Interesting PISA opinion

seavill

Interesting article re PISA. Plenty to consider

"Comparing literacy and numeracy levels between China and Ireland is not ‘apples and oranges’. It is more like ‘apples and potatoes’. China’s education ministry was allowed to select one city – Shanghai – to represent the whole country, ignoring hundreds of millions of other students. As well as that, the government was allowed to hand-pick the 100 ‘best schools’ in Shanghai. There, 15-year-olds attend school for 12 hours each day and the nature of teaching and learning is so different from ours that any comparisons are no greater than a curiosity.

Canada was represented by two provinces – Alberta and Ontario – and it was no coincidence that they have better literacy and numeracy outcomes than the country’s other provinces. Many Irish 15-year-olds appraised by PISA did not complete the assessment papers, were unaware of the significance of the task and, not unusually for teenagers, left well before the allocated time. If these issues alone were addressed through better supervision, they would have had a significant impact on the Irish ranking."

Link
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/education/2012/0508/1224315740260.html

The author believes we should possibly withdraw from PISA, any opinions?

carolzoo

very informative post seavill -thanks!

very interesting.

Apparently irish students do not take pisa seriously at all, just an exercise to get done or not done as fast as possible.

seavill

carolzoo wrote: »

very informative post seavill -thanks!

very interesting.

Apparently irish students do not take pisa seriously at all, just an exercise to get done or not done as fast as possible.

Yes that seems to be the case and in reality who can blame them. It has no relevance to them, no matter how much emphasis the principal tries to put on it.

Kids go to school looking at the JC and the LC and everything else is irrelevant. I think I read somewhere before that there is a long written section involved in this also.
Think back to when we were that age, if you were given a written section of an hour or two that wasn't your JC would you really care?

I think the main point is some countries are cherry picking the students, if we all did that imagine the results we could get.

Our school took part in PISA in the past and there was a full mix of students picked at random. I can guarantee that it was completely random, if we were to take the line of China etc. some of these students would not have been left do the exam.

carolzoo

exactly and they probably know they get nothing out of it and perhaps feel used as guinea pigs in a way.

Very unfair if we are being compared to the likes of China so!

Icaras

Is this not the important bit "Then, in 2009, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that the standard of literacy and numeracy among 15-year-olds in Ireland had dropped dramatically since the previous assessment"? Or was this already known through other means and JC results?

Does anyone know what the numbers were and what they dropped to?

rainbowtrout

Icaras wrote: »

Is this not the important bit "Then, in 2009, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that the standard of literacy and numeracy among 15-year-olds in Ireland had dropped dramatically since the previous assessment"? Or was this already known through other means and JC results?

Does anyone know what the numbers were and what they dropped to?

Wasn't that in comparison to the previous PISA assessment? I think Ireland was somewhere in the middle in 2009, can remember the number 15 being bandied about, and prior to that had been in the top 10.

This is the 2009 report they were probably quoting from:

http://www.erc.ie/documents/p09national_summary_report2009.pdf

It says since 2000 we have dropped from 5th to 17th overall. (page 7)

This decline is the largest across all 39 countries that participated in both PISA 2000
and PISA 20095, resulting in Ireland’s rank falling from 5th to 17th among such
countries

Again of course like seavill said below, if you are allowed to cherry pick you can skew the results no bother.

seavill

Icaras wrote: »

Is this not the important bit "Then, in 2009, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that the standard of literacy and numeracy among 15-year-olds in Ireland had dropped dramatically since the previous assessment"? Or was this already known through other means and JC results?

Does anyone know what the numbers were and what they dropped to?

But is the whole point of the article. Our numbers are compared against other nations. We have dropped down the table that is what they are saying.

The article points out that we dropped where others who cherry pick the students to do the exam went ahead of us.

