class move on (Principle 3), it is accompanied by a professional development programme for teachers (Principle 4) and the sharing of best practice amongst a network of schools (Principle 5).

  Two British researchers carried out a randomised control trial (the gold standard of research methods) evaluating the impact of this programme in 87 primary schools and 50 secondary schools after one year, and found that it had a modest but significantly positive effect, which they estimate would lead to non-trivial economic returns (i.e. its effects would lead to lifetime earnings significantly outweighing the cost of the programme).256

  But what if you don’t care about economic returns? What about everything else? Education is about more than just maths after all. Are these principles at odds with other important things? In the next chapter, we will consider whether these approaches necessitate trade-offs.

  Chapter 18: Trade-Offs?

  I don’t have children yet. But I’ve been imagining all the way around the world whether I’d like to send my future children to the schools that I visited, to be educated in these high-achieving systems.

  I’d like my children to be excellent readers and solid mathematicians, just like the vast majority of American parents said they did in a recent national survey.257 I want them to have a good understanding of science too (I’d be embarrassed if they didn’t given that I was a science teacher), but I don’t know if I want them to be doctors, lawyers or engineers like 38 per cent of parents in a worldwide survey did258 – I’ve not even met them yet. So far, all of this is consistent with the five principles underlying the education systems of our five top-performing countries.

  I’d also like them to have a broader education. They may not be good at art or dance if talent in those subjects has anything to do with genetics, but I’d like them to throw themselves into the creative arts, and learn to express themselves through these mediums. I’d like them to come home from school covered in mud from a rugby game, or stinking of BO after their basketball match, and I wouldn’t mind if they came home a bit late to accomplish that. I’d also like their school to encourage them to think about their community, their society and their role within it, and for them to be held to high standards of moral conduct. None of these things are ruled out by sending them to a school in a system that gets high PISA scores.

  Children in Canada, Finland and Japan spend less time per week than the average OECD country does on maths, science and language-of-instruction lessons, leaving ample time for other things. Children in Shanghai and Singapore do spend more time in these subjects than the OECD average, but in Shanghai it’s only six minutes weekly more than American students, and 25 minutes more than British students – not enough to significantly narrow the rest of the curriculum. Even at junior high level, when Chinese students are preparing for their high school entrance exams, they have lessons in politics, Chinese, maths, a foreign language, history, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, physical education, music, art and household skills. And I’d be particularly pleased about my children learning that last one.

  What are the trade-offs then? Are these systems getting these high results without having to compromise on anything at all? If other systems were to apply the principles outlined in the last chapter, their PISA scores might rise, but at what cost?

  Jobs and Vocational Education

  You’re 14, you struggle at maths, and there’s no way you want to stay in school past 15 or 16 to do anything that requires sitting at a desk – which has been the only option ‘marketed’ to you by your teachers. You’re therefore not that fussed about doing your homework, or paying attention in class. If, on the other hand, there was a well-regarded vocational institution not that far away from your auntie’s place that taught car mechanics, which is what you’ve always wanted to do, but that only lets you in with a minimum grade in maths and English and a decent report from your teachers, well, you’ll try considerably harder.

  Having high-quality vocational training available has obvious advantages beyond giving those who don’t want to continue with academia a reason to study. Employability is the one that will no doubt spring first to your mind, but there is a less functional, more fundamental reason why governments ought to invest in this too: education should be for all. It shouldn’t be a ladder to university, with those who can’t or don’t want to get there falling off at different rungs onto the pavement of unemployment; it should be a tree, with a trunk of essential knowledge leading to various, valued branches of specialisms, encompassing the full range of potential vocations.

  As previously argued, I don’t think that trunk should split off into different branches until children are about 15, for two reasons. In the 21st century, jobs increasingly require employees to be more educated. Whereas a primary-school education might have been enough for the loggers and factory workers of the 20th century, their grandchildren require more cognitive skills to do the jobs that have not been replaced by machines, and deserve to experience the fruits of education just like everyone else. Secondly, splitting into different routes before this increases the impact of parental background on test scores, which is fine if your parents are doctors, but unfairly limits your options if your parents are uneducated, unemployed, or absent all together. Leaving selection into academic and vocational tracks until after lower secondary school is also not at odds with better employment outcomes.259

  Beyond 15, Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Singapore have separate vocational schools, which specialise in various forms of technical and vocational education. In Finland and Singapore, these can subsequently lead to tertiary-level education, and in both countries, some children who would qualify for academic high schools choose instead to go to the technical institutes – a sign that attitudes towards them are changing. In most provinces in Canada, children can also go to high schools that provide both academic and vocational education, allowing them to combine courses from both before deciding what to specialise in beyond high school. This trip broadened my ambitions for an education system – rather than solely focusing on getting students from poor backgrounds into university, we should ensure we provide excellent educational opportunities for those who choose not to go, whatever background they’re from. Thankfully, high-quality academic outcomes in a system are not at odds with the provision of high quality vocational education – if anything they complement one another.

