PISA Rows

Every few years of so, there is a row caused by the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) scores ....

Anti-American Headline For No Reason ....

 

..... these are measures of educational attainment for 15 year olds across the globe.

Grim Reading (aka Taking The Pisa)

Once again the failings in the UK’s dumbed down education system have been exposed. I say ‘dumbed down’, because there was and is a school of thought (what an inappropriate term), amongst educationalists that got a grip on the education system a couple of decades ago, and that said that ‘no one is to be left behind’. So it abandoned streaming classes on the ability of the children, and pretended instead, in a socialist sort of way, that all are equal. Let us therefore have 'multi-achievement' level kids in every class, and teach at the speed of the stupidest.

Grim Reading For The Educational Establishment.

Well the results are there for all to see – an education system that was once one of the best and most admired in the world. That once produced some of the brightest and best minds in the world; now languishing in 23rd spot in the Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment), educational attainment tests, world league table- which are run by the O.E.C.D think tank.  And before the Celtic fringe in the (still) United Kingdom starting wittering on about the ‘special’ education that they offer, now that they are free of the ‘English’ … please note that:

The Marked Decline Of The West

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are a way of comparing like with like across international educational systems. Sadly their biggest attainment has been to expose the West's decline into mediocrity ......  and the rise of Asia.

In the West generally and the UK in particular we have constantly chosen the lowest common denominator as our bench marks for educational standards, and boy is it now showing on our streets. Of course one measure of this is our relative economic performance, and all this is reflected now in the international educational performance leagues. Our last leader in any of the key fields was plucky Finland.

In the triennial Pisa tests, those taken by 15-year-olds are in reading, maths and science. The previous leaders in these subjects are:

• 2000: Finland, Japan, South Korea.
• 2003: Finland, Hong Kong, Finland.
• 2006: South Korea, Taipei, Finland.
• 2009: Shanghai, Shanghai, Shanghai.

The Leaders Of Tomorrow (or is that Today?)

This years results are expected to reinforce the dominance of China, with more evidence that all over that nation the educational system is producing the scientists and engineers of the coming century. All this in the space of little more than twenty five years.

So what are we doing about it? Nothing, which is why the UK will disappear as a nation of any worth inside the next twenty five years. When my generation, which was educated in a different more rigorous system, is gone, or senile, the lights may well be turned off in the West.