If we did as china and Canada did and picked our 200 brightest students in the country to do the test. All the articles a few months ago would be saying how our levels have risen as we were 3rd in the table for example.
It's all relative.

ardmacha

While I wouldn't be surprised at China fiddling the figures, Alberta or Ontario are large places and there is no reason why Ireland should not be compared with these. These issues don't explain a drop in Ireland's performance. If people are blaming the students, then is a failure of students to make an effort when representing the country not also a form of failure of the education system?

seavill

ardmacha wrote: »

While I wouldn't be surprised at China fiddling the figures, Alberta or Ontario are large places and there is no reason why Ireland should not be compared with these. These issues don't explain a drop in Ireland's performance. If people are blaming the students, then is a failure of students to make an effort when representing the country not also a form of failure of the education system?

Why should Ireland be compared with Alberta or Ontario if they are also fiddling the figures as has been claimed in this article.
You seem to accept China doing it so going on the article Canada are also doing it.
Ireland are not doing it. So the comparison is not equitable. If it was I have no problem comparing us with anywhere but if as the article is true the system is a farce.

They do explain a drop in Ireland's performance. I do not understand how they do not. If in recent years they have started to fix the study and we have not it explains the sudden drop in our ranking.

We put kids with disabilities, with learning difficulities (severe and minor), high achievers and low achievers forward for these tests other countries do not. Explains a lot in my opinion.

The education system is a mess that has been discussed here many times and most of us are in agreement with that.

The point still stands valid that an irrelevant test in the kid's eyes is given to them where they never get the results and will more than likely never hear about it again in their school career. How is this in any way interesting to them. Someone claimed that they should be intersted for the good of the results for the country. You find me any 15 year old that would think like that about this test.

No one likes doing tests especially 15 year olds, so make it something they will never see again, never hear about again, and never get any results from. Hardly something you are going to worry too much about.

In China the ed. system and the ed. culture is a lot different especially in the high achieving schools where kids could spend up to 10 or more hours a day in school. Hardly like with like.

Inspector Coptoor

Great original post & good follow up posts.

Just to add another bit to it:
On top of Ireland putting in students of mixed ability etc, it had also come to light that the head of Pisa has come out & said that Irelsnd had one of the highest rates of students having the main language if the country as their second language & that Ireland's results are not at all representative.

evolving_doors

Inspector Coptoor wrote: »

Great original post & good follow up posts.

Just to add another bit to it:
On top of Ireland putting in students of mixed ability etc, it had also come to light that the head of Pisa has come out & said that Irelsnd had one of the highest rates of students having the main language if the country as their second language & that Ireland's results are not at all representative.

Had to read that a few times...did the PISA guy mean Irish or English as the main language? Surely the main language is the 1st language, no?

Inspector Coptoor

Sorry if that came across badly
What I meant us that English, rightly or wrongly, is the main teaching language in this country.

During Celtic Tiger years, there was a massive influx of Eastern European, Brazilian & African immigrants, a lot of whom had English as a 2nd language which would have made the Pisa test difficult for any of this cohort if students who ended up being part of a "truly representative & random" sample of students.

His point, the head of Pisa, was that this scenario would not be the same in China, Canada et al.

Hope that clears up my point.

rainbowtrout

Inspector Coptoor wrote: »

Sorry if that came across badly
What I meant us that English, rightly or wrongly, is the main teaching language in this country.

During Celtic Tiger years, there was a massive influx of Eastern European, Brazilian & African immigrants, a lot of whom had English as a 2nd language which would have made the Pisa test difficult for any of this cohort if students who ended up being part of a "truly representative & random" sample of students.

His point, the head of Pisa, was that this scenario would not be the same in China, Canada et al.

Hope that clears up my point.

If I understand you correctly what you're saying is that there is a higher proportion of students taking the PISA test in Ireland where English is not their first language than in other countries.

My school was selected for PISA, it was in 2009 as well. A few weeks before the tests the principal made the announcement to the staff and read out the list of students that may be selected for the test so we would know who would be missing from class for it etc. The number of incredibly weak students, students with learning disabilities, students in receipt of resource or learning support on the list was unreal.

spurious

Same situation in our place - many very weak children on the list.