Governing complex education systems

by Tracey Burns
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD
Florian Koester
Consultant, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD

What models of governance are effective in complex education systems? How can governments set priorities and design polices that balance responsiveness to local diversity with national education goals? And how do we ensure that there is trust, co-operation and communication between the multiple levels and actors in the system?

These are tough questions. Just published, Governing Education in a Complex World brings together state of the art research and insights from country experience to identify the elements necessary for effective education governance. The book challenges our traditional concepts of education governance through work on complexity, reform and new approaches to collaboration and decision-making. In doing so it sets the agenda for thinking about creating the open, dynamic and strategic approaches necessary for governing complex systems in today’s global world.

Effectively governing education systems is not a simple task. There are no magic solutions, no one-size-fits-all recipe that can be rolled out to guarantee success. Work on complexity theory reveals that a certain level of complexity in a system – whether in an education system or a school – can lead to unpredictable reactions or unexpected consequences to even seemingly simple changes. Modern education governance must be flexible at the same time as it steers a clear course towards established goals. It must also be efficient, limited by given funds and time.

The book identifies key elements to modern education governance. First, savviness and endurance are needed to align multi-level systems and it is vital to engage with a diverse set of actors, including students and parents. In doing so, it’s important to include all stakeholders and voices – not only the ones that shout the loudest – in the governance process to strengthen participatory decision-making. And while new technologies provide the opportunity to engage a broader set of actors, they also bring new challenges: instant feedback can mean that expectations rise faster than performance, and lead to short-term solutions rather than long-term vision. This tends to result in reactive decision-making, where the urgent is prioritised over the important. Staying on track and keeping an eye on the long-term is not easy, but it is key to effective and sustainable governance.

Education systems must also be able to resolve system-wide tensions. For example, countries are under pressure to strengthen their accountability systems while at the same time they encourage innovation.  Ideally, a system would have both a strong and constructive accountability system as well as dynamic innovation processes. However, controlled accountability mechanisms generally seek to minimise risk and mistakes to improve efficiency. At the same time, trial and error are fundamental to the innovation process. Finding the right balance of these two elements (or, perhaps more accurately, the right combination of mutually reinforcing dynamics) is key and will depend on the context and history of the system as well as the ambitions and expectations for its future.

Successful governance also requires thinking about the individuals involved, their needs and their aspirations. Any time a reform is rolled out, we need to think carefully of what is needed on the human level to make it happen. Do teachers (and principals, students and parents) have the capacity to deliver on their new responsibilities? If not, is training or other support in place? This is a simple set of questions, but our work demonstrates that it is often this piece of the puzzle that gets lost in the rush to move forward with a new reform or policy. Yet without the required capacity and support, the best plan risks being derailed at the level where it counts most: the classroom.

So what are the elements of effective modern governance systems? Effective governance:

• focuses on processes, not structures;
• is flexible and can adapt to change and unexpected events;
• works through building capacity, stakeholder involvement and open dialogue;
• requires a whole system approach to align roles and balance tensions;
• harnesses evidence and research to inform policy and practice; and
• is built on trust.

The search for new modes of governance for 21st century education systems will certainly continue in the years to come. Governing Education in a Complex World sets the agenda and challenges us to develop the open, adaptable, and flexible governance systems necessary in a complex world. Just as education must move to evolve and grow with our modern world, so too must the systems that govern them.

Links:
Governing Education in a Complex World
OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Find out more on Governing Complex Education Systems (GCES)
Photo credit: ©Juriah/123RF.COM

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How far from the tree does the leaf fall?

by Antonio Villar
Thomas J. Alexander Fellow & Universidad Pablo de Olavide


High and Low performers in advantaged and disadvantaged students (OECD, PISA 2012 Results)

Equality of opportunity is a lofty ideal, but some societies get closer to achieving it than others. Regarding compulsory education, results from PISA show that socio-economically disadvantaged students in the OECD have much higher chances of being low performers than their socio-economically advantaged peers. And also, that they have much lower chances of being high performers.