  Enjoyment of School and Learning

  There is a widely held belief in the West that in East Asia students are high-performing but miserable, all enjoyment of learning drilled out of them by boring teachers and constant testing. I hope I’ve shown you that it’s a bit more complex than that. Students in Singapore, Shanghai and Japan are under a lot of pressure, but they are not all miserable; in fact, many of them actually enjoy school, and are more interested in their school subjects than Brits or Americans. The results of questionnaires that were given to students along with the PISA test help to illustrate t
his, as they asked them some interesting questions on their feelings about school.

  Figure 5: Student-reported happiness265

  Figure 6: Student-reported interest in mathematics266

  You can see that students in Shanghai, Singapore and Japan actually report enjoying school more than students in Canada, Finland, the UK and the US (although Korea – another high-performing Asian country, lands right at the bottom of this chart). Having a high-performing education system neither precludes children from enjoying school, but (as the case of Finland indicates) nor does it guarantee it.

  It is a similar story with intrinsic motivation; more Shanghainese and Singaporeans said they were interested in the things they learned in mathematics than any of the other countries looked at in this book. You’ll remember the two suggested reasons for this as discussed when we were in China: that students there have internalised the importance of education, so are working hard of their own volition, and that mastering a topic or a subject leads to its own intrinsic enjoyment. Our stereotypes about Asian education systems are misinformed; they are not all exam hellholes, devoid of joy and deep learning, and nor are they all the same.

  Nevertheless, there is self-evidently a lot of pressure put on children in these countries; parents I met in Singapore and Shanghai lamented that their children had to study so hard, and saw it as a necessary evil given the education system they were a part of. I wonder whether a high number of children in Shanghai and Singapore find school relatively enjoyable because it is more fun than what they are doing when they’re not at school – studying (and conversely perhaps Finnish children rate school as relatively less enjoyable because when they’re not there they’re playing in the woods). Here is one trade-off between high performance and something else we value. Having an education system with key exams that have high stakes for the pupils (like the gaokao in China, or the PLSE in Singapore) was not one of the principles I drew upon to illustrate the key features of high-performing systems, because it was not common to Finland and Canada. However, this pressure no doubt contributes to parents’ tendency to seek out extra homework and extra tuition for their children, and subsequently raises both their scores and their stress levels. It is no surprise then that East Asian jurisdictions dominate the top of the PISA tables.

  What if the government of a non-Asian country was willing to put the children in their care under this much pressure, in order to ‘beat the Chinese’? They can certainly try, but it’s unlikely to be worth the hassle. Most of the pressure in East Asian countries comes from the parents’ response to these exams; they hold academic education in high regard, they recognise the long-term impact of their children’s exam performance, and are typically competitive. Unless you can somehow get the parents in your country to think like this too, and to take leave from their jobs to privately coach their children in big exam years, you won’t be catching up any time soon.

  I do think that cultures can change, but it might be more productive to focus on changing the culture within schools rather than changing the values and behaviours of all the adults that have chosen to reproduce. This will limit non-Asian nations’ ability to reach the top of the PISA charts, but I don’t personally think this is a problem. Much better to focus on changing the things you can change, reach the PISA top 15 perhaps, and then focus on growing your nation’s talent in the things that the Chinese aren’t winning at (yet).

  21st-Century Skills

  With the exception of expertise in the most recent information technology, ‘21st-century skills’ existed well before the 21st century. Skills often referred to under this label include problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, and creativity; skills that our ancestors have been making use of for centuries. There has been a renewed focus on these skills more recently because a greater proportion of the jobs of the present and the future rely on them – and to a greater degree – than they ever did before.

