Breaking down the barriers to immigrant students’ success at school

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education 

Education is one of the best ways of integrating immigrant children and their families into their new home countries. But most immigrant students have to overcome multiple barriers in order to succeed at school. The latest edition of PISA in Focus shows that of all the obstacles to success these students must surmount, the concentration of socio-economic disadvantage at school is among the most strongly related to poor performance.

Disadvantage and immigrant status are closely linked. Most immigrants leave their home countries in search of better economic prospects. Once immigrants arrive in a host country, they often settle in communities where there are other immigrants who share their culture, their language and often their socio-economic status. Their children often attend the same schools – and those schools frequently have large proportions of immigrant students. As a result, immigrant students tend to be concentrated in certain schools. In most cases, these schools are generally more socio-economically deprived than other schools.

PISA finds that countries vary markedly in how immigrant students are accommodated in schools. In New Zealand, for example, 50% of immigrant students – well below the OECD average of 68% – attend a school that has a large proportion of immigrant students. In addition, the concentration of immigrant students in socio-economically disadvantaged schools is also relatively low in New Zealand: only one in four immigrant students – compared with the OECD average of 36% – attends a school that has a large proportion of students whose mothers have low levels of education. (Having a low-educated mother, that is, a mother who has not attained an upper secondary education, is a measure of socio-economic disadvantage among immigrant populations.) In Germany, the concentration of immigrant students in schools is around the OECD average, while the concentration of immigrant students in disadvantaged schools is higher than the OECD average. In the United Kingdom, high concentrations of immigrant students in schools are coupled with high concentrations of immigrant students in the most disadvantaged schools.

When analysing student performance through this prism, poor student performance, particularly among immigrant students, is most strongly related to the proportion of students in a school whose mothers have low levels of education. This finding indicates that immigrant students – indeed all students – face a major obstacle to success at school when they are concentrated in schools attended by students who face similar socio-economic disadvantage.

In contrast, the results suggest that it is not the proportion of immigrant students or the proportion of those who speak a different language that is most strongly associated with poor performance. In other words, being in a school with students from different countries or who speak multiple languages does not hinder learning as much as being in a school that has a high concentration of disadvantaged students does. In fact, there are many high-achieving schools that have large proportions of immigrant students. Many schools in the Canadian province of Alberta, for example, have just this kind of profile. Often, that high performance is the result of specific national or regional education policies designed to accommodate – and make the most of – heterogeneous student populations.

What these results tell us is that reducing the concentration of disadvantage in individual schools is a good first step towards helping immigrant students integrate successfully into school and, ultimately, society.

Links:

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/

PISA in Focus No. 22:How do immigrant students fare in disadvantaged schools? 

Photo credit:  Colour figures / Shutterstock

The “extra” in extracurricular activities

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

It may be tempting for school systems that are trying to reduce expenses to trim the “extras” from their budgets, including school-sponsored extracurricular activities. But are these activities just a luxury that schools can no longer afford? The latest issue of PISA in Focus makes the case that the availability of extracurricular activities at school is positively related both to student performance and to students’ attitudes towards learning.

As part of the PISA 2006 survey, which focused on student performance in science, school principals were asked about the kinds of extracurricular activities they offered their students. On average across OECD countries, 89% of students attend schools whose principals reported that science-related field trips were commonly offered, 56% of students attend schools that hold science competitions, 48% of students are in schools that encourage involvement in extracurricular science projects, 42% are in schools that organise science fairs, and 41% are in schools that have science clubs.

While the types of science-related extracurricular activities vary across countries, their relationship with better student performance is consistent throughout. In 22 of 31 OECD countries and 14 of 17 partner countries and economies, students in schools that offer more science-related extracurricular activities tend to perform better in science than do students in schools that offer fewer such activities. And in 21 OECD countries and 12 partner countries and economies, this positive relationship holds even after accounting for students’ socio-economic background. However, in two countries, the relationship is very different:  in the United States, students in schools that offer fewer of these kinds of science-related activities tend to perform better in science, after accounting for students’ socio-economic backgrounds; while in Montenegro, the relationship is negative both before and after accounting for students’ backgrounds.