PISA provides information on the competences acquired by 15-year-old students in some 65 countries and large economies. Those competences are classified into 6 different levels of proficiency, each one adding new competencies. Students in levels 5 and 6 are considered to be the high performers whereas those below Level 2 are regarded as the low performers. Level 2 is viewed as the baseline level concerning future outcomes in the labour market and social life. PISA also provides rich information on family characteristics of students allowing one to analyse their relationship.

On average, across the OECD, almost 40% of students coming from disadvantaged families do not reach the baseline level of proficiency and less than 5% achieve the highest levels. The opposite is true for students coming from advantaged families: less than 10% do not reach the baseline level, while 25% do achieve the highest levels of proficiency.

In other words, disadvantaged students are four times more likely to have competencies that put them at risk for their future participation in the labour market and society more broadly. In contrast, advantaged students are five times more likely than their disadvantaged peers to enjoy competencies that give them much better chances for the future.

The ratio between low performers in disadvantaged and advantaged students can be regarded as a rough measure of discrimination “from below”, in an educational system. Similarly, the ratio between high performers in advantaged and disadvantaged students can be regarded as a measure of discrimination “from above”.

The degree of discrimination by socio-economic status varies substantially between the OECD countries. Moreover, the type of discrimination, from below or from above, turns out to be very different within countries. In Iceland, Korea and Norway, the results of advantaged and disadvantaged students are much closer than the OECD average, both for high and low performers. That is, those countries are doing much better than the average OECD country regarding equality of opportunity. The opposite happens in the case of Denmark, France, Hungary and Portugal, where both types of discrimination are much higher than the average OECD.

Discrimination from above turns out to be extreme in the cases of Chile and Greece, with values of 62 and 30 times for those students coming from advantaged families. Mexico, Luxembourg, Israel, the Slovak Republic and Turkey also present high values for this type of discrimination. The contrary happens in Canada, Estonia and Finland, where discrimination from above is much smaller than in the OECD. Chile, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Sweden and Turkey, present very low values of discrimination “from below”. The contrary happens for Belgium, Ireland and Poland.

These data show that equality of opportunity in compulsory education is still an issue in the OECD. There are substantial differences between countries, so that the country in which a child is educated matters a lot. Moreover, socio-economic conditions still play a very relevant role in educational achievements. This role is very different among OECD countries both regarding its intensity and in the way it affects high and low performers.

Links
How Bad Is Being Poor for Educational Performance?  A Message from PISA 2012, by Antonio Villar 
OECD Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship: current call for research proposals closes 23 May 2016.
Chart source: © OECD

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Learning by heart may not be best for your mind

by Alfonso Echazarra

Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills



PISA 2012 Released Mathematics Item (Proficiency Level 6)

Some of the greatest geniuses had remarkable memories. Mozart, according to legend, sat and listened to Allegri’s “Miserere”, then transcribed the piece of music, entirely from memory, later in the day. Kim Peek, the savant who was the inspiration for the blockbuster film, Rain Man, memorised as many as 12 000 books. But unlike Mozart, who composed more than 600 works during his brief life, Peek was unable to distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant, or discover hidden meanings and metaphors in the texts he had committed to memory.

What do these stories have to do with learning mathematics? Or, put another way: in light of these stories, how would you encourage students to learn mathematics? By understanding what mathematics concepts, procedures and formulae mean and applying them to a lot of different maths problems set in a lot of different contexts? Or by learning them by heart and applying them to a lot of similar maths problems? Sooner or later, the method matters. Students who avoid making an effort to understand mathematics concepts may succeed in some school environments; but a lack of deep, critical and creative thinking may seriously penalise these students later in life when confronted with real, complex problems. As Albert Einstein provocatively said: “Any fool can know; the point is to understand”.

A similar message is relayed in this month’s PISA in Focus and a new OECD paper on education, “How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school”. The analyses show that students who mainly use memorisation when they study do well on easy questions. For example, “CHARTS Q1”, a multiple-choice question from the PISA 2012 test, refers to a simple bar chart and is considered one of the easiest questions in the mathematics assessment. Some 87% of students answered this question correctly. Students who reported that they use some type of memorisation strategy when they study mathematics, such as learning by heart, recalling work already done or going through examples again and again, had about the same success rate on this easy item as students who reported using other learning strategies.

