— Christine Blower, general secretary of the United Kingdom’s National Union of Teachers - which, along with the UK’s other main teachers union, is threatening to strike
— Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at a debate among ministers of education and science and technology from 10 African countries
Singapore, often one of the top-performing countries on international assessments, is moving away from memorizing facts to an emphasis on creativity in learning, reports the BBC.
So what does this look like? For one of the country’s top schools, it meant taking a “learning journey” through a park for a science lesson. Students “photographed ‘evidence’ on smartphones and digital cameras, soaking up facts on plant and animal species on their iPads,” according to the BBC:
”In one activity, I can cover three topics,” said science teacher Lin Lixun, clad in a white laboratory coat for his role as chief investigator.
”They can really learn through hands-on experience and putting things into action,” said civics and moral education teacher, Joslyn Huang.
A program pioneered by India’s poorest state, Bihar, is spreading across the country in an effort to keep female teens in school. When girls reach ninth grade, they can get a bike paid for by the state, reports the Associated Press.
This seemingly simple act is making a big difference. After the first four years of the program, which began in 2007, the number of girls enrolled in ninth grade tripled from 175,000 to 600,000.
“We found that the high school dropout rate soared when girls reached the ninth grade. This was primarily because there are fewer high schools and girls had to travel longer distances to get to school,” Anjani Kumar Singh, Bihar’s principal secretary overseeing education, told the AP. “The results are remarkable. The school dropout rate for girls has plunged”
The United States is not alone in its debate over whether teachers should be paid based on results, rather than credentials and years of experience. But, as critics of performance pay are quick to point out, there’s no research evidence that linking student achievement with teacher pay improves performance. A recent international comparison done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) bolsters this argument, finding no relationship between student performance on tests given internationally and the teacher salary scheme used by the country.
About half of OECD countries use some kind of performance pay, whether for deciding what a teacher’s base salary should be or for giving bonuses. The report concludes that “some high-performing education systems use performance-based pay, while others don’t.”
That’s not to say teacher salary doesn’t matter - it depends on how well paid teachers are in general: “In countries with comparatively low teachers’ salaries (less than 15 [percent] above GDP per capita), student performance tends to be better when performance-based pay systems are in place, while in countries where teachers are relatively well paid (more than 15 [percent] above GDP per capita), the opposite is true.”
— Hamzat Lawal, a political science student at Nigeria’s University of Abuja quoted in the Global Post. With too few seats for all the students who want to go to college in Nigeria, bribes to universities are becoming a de facto part of the admissions process. It took Lawal four years to get into school, despite getting passing grades on college admissions tests.
Forty-two percent of Chile’s newest teachers don’t have adequate teaching skills. And 69 percent don’t know the teaching curriculum. At least, those are the findings from the Chilean Education Ministry’s Inicia 2011 test, which is given to newly graduated teachers, according to the Santiago Times.
The test, for now, is voluntary and was taken by 3,271 recent graduates. Eight percent of teachers were rated as outstanding based on their teaching skills. Just 2 percent - or 25 teachers-to-be - received the highest possible rating for their knowledge of subjects in the curriculum.
“What’s important here are the students,” Education Minister Harald Beyer said at a news conference. “They deserve better teachers and we should have high quality and equal education.”
— Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development who oversees the Programme for International Student Assessment.
Not at all, according to an op-ed in the Guardian, which criticizes Francois Holland, the newly elected president of France, as well as the entire election. Holland and his main opponent, current president Nicolas Sarkozy, seemed “totally disconnected from critical challenges in which France is failing in every possible way,” the piece argues. The main take away? Don’t look for innovation under Holland’s presidency.
Take higher education. The failure is unequivocal, regardless of political leanings. France might have about 80 universities, most of them second or third rate and producing mostly unemployable people. And if you dare a transatlantic comparison, you generate killer statistics. France’s budget for higher education and research is the equivalent of Harvard University’s endowment (€24bn or $31bn for French universities and public laboratories and $32bn of cash reserves for Harvard). Overall, France’s spending per student is less than half of the US – and 15 times less if you compare to the Ivy League colleges. French faculty members, unions and politicians have made their best efforts to disconnect universities from the business world. They’ve been remarkably successful. As a result, Gallic colleges have become poorer, and largely unable to cope with the legions of students that land onto their benches, facing underpaid and unmotivated professors.
The Hechinger Report is focusing its attention on international education. We've sent reporters around the world and are keeping tabs on education struggles and success stories across the globe.
For more in-depth coverage visit our special section at The Report.