And there’s more at play than test scores: PISA also found a link between the availability of school-sponsored extracurricular activities and students’ belief in their ability to handle science-related tasks, known as self-efficacy, and their enjoyment of learning science. In 22 OECD countries, 7 partner countries and 1 partner economy, students in schools that offer more of these kinds of activities tend to have higher levels of self-efficacy in science; and in 20 OECD countries, 2 partner countries and 1 partner economy, they also enjoy learning science more. In no country or economy is there a negative relationship between science-related extracurricular activities and positive attitudes towards learning science.

These findings from PISA can’t determine conclusively whether being exposed to science-related extracurricular activities enhances students’ attitudes towards science or whether students with more positive attitudes towards science are attracted to schools that offer more of such activities; both could be true. But what these results do show is that these kinds of activities are positively related not only to student performance, but also to students’ attitudes towards learning and their belief in their own abilities. With that in mind, school leaders should carefully weigh the benefits of these “extras” against their cost when making tough budgetary decisions.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Link latest issue "Are students more engaged when schools offer extracurricular activities?"
Photo credit: Teen science experiment / Shutterstock

Urban studies

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

To many people, the phrase “inner-city schools” is synonymous with crumbling buildings, frustrated teachers, disengaged students, truancy and violence. In some urban areas, though, city schools and the students who attend them flourish. In fact, three of the top five performers in reading in the PISA 2009 survey—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore—are large cities. So are big cities a boon or a bane for education?

The latest edition of PISA in Focus presents new analyses suggesting that, in some countries, students in large cities—defined as those with over one million inhabitants—score on a par with their top-performing peers in PISA. For instance, students in urban areas in countries like Portugal and Israel, countries that tend to perform around the OECD average in PISA, compare favourably with students in Singapore; and the performance of students in Poland’s urban areas compares easily with that of students in Hong Kong.

But in Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States, the performance of students in large urban areas drags down overall country scores in PISA. This might be because, in these countries, not all students can enjoy the advantages—including a rich cultural environment, more school choice and good job prospects after leaving school—that large urban centres offer. Some of these students may come from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, speak a different language at home than the one spoken at school, or have only one parent to turn to for support and assistance.

However, these new analyses of PISA data also show that an urban environment’s impact on learning is not just related to socio-economic advantage or disadvantage. Even when comparing students of similar backgrounds in OECD countries, those attending schools in urban areas in Chile, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Turkey scored more than 45 points higher—the equivalent of more than one year of formal schooling—than their peers in rural schools. In Hungary, the performance gap between the two groups of students was more than 70 score points wide.

What these analyses tell us is that in order to join the ranks of PISA best-performers, countries may have to provide targeted support to isolated rural communities to ensure that students attending schools in these areas reach their full potential, while those countries whose city-based students underperform will have to figure out how to both embrace a heterogeneous student population and enable these students to tap into the cultural and social advantages that large urban areas offer.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Are large cities educational assets or liabilities?
Photo credit: City student / Shutterstock

“I’ve been driven by goals”

Ellen MacArthur, Founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, was in Paris this week to speak on entrepreneurship and skills at the OECD Forum. She was interviewed by Marilyn Achiron, Editor of the Education Department.

In 2001, a 24-year-old Ellen MacArthur fulfilled a 20-year dream and sailed, single-handedly non-stop around the world in the Vendée Globe. Not only did she achieve her goal, she also came in second in one of the hardest races in sailing. Three years later, she broke the speed record for circumnavigating the globe, alone, on a trimaran.

Today, MacArthur has set herself another challenge: to change, fundamentally, how we think about and use the world’s resources. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, established in 2010, links education and business in a drive towards a circular economy. The idea of the circular economy is based on “systems thinking”, the acknowledgement that nothing occurs in a vacuum; that context matters. And the context we’re all living in right now is that of finite natural resources.

When asked, MacArthur says she is driven by goals; but that seems only half the story: the other half is passion. You hear it when she speaks of her first sailing experience, as a 4-year-old, with her “auntie”: “It was the greatest feeling of freedom I could ever imagine. That boat could have taken us anywhere in the world.” And you hear it when she speaks of her work now: “The ‘big click’ happened when I first started to understand the circular economy. It’s a whole different system. Suddenly I had the same feeling I had as a 4-year-old.”

In her 20s, the context of MacArthur’s life was the confines of impossibly small vessels. “You realise what ‘finite’ means; how you behave when you have limited resources.” Now, the context may seem far larger, but the constraints are no less challenging: “We don’t have enough resources to sustain our economy. You can re-start your boat at the end of a race, but you can’t do that with finite resources.”