But complex problems are a different matter; they require more than a good memory. For the most challenging question from the PISA 2012 mathematics test, “REVOLVING DOOR Q2”, students who reported using mainly memorisation strategies were much less likely than students using other strategies, such as connecting ideas or working out exactly what is important to learn, to answer correctly. Answering “REVOLVING DOOR Q2” correctly requires substantial geometric reasoning and creativity, involves multiple steps, and draws heavily on students’ ability to translate a real situation into a mathematical problem. Only 3% of participants answered this question correctly.

The findings also show that, contrary to received wisdom, East Asian students are not necessarily the ones who use memorisation strategies the most. Memorisation is used almost everywhere, but fewer 15-year-olds in Hong Kong-China, Japan, Korea, Macao-China, Shanghai-China, Chinese Taipei and Viet Nam reported using it than students in, let’s say, English-speaking countries to whom they are often compared. For instance, 5% of students in Viet Nam, 12% of students in Japan and 17% of students in Korea reported that they learn as much as they can by heart when they study mathematics, compared to 26% of students in Canada, 28% in Ireland, 29% in the United States, 35% in Australia and New Zealand, and 37% in the United Kingdom.

In some situations, memorisation is useful, even necessary. It can give students enough concrete facts on which to reflect; it can limit anxiety by reducing mathematics to a set of simple facts, rules and procedures; and it can help to develop fluency with numbers early in a child’s development, before the child is asked to tackle more complex problems. But to perform at the very top, 15-year-olds need to learn mathematics in a more reflective, ambitious and creative way – one that involves exploring alternative ways of finding solutions, making connections, adopting different perspectives and looking for meaning. So yes, you can use your memory; just use it strategically, lest Einstein call you a fool.

Links:
PISA in Focus No. 61: Is memorisation a good strategy for learning mathematics? by Alfonso Echazarra
PISA á la loupe No. 61: La mémorisation : Une stratégie payante pour l’apprentissage des mathématiques?
How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school.
PISA Try the Test: Explore PISA 2012 Mathematics, problem solving and financial literacy test question
Source: PISA 2012 Released Mathematics Items

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Is international academic migration stimulating scientific research and innovation?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Higher education and academic research are among the most rapidly globalising systems. Today, around 5 million students study and do research in a country other than their own, attracted by the quality of overseas universities and willing to complement their education portfolio with international experience. Employers generally value the impact international education has on the skills and mind-set of graduates, and see international experience as indispensable for future global leaders.

But in an age when governments are increasingly concerned about rising levels of migration and are making their migration policies more stringent, international student mobility is also being scrutinised. Some countries impose stricter visa requirements or limitations on the time for international students to stay in the country. Others make it more difficult for graduates to stay and work in the country where they have studied. The prospect of losing the economic returns from international students and the income provided by fee-paying students does not seem to dissuade some governments from imposing stricter regulations on international students.

The recent Education Indicators in Focus brief looks in more detail at the international mobility of master’s and doctoral students. The mobility of doctoral students is of special concern because of its relevance to research policy. The chart above illustrates the close relationship between the number of international doctoral students in a country and the country’s commitment to research, as measured by spending on R&D in tertiary education. Countries with a large share of international doctoral students are also countries that invest a lot in research.

The chart does not suggest any causality. In fact, there are two ways to interpret the relationship. Countries with relatively high levels of investment in university research are probably well-integrated in global research networks. International collaboration naturally leads to an exchange of researchers. Favourable research climates, high levels of investment and the prospect of collaborating with researchers working at the cutting edge in their fields offer attractive opportunities for young doctoral researchers.

The global research landscape is diversifying. Next to the academic centres in the United States and the United Kingdom, new strongholds of global academic research are emerging in countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden. These countries have opened up their universities for international researchers, and now 30%, 40% or even more than 50% of the doctoral students in these countries are of foreign origin.

But it could very well be that the causality also works in the other direction. Higher numbers of international researchers probably contribute to the global competiveness of academic research by strengthening integration in research networks or by facilitating international knowledge transfer. We can find support for this hypothesis in comparing our data on the percentage of international doctoral students with OECD data on the share of publications in the top 10% academic journals. The strong country-level correlation between both sets of data suggests that doctoral students have a positive impact on the quantity and quality of scientific research in the host country. In turn, this could prompt governments to increase their R&D spending on universities. Indirectly, international students then contribute to the innovation process and the development of a research-intensive knowledge economy in the host country.

