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China’s poorest beat our best pupils
Children of factory workers and cleaners in Far East achieve better exam results than offspring of British lawyers and doctors, says OECD
British schoolchildren are lagging so far behind their peers in the Far East that even pupils from wealthy backgrounds are now performing worse in exams than the poorest students in China, an international study shows.
The children of factory workers and cleaners in parts of the Far East are more than a year ahead of the offspring of British doctors and lawyers, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Researchers said the study, which looked at the performance of 15-year-olds in mathematics, showed countries to could overcome traditional social class divides to raise education standards among relatively deprived pupils.
The report was published as a senior European Commission politician attacked the standards of British schools and warned that UK politicians must improve the education system before focusing on changing the country’s relationship with the EU.
Viviane Reding, the vice-president of the European Commission, warned that ministers should focus on raising school standards instead of blaming the country’s problems on foreigners. In a speech in Cambridge she suggested that the UK’s poor education system is the reason Britons cannot compete with foreigners for jobs. She said politicians needed to “work on the quality of education and welfare, so that people in this country can find employment and enjoy reasonable social standards”.
The OECD findings underline the extent to which British pupils now lag behind their peers in high-performing countries in subjects seen as vital to the nation’s economic future and will intensify calls for the UK to adopt a more rigorous education system.
Elizabeth Truss, the education minister, will next week lead a delegation of head teachers and education experts to China in a fact-finding mission. The visit could lead to schools adopting Chinese-style tactics such as more evening classes and eliminating time-wasting between lessons to boost performance in key subjects.
She said English schools needed to adopt the “teaching practices and positive philosophy” that characterised schools in parts of the Far East.
“They have a can-do attitude to maths, which contrasts with the long-term anti-maths culture that exists here,” she said.
“The reality is that unless we change our philosophy, and get better at maths, we will suffer economic decline. At the moment our performance in maths is weakening our skills base and threatening our productivity and growth.” The OECD study was based on performance in independently-administered exams in reading, maths and science sat by 15-year-olds in 65 developed nations.
Overall, the UK was ranked just 26th for maths, 23rd for reading and 21st for science while China’s Shanghai district was the top-rated jurisdiction in each subject. The study assessed how students would be able to use their maths knowledge and skills in real life, rather than just repeating facts and figures.
As part of the study, children were asked to name their parents’ occupation to determine its effect on pupil performance. Across the world, children whose parents work in professional careers generally outperform those in elementary jobs such as caterers, cleaners, factory workers and labourers.
The study, involving more than 500,000 pupils worldwide, found children of elementary workers in many Far Eastern nations outperformed the sons and daughters of professional British children.
The children of UK professionals scored an average of 526 points in maths. But this was overshadowed by an average score of 656 registered by the children of professionals in Shanghai-China and 569 among children of the country’s elementary workers. The children of parents in unskilled jobs in the UK scored an average of 461, the equivalent of two and a half years behind.
Elementary workers’ children in Hong Kong (542), South Korea (538) and Singapore (534), also outperformed more affluent British peers. In Japan, Vietnam, Liechtenstein, Japan and China-Taipei, relatively poor children were only marginally behind the wealthiest British pupils.
The report said: “In the United States and the United Kingdom, where professionals are among the highest-paid in the world, students whose parents work as professionals do not perform as well in mathematics as children of professionals in other countries — nor do they perform as we as the children in Shanghai-China and Singapore whose parents work in manual occupations.”
Andreas Schleicher, deputy director for education and skills at the OECD, said: “If school systems want all their students to succeed in school, they should give the children of factory workers and cleaners the same education opportunities as the children of doctors and lawyers enjoy.”
The delegation to China will include Dame Rachel de Souza, of the Inspiration Trust academies group in Norfolk, Shahed Ahmed, who runs Elmhurst Primary School in east London, and Charlie Stripp, of Mathematics in Education and Industry.
China’s poorest beat our best pupils - Telegraph
Shocking but not altogether surprising. The western system has its merits such as encouraging critical thinking, scientific inquiry and innovation (hence most Nobel laureates still hail from the Western hemisphere) but the overall dumbing down of education and proliferation of mickey mouse degrees in recent years are leaving young people in the West increasingly ill equipped to compete with their Asian counterparts particularly in technical disciplines...