  I’m not going to attempt to go into any detail about how education systems should best address the teaching of these skills – that is not the subject of this book – but I will address the question of whether the approaches to high-performing education systems suggested in the previous chapter are at odds with their development. Is there a trade-off between high-quality academic outcomes and 21st-century skills? Some people have suggested that there is – they see the high performances of the East Asian countries, and the fact that their own governments have been lamenting the lack of creativity and critical thinking amongst their young people, and they assume that the same things that lead to their high performance are the cause of these concerns. There is some truth in this, but I don’t believe it’s the whole picture.

  The same feature of these systems that puts children under great pressure is the one that stifles creativity and critical thinking – the high-stakes exam culture. In such a culture, where a few exams can have such a dramatic effect on your educational opportunities and subsequent job prospects, there isn’t much space for alternative answers that are not on the mark scheme. While for mathematics, and to some extent science, this is less of a problem (I have to agree with Rony that while it is good to find different ways of reaching the answer, getting answers wrong in maths is not ‘creative’), educating for standardised tests in language, literature, history and politics discourages divergent and critical thinking, and encourages teaching children the mark scheme. Combine this with learning in countries where the governments are wary of criticism (Singapore and China) or where conformity is prized (Japan) and there is even less incentive for teachers to encourage children to think outside the box.

  This is not an inevitable consequence of having standardised tests – only of aligning incentives for teachers and students to focus on the tests exclusively, at the expense of deeper, broader or more applied learning. Both Shanghai and Singapore are attempting to move away from this exclusive focus, and have adapted their curricula to encourage more focus within lessons on the children applying what they learn and discussing what they think about it. A common mantra in Shanghai is now ‘to every question there should be more than a single answer’. Singapore and Japan both made a decision to cut down on the content in their curricula to make time for this kind of learning. Japan also tried to encourage more 21st-century skills by introducing separate inter-curricular lessons more than a decade ago.

  Whether teachers actually follow any of this guidance though, when the high-stakes tests remain, is the crucial question. Several teachers I spoke with in Singapore and Shanghai told me that what they really needed to focus on was preparing students for the test, as that is what the parents know and care most about – something the respective governments are battling to address. In Japan, research on the ‘relaxed education’ curriculum suggested that while primary teachers embraced it (possibly enabled by the lack of primary-school exams), teachers at junior high school and high school got away with doing as little of it as they could.

  With a complete absence of national exams in primary and junior high school, Finnish teachers have the freedom to teach and assess in a way that they think best meets the demands of the curriculum and the needs of their children. Canadian provinces offer an example of a balanced use of standardised testing – irregular provincial tests at elementary and middle school that have no impact on the children but act as a ‘dip stick’ to see how schools are doing and where they need intervention and support, and then yearly provincial exams in high school, which make up the credits for about half of each student’s school leaving certificate, along with teacher-graded courses. This leaves space for teaching beyond the test, and for more nuanced assessment of skills that can take place over a longer period of time.

  An Enhancement, Not a Replacement

  Japan put the brakes on its ‘relaxed education’ when it noticed that its PISA results were going down, re-introduced material that it had formerly cut out of the curriculum and reintroduced Saturday schools. Is there a trade-off between international test scores and 2
1st-century skills? It appears to me that there might be a quantitative one. In any school year there is a finite amount of time; the number of hours spent on learning and understanding new content is in direct competition with the number of hours spent applying, thinking critically about, and working creatively with that content.

  This can all be happening within the same lessons, with one type of learning leading on seamlessly from the other, but both take up time. Writing an extended essay that requires you to make the case for your own interpretation of who was to blame for the Cold War, based on a thorough understanding of the events at the time and a discussion of secondary sources, takes significantly longer than learning those facts by heart, and learning what points to make in an exam essay. Using what you’ve just learned about heat transfer to design a super-cool lunch box or explain to your classmates how double-glazing works takes longer than learning definitions of different types of conduction. In each of these cases, 21st-century skills are developed by expanding the time on each topic and deepening the learning through creative or critical application.

  There are a couple of seemingly clever solutions to this time trade-off. One is to dismiss the need for knowledge all together, and just focus on teaching the skills – after all, if I want to know anything I can look it up on Google. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t work, because skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity rely on domain-specific knowledge to be of any use. If I’m able to think critically about education systems, it’s largely because I know a lot about them. I couldn’t contribute any intelligent comment however on a debate about whether or not Scotland should become independent from the UK, because I don’t know enough about economics, or Scotland. My partner is a doctor and can solve many medical problems, but he won’t be the first person I go to when I need help with marketing this book, because he doesn’t know much about the book industry, or marketing.