The case of Switzerland is telling. A small country in the heart of Europe that is now fiercely debating migration policy, Switzerland has opened up its universities to international researchers and doctoral students, while at the same time increasing its R&D investment. Anyone who looks at international rankings has noticed that Switzerland is rising rapidly up the global academic hierarchy. Sweden and the Netherlands are close behind. This is no coincidence.

Current debates about international student mobility tend to overemphasise the benefits for the individual student or the financial returns for the host institution or host country. But it is also important to look into the wider benefits of academic migration. Laboratories and research centres at the frontier of their fields cannot do without strong integration in global networks and without international researchers. Progress in scientific research happens by sharing and confronting ideas, questioning established wisdom and looking at the world from different perspectives. International exchange and mobility of doctoral researchers is absolutely critical to this. Countries that curtail academic mobility risk paying a high price.

Links:
The internationalisation of doctoral and master's studies, Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 39, by Gabriele Marconi.
L’internationalisation des études de doctorat et de master, Les indicateurs de l'éducation à la loupe, issue No. 39 (French Version).

Graph sources: OECD Education Database, http://stats.oecd.org/, (accessed 21 January 2016), and OECD (2015a), Education at a Glance 2015: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2015-en, Table B1.2.

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We can do better on education reform

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

A generation ago, teachers could expect that what they taught would equip their students with the skills needed for the rest of their lives. Today, teachers need to prepare students for more change than ever before, for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve social problems that we just can’t imagine. And many of the world’s social and economic difficulties end up on the doorsteps of schools too.

So expectations for teachers are high. We expect them to have a deep understanding of what they teach; to be passionate, compassionate and thoughtful; to make learning central and encourage students’ engagement and responsibility; to respond effectively to students of different needs, backgrounds and mother tongues, and to promote tolerance and social cohesion; to provide continual assessments of students and feedback; and to ensure that students feel valued and included and that learning is collaborative. And we expect teachers themselves to collaborate and work in teams, and with other schools and parents, to set common goals, and plan and monitor the attainment of goals collaboratively.

That’s a long list. But it reflects the transition from an industrial work organisation towards a professional work organisation that many sectors of our economies went through a long time ago. People typically define professionalism as the level of autonomy and internal regulation that members of an occupation exercise. So they look to see whether people work mainly through external forces exerting pressure and influence on them, or whether the work is the outcome of advanced skills, internal motivation and the efforts of the members of the profession itself.

As OECD data show, when rated on their knowledge base for teaching, their decision-making power over their work and their opportunities for exchange and support, teachers still have significant challenges ahead of them. Rarely do teachers own their professional standards, and rarely do they work with the level of professional autonomy and in the collaborative work culture that we, in other knowledge-based professions, take for granted.

But our data also show that where teachers teach a class jointly, where they regularly observe other teachers’ classes, and where they take part in collaborative professional learning, they are more satisfied with their careers and feel more effective in their teaching.

It’s time for governments, teachers’ unions and professional bodies to redefine the role of teachers, and to create the support and collaborative work organisation that will help teachers grow in their careers and meet the needs of 21st-century students. And that’s precisely why ministers and union leaders from the world’s most advanced education systems are gathering in Berlin this week at the sixth International Summit on the Teaching Profession.They are well aware that education reform will always be difficult.

Everyone supports education reform – except when it may affect their own children. Everyone has participated in education and has an opinion about it. Reform is difficult to co-ordinate across an education system, and across multiple regional and local jurisdictions. And the fear of loss of privilege is particularly pervasive around education reform, simply because of the extent of vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

The summit will examine plenty of examples of successful reforms around the world that have already improved student learning outcomes. But education systems can and should be doing better. Both the lack of coherence in reform efforts across successive governments and the fact that just one in ten reforms is subject to any kind of evaluation of its impact or efficacy is inexcusable. It shows a lack of respect for both taxpayers and educators at the frontline. At the OECD, we’ve identified six crucial actions needed to make education reform happen.