In addition to making the case for a circular economy among business leaders her Foundation is piloting, testing and producing materials for secondary school teachers based on systems thinking and “restorative” recycling that can be built into the design of nearly everything we use, from washing machines through cars and carpets to packaging. “When people learn about recycling, they learn that they should be doing less. And everything they’re learning is, at best, just buying time. It doesn’t inspire creativity and innovation. In the circular economy, there’s an extraordinary message about what you can do, not what you can’tdo. And that message comes through in the classroom and in the boardroom.”

MacArthur recounts how, in front of a class of teachers, she takes what looks like a plastic bag, stuffs it into a glass of hot water, watches the bag dissolve and then drinks the nutrient-filled contents of the glass: a show-and-tell of how design for a circular economy can feed (in this case, literally) the future. The teachers, she says, “are not used to seeing that; they’re not used to the idea of a circular economy. It’s an exciting way to teach.” And what they’re learning, at the same time, is a notion that is central to a circular economy: that consumers pay for performance, not for the material product. “You look at how you can design something so that you can re-sell and re-manufacture it.

“The idea of the circular economy is an enabler for young people—and for businesses,” says MacArthur. “The more creative they are, the better. That’s what it’s all about.”

Links:

EllenMacArthur Foundation

OECD Forum 2012

OECD Economic Outlook

OECD Skills Strategy

OECD Work on Green Growth

Photo credit: Nautilus shell / Shutterstock

Another perspective on teachers’ pay

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

Thanks largely to the OECD’s work in compiling internationally comparable data on education,  the issue of teachers’ pay has quietly crept up the political agenda in more than a few countries (take the recent French presidential election and the current US presidential campaign, to name just two). PISA takes the discussion a step further. It asks: does basing teachers’ pay on their effectiveness as teachers help to improve an education system’s overall performance?

As this month’s PISA in Focus notes, about half of OECD countries reward teacher performance in different ways. For example, in the Czech Republic, England, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden and Turkey, outstanding teaching performance is a criterion for decisions on a teacher’s position on the base salary scale. In the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the Slovak Republic, it is a criterion for deciding on supplemental payments that are paid annually. In Austria, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey and the United States, outstanding teaching performance is used as a criterion for deciding supplemental incidental payments.

A look at the overall picture shows no relationship between average student performance in a country and the use of performance-based pay schemes. In other words, some high-performing education systems use performance-based pay while others don't. But the picture changes when taking into account how well teachers are paid overall in comparison with national income. In countries with comparatively low teachers’ salaries (less than 15% 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% above GDP per capita), the opposite is true.

But deciding on whether or not to have performance-based pay for teachers is only the first step. Measures of teacher performance must be clearly defined and be considered by teachers themselves to be fair and accurate. School systems also have to decide whether to reward individual teachers, groups of teachers or schools. And they also have to consider whether to create one “pot”, of a pre-determined sum, out of which rewards will be paid, or to be flexible enough to allow more teachers to earn rewards.

In the end, though, salary is only part of the work environment. Countries that have succeeded in making teaching an attractive profession have often done so not just through pay, but by raising the status of teaching, offering real career prospects, and giving teachers responsibility as professionals and leaders of reform. This requires teacher education that helps teachers to become innovators and researchers in education, not just civil servants who deliver curricula.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Does performance-based pay improve teaching?
Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons From Around The World
Photo credit: Performance / Shutterstock

How can education help tackle rising income inequality?

By Ji Eun Chung
Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education

See instructions below for how to read the chart

The gap between the rich and poor has widened in OECD countries over the past 30 years. As the latest issue of the OECD’s new brief series Education Indicators in Focus describes, the average income of the richest 10% of people in OECD countries was about nine times greater than the income of the poorest 10% before the onset of the global economic crisis. This ratio was 5 to 1 in the 1980s.

What’s more, existing income inequality may also limit the income prospects of future generations in some countries. In countries with higher income inequality – such as Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States – a child’s future earnings are likely to be similar to his or her father’s, suggesting that socio-economic background plays a large role in the development of children’s skills and abilities. Meanwhile, in countries with lower income inequality – like Denmark, Finland, and Norway – a child’s future income is not as strongly related to his or her family’s income status. In these countries, the development of children’s skills and abilities has a weaker link with socio-economic factors.