Children of factory workers and cleaners in Far East achieve better exam results than offspring of British lawyers and doctors, says OECD
British schoolchildren are lagging so far behind their peers in the Far East that even pupils from wealthy backgrounds are now performing worse in exams than the poorest students in China, an international study shows.
The children of factory workers and cleaners in parts of the Far East are more than a year ahead of the offspring of British doctors and lawyers, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Researchers said the study, which looked at the performance of 15-year-olds in mathematics, showed countries to could overcome traditional social class divides to raise education standards among relatively deprived pupils.
The report was published as a senior European Commission politician attacked the standards of British schools and warned that UK politicians must improve the education system before focusing on changing the country’s relationship with the EU.
Viviane Reding, the vice-president of the European Commission, warned that ministers should focus on raising school standards instead of blaming the country’s problems on foreigners. In a speech in Cambridge she suggested that the UK’s poor education system is the reason Britons cannot compete with foreigners for jobs. She said politicians needed to “work on the quality of education and welfare, so that people in this country can find employment and enjoy reasonable social standards”.
The OECD findings underline the extent to which British pupils now lag behind their peers in high-performing countries in subjects seen as vital to the nation’s economic future and will intensify calls for the UK to adopt a more rigorous education system.
Elizabeth Truss, the education minister, will next week lead a delegation of head teachers and education experts to China in a fact-finding mission. The visit could lead to schools adopting Chinese-style tactics such as more evening classes and eliminating time-wasting between lessons to boost performance in key subjects.
She said English schools needed to adopt the “teaching practices and positive philosophy” that characterised schools in parts of the Far East.
“They have a can-do attitude to maths, which contrasts with the long-term anti-maths culture that exists here,” she said.
“The reality is that unless we change our philosophy, and get better at maths, we will suffer economic decline. At the moment our performance in maths is weakening our skills base and threatening our productivity and growth.” The OECD study was based on performance in independently-administered exams in reading, maths and science sat by 15-year-olds in 65 developed nations.
Overall, the UK was ranked just 26th for maths, 23rd for reading and 21st for science while China’s Shanghai district was the top-rated jurisdiction in each subject. The study assessed how students would be able to use their maths knowledge and skills in real life, rather than just repeating facts and figures.
As part of the study, children were asked to name their parents’ occupation to determine its effect on pupil performance. Across the world, children whose parents work in professional careers generally outperform those in elementary jobs such as caterers, cleaners, factory workers and labourers.
The study, involving more than 500,000 pupils worldwide, found children of elementary workers in many Far Eastern nations outperformed the sons and daughters of professional British children.
The children of UK professionals scored an average of 526 points in maths. But this was overshadowed by an average score of 656 registered by the children of professionals in Shanghai-China and 569 among children of the country’s elementary workers. The children of parents in unskilled jobs in the UK scored an average of 461, the equivalent of two and a half years behind.
Elementary workers’ children in Hong Kong (542), South Korea (538) and Singapore (534), also outperformed more affluent British peers. In Japan, Vietnam, Liechtenstein, Japan and China-Taipei, relatively poor children were only marginally behind the wealthiest British pupils.
The report said: “In the United States and the United Kingdom, where professionals are among the highest-paid in the world, students whose parents work as professionals do not perform as well in mathematics as children of professionals in other countries — nor do they perform as we as the children in Shanghai-China and Singapore whose parents work in manual occupations.”
Andreas Schleicher, deputy director for education and skills at the OECD, said: “If school systems want all their students to succeed in school, they should give the children of factory workers and cleaners the same education opportunities as the children of doctors and lawyers enjoy.”
The delegation to China will include Dame Rachel de Souza, of the Inspiration Trust academies group in Norfolk, Shahed Ahmed, who runs Elmhurst Primary School in east London, and Charlie Stripp, of Mathematics in Education and Industry.
China’s poorest beat our best pupils - Telegraph
Shocking but not altogether surprising. The western system has its merits such as encouraging critical thinking, scientific inquiry and innovation (hence most Nobel laureates still hail from the Western hemisphere) but the overall dumbing down of education and proliferation of mickey mouse degrees in recent years are leaving young people in the West increasingly ill equipped to compete with their Asian counterparts particularly in technical disciplines...
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