The first is to strive for consensus about the aims of reform without compromising the drive for improvement. That means acknowledging divergent views and interests. Involving stakeholders cultivates a sense of joint ownership over policies, and helps build consensus on both the need for and the relevance of reform. Regular consultations help to develop trust among all parties, which, in turn, helps to build consensus.

The second lesson is to engage teachers not just in implementing reform but in designing it too. Policy can encourage that through leadership-development strategies that create and sustain learning communities, linking evidence of teachers’ commitment to professional learning to pay, providing seed money for self-learning in and among schools, or through professional self-regulation through processes and organisations that include teachers.

Third, experimenting with policies on a smaller scale first can help build consensus on implementation and, because of their limited scope, can help overcome fears and resistance to change.

Fourth, backing reforms with sustainable financing will always be central. This is not only about money; it’s first and foremost about building professional capacity and support.

Fifth, timing and sequencing are always critical. We need to acknowledge that it is rarely possible to predict clear, identifiable links between policies and outcomes, especially given the lag involved between the time at which the initial cost of reform is incurred, and the time when it is evident whether the intended benefits of reforms actually materialise. Everyone needs to develop realistic expectations about the pace and nature of reform – even in the heat of debate. Time is also needed to learn about and understand the impact of reform measures, build trust and develop the necessary capacity to move on to the next stage of policy development.

Last but not least, success is about building partnerships with education unions. Putting the teaching profession at the heart of education reform requires a fruitful dialogue between governments and unions. At the end of the day, different perspectives and positions are best addressed by strong social partnerships.

Links:
International Summit on the Teaching Profession - Framing the Issues, by Andreas Schleicher
Teaching Excellence through Professional Learning and Policy Reform: Lessons from around the World
International Summit on the Teaching Profession 2016
Follow on twitter: #ISTP2016

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Long-term wellbeing of European societies is at stake

By Natália Mazotte
Freelance Journalist, SGI News

Child and youth opportunities

Children and young people are among the biggest losers in the European economic and debt crisis. What do the staggering numbers in youth unemployment and child poverty in Europe mean for the future of this generation – and the continent as a whole?

While Europe continues to struggle to leave the legacy of the financial crisis behind, an entire generation is feeling the effects of the economic fallout most directly. The remarkable increase in youth unemployment since 2008 is perhaps the most disturbing sign of this scenario. In over a dozen European economies, youth unemployment remains today above 20%, and more than one in three unemployed young people have been looking for work for more than a year, according to the Global Employment Trends for Youth.

If you live in Spain or Greece, are between 15 and 24 years of age, and look for work, you are just as likely to be unemployed as to enjoy the privilege of a work contract. The situation does not improve much in other EU countries, where unemployment rates among young people grew from about 15% in 2008, before the crisis, to 22.2% in 2014, affecting 5.3 million young people. 7.5 million Europeans between 15 and 24 are not in employment, education or training. As such, these young people have dropped off the radar of their country’s education, social and labour market systems, as underlined in the OECD 2015 Skills Outlook on Youth, Skills and Employability.

In the crisis-battered southern European countries, life opportunities have declined while the risk of poverty among children and youth has increased since 2007/08, according to the latest EU Social Justice Index of the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

The study contains dramatic numbers, such as 35.8% – more than one third – of children and youth today who are at risk of poverty and social exclusion in Spain. The rate is 31.7% in Portugal. In Greece, it stands at 36.7%, while the share of children living under conditions of severe material deprivation has more than doubled from 9.7% in 2007 to 23.2% in 2014.

Poor labor market and economic deprivation foster mistrust in political institutions

In a study published in 2011, David N. F. Bell and David Blanchflower show that long-term youth inactivity leaves a heritage of reduced lifetime earnings, a large risk of future periods of unemployment and a high likelihood of precarious employment, and it results in poorer health and well-being and lower job satisfaction more than twenty years later.

Additionally, this situation impacts the political scene, where young Europeans appear highly skeptical that those in power are able to address their needs. The shakiness of the labor market and the threat of economic deprivation and social exclusion are all contributing to a growing mistrust of institutionalised politics. Displeasure and frustration are the driving forces behind new forms of political participation, such as Los Indignados, a grassroots protest movement that has grown into the Podemos political party, which won over 20% of the votes in the Spanish general elections last December.

