Sharon Johnston

As an alternative to the advice offered by @teacherhead here, is a different statement I suggest that @LucyMPowell might make. The PISA results for England are out. Given their outlier nature, they should be treated with interest and care. The data certainly do not justify a policy of more direct instruction and super-strict behaviour management in what is becoming a global policy business for former Ministers @michaelgove & @NickGibbUK and adviser @tombennett71. First, as my measurement colleagues tell me at Stanford, in Canada, & elsewhere, the skills that @OECDEduSkills PISA claims to measure are not achieved through direct instruction. Even if England's PISA results are valid and authentic, they are not a mandate for more direct instruction. If indeed the results are valid, congratulations to all those teachers who have successfully taught the applied and creative knowledge that PISA claims to measure, despite the policy directions of my political predecessors to the contrary. Second, consider that Englands PISA results may be less valid and reliable than is claimed by the direct instruction advocates. The sample size submitted by the previous government compared to Wales and Scotland was so low that, for OECD, it became a borderline case of whether it would qualify at all. The same problems are evident in the US. The sample also appears to be biased in terms of unusually high numbers of exclusions of FSM pupils. Furthermore, most of the gains, it seems, come from young people in higher socioeconomic groups. Excellence is not being accompanied by equity. Performance in lower groups is not significantly different from the trajectory in other countries. PISA is measuring England's better-off pupils against a wider range of pupils elsewhere. Note also that neither Canada nor the Republic of Ireland have results strikingly different from England's but have historic commitments to care and support rather than strictness and exclusion, and certainly they have no tradition of direct instruction or recent initiatives in that direction. Claiming that England's PISA results are the consequence of a Conservative push for more direct instruction therefore has no basis in evidence. As a government, we are very concerned about the 20 year PISA decline in almost all Western nations of which Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada and others are a part. Young people everywhere are suffering from widening inequalities, conflict and displacement, the distractions and addictions of digital technologies among their parents as well as themselves, and the lingering mental health consequences of the worst pandemic in a century that our PISA performers experienced for two years when they were just 10-12 years old. A bit more phonics or strictness is not going to be the answer to these global trends - especially when the UK's young people are among the worst in the world on happiness and wellbeing indicators. As a government, we vow to raise performance for everyone, not just the few. We are committed to authentic participation and proper sampling in PISA, and to working in partnership with our UK colleagues and their systems to build a brighter future for all our young people. We believe that vocational education, and projects that get children using head, heart and hand together, should begin for all children in primary school, and not just be reserved for those at 14 who have been unsuccessful in traditional academics. We believe in wellbeing policies that don't just support or compensate for approaches to learning that disengage young people, but in policies that will rest on having more stimulating and engaging learning for all young people and their teachers. We take these PISA points seriously, but most of all, with other Western nations, we are committed to securing educational quality for all young people. We are committed to increasing engagement of pupils and teachers along with achievement. We are committed to parity of esteem for all forms of knowledge from the earliest years, not just after 14. And we are committed to open enquiry and transparency regarding all forms of data concerning our young people's achievement. The consequences of decades of neo-liberalism of which our PM has spoken so eloquently, have left our young people exposed too much to narrow targets and testing, and to restricted ideas about what our teachers are capable of accomplishing in their classrooms. Our world is in manifest disrepair. We will not fix it with a bit more phonics or by tightening up on strictness. Quick political fixes and lucrative global careers for those who advance them are not what our young people need and deserve now. They need a government who will face head on what is happening to our democracies in our schools as well as beyond them. Greater equality, better opportunity, in a system that brings head, hand and heart together for all young people, with proper public funding behind it, and honesty rather than trickery about what all the data mean, is what we will set out to accomplish. @jon_severs @CharteredColl @dizdarm @steve_munby @LesWalton500 @LucyMPowell @greg_ashman @NAHTnews