The implications for education policy are clear. Education policies focusing on equity in education may be a particularly useful way for countries to increase earnings mobility between generations and reduce income inequality over time. Countries can work towards this goal by giving equal opportunities to both disadvantaged and advantaged students to achieve strong academic outcomes – laying a pathway for them to continue on to higher levels of education and eventually secure good jobs.

Four top performers on the 2009 PISA reading assessment show the potential of this approach. Canada, Finland, Japan, and Korea all have education systems that put a strong focus on equity – and all have yielded promising results. In each of these countries, relatively few students performed at lower proficiency levels on the PISA reading assessment, and high proportions of students performed better than would be expected, given their socio-economic background.

Yet while each of these countries focuses on equity, they’ve pursued it in different ways. In Japan and Korea, for example, teachers and principals are often reassigned to different schools, fostering more equal distribution of the most capable teachers and school leaders. Finnish schools assign specially-trained teachers to support struggling students who are at risk of dropping out. The teaching profession is a highly selective occupation in Finland, with highly-skilled, well-trained teachers spread throughout the country. In Canada, equal or greater educational resources – such as supplementary classes – are provided to immigrant students, compared to non-immigrant students. This is believed to have boosted immigrant students’ performance.

Income inequality is a challenging issue that demands a wide range of solutions. In a world of growing inequality, focusing on equity in education may be an effective approach to tackle it over the long run.

For more information
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
Equity and Quality in Education - Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2011
Divided we stand: Why inequality keeps rising: www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality
On the OECD’s Indicators of Education Systems (INES) programme, visit:
INES Programme overview brochure

Chart source: Source: D'Addio (2012, forthcoming), “Social Mobility in OECD countries: Evidence and Policy Implications”; OECD (2008), Growing Unequal?, www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality/GU; OECD Income distribution database.


How to read the chart: This chart shows the relationship between earnings mobility between generations of a family, and the prevalence of income inequality in different countries. Overall, countries with higher levels of income inequality tend to have lower earnings mobility between generations, while countries with lower levels of income inequality tend to have higher earnings mobility.

Making education reform happen

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Indicators and Analysis Division, Directorate for Education

This is the time of year when a lot of us resolve to commit ourselves to self-improvement plans of greater or lesser magnitude. Spend more time reading? On the list. Eat better? Ditto. Reform the education system? Whoa—nice idea; but isn’t that a bit too ambitious? 

What is it about education reform that all-too-often turns resolve into sighs and resignation? If countries really want to keep that resolution, here’s a suggestion: invite teachers to get involved.

On the face of it, it seems elementary: The best—meaning the most sustainable and effective—reforms happen when those who are directly affected support them. You don’t have to take our word for it; just look at how some of the best-performing and rapidly improving school systems got that way. Take Finland,  for example–one of the consistently best-performing OECD countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) since the assessments were first conducted in 2000. While teachers there have long enjoyed high professional status (which should be one of the goals of reform in countries where teachers are poorly trained, poorly paid and not recognised as the professionals they are—or should be), their views on improving student performance are actively solicited and, to the extent possible, used to spur and support change.

Ontario, Canada, initiated a comprehensive reform of its education system in 2003 to improve graduation rates and standards in literacy and numeracy. Those who led the reform effort acknowledge that it couldn’t have been as successful as it has been without the involvement of teachers’ unions and superintendents’ and principals’ organisations. For example, a collective bargaining agreement with the main teachers’ unions there eased the way for a reduction in class size and more preparation time for teachers—changes that, in turn, led to the creation of some 7,000 new jobs.

When teachers, union leaders and education ministers meet again in New York this March for the second OECD co-sponsored International Summit of the Teaching Profession, they will no doubt take as a starting point their conclusion from last year’s Summit: that high-quality teaching forces are created through deliberate policy choices, and by engaging strong teachers as active agents in school reform, not just using them to implement plans designed by others. In other words, the resolve to reform education can only be turned into real reform if teachers are at the forefront of change.

So in these first few days of the new year, be ambitious in your resolutions—and wise in keeping them.

Links:
For a full summary of the evidence that underpinned the first International Summit on the Teaching Profession held in New York in March 2011 see the report:
Building a High-Quality Teaching Profession: Lessons from around the World
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)
Video Series: Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education

Picture credit: Mark Rogers, fallingfifth.com