No wonder then that leaders and European institutions consider this one of the most important issues to tackle. In France, where youth unemployment is at a distressing 25.1%, the government recently unveiled new plans, to train young jobseekers and encourage job creation. The same objectives are integrated in the Europe 2020 strategy.

Although the scenario is grim for most EU countries, some of them have managed to go against this trend. Countries such as Germany and the Netherlands remained under 12% youth unemployment in 2015. According to Alain Dehaze, head of the world's largest recruitment company, this is because those countries are better at blending formal education, apprenticeships, work and international experience.

The EU Social Justice Index points out that in Europe as a whole “governments must seek to improve vocational training, reduce the number of early school leavers and improve the transition from the education system to the labor market.“

Poverty is a vicious circle

Whereas young people face hardships transitioning to independence and adulthood in a post-crisis economic context, children are among the biggest losers in countries where the recession has hit hardest.

The most recent Innocenti Report Cards, a UNICEF publication devoted to the living conditions and well-being of children in economically advanced countries, reveals a strong correlation between the extent to which the recession ravaged national economies and the decline in child well-being since 2008.

Some 1.6 million more children were living in severe material deprivation in 2012 (11.1 million) than in 2008 (9.5 million) in 30 European countries. The largest increase in child poverty has been in southern Europe – in Greece, Italy and Spain – as well as in Croatia.

According to the study, children from families who have experienced difficulty remaining in the labor market and satisfying their most basic material and educational needs suffer the stress directly. “Poverty is a self-reinforcing cycle. A child with unemployed parents may do less well at school. Doing less well at school may bring more stress at home. And so on. The longer a child is locked in the cycle, the fewer the possibilities of escape,” the report says.

The EU Social Justice Index does not present a more comforting picture but it highlights some of the ways which can reduce child poverty in Europe: governments should set priorities so that those disadvantaged in society “receive targeted support through a functioning tax and transfer system (e.g., effective child benefit and allowance schemes, housing benefits).” However, “combating poverty is not only a question of monetary support, it also depends on sound policies in other areas, such as education and employment,” the experts warn.

Measures to reverse the deterioration of children’s quality of life are urgently needed to avoid highly disturbing future prospects, not only for this generation, but also for Europe as a whole.

Links:
OECD Skills Outlook 2015: Youth, Skills and Employability
Europe 2020 strategy
EU Social Justice Index
UNICEF Innocenti Report Cards
Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015: Youth employment crisis easing but far from over
Graph source: @ BertelsmannStiftung

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How much time is spent on maths and science in primary education?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Compulsory instruction time per subject in primary education, in hours per school day (2015)

Primary school is a fundamental stage in children’s education. Yet it is often neglected in education research and policy debates, somehow squeezed between the seemingly more important stages of early childhood education and secondary education. The purpose of primary education is to build a solid foundation on which an entire life of learning can thrive. Cognitive processes such as working memory, attention, self-regulation, as well as character traits, communication skills, motivation and meta-learning attitudes grow enormously during the first years at school. And the primary school curriculum lays out the basic constituents of human knowledge by introducing students to its core disciplines.

Historically, the relative importance of the core subjects in primary school has always been a contentious issue. Many social interests and political opinions converge in the decision-making process, often resulting in an overcrowded curriculum prioritising expected social outcomes over children’s education needs and potential. A sound primary school curriculum should have sufficient “air” and flexibility to provide the space for children’s autonomous learning, for playful learning and for self-directed discovery of the world. Still, the relative weight of some of the core subjects in the curriculum is worth serious consideration.

The new Education Indicators in Focus brief presents the instruction time given to each of the main subjects in primary school across OECD countries in 2015. On average, primary school students receive 4.3 hours of instruction time per day. But as shown in the chart above, the differences across OECD countries are huge. More than one quarter of that time, 1.1 hours, on average, is spent on reading, writing and literature in the language used at school, ranging from almost two hours in France to .6 hours in Poland. France also devotes a relatively large amount of time to language instruction: no less than 37% of total instruction time.

Of course, language instruction is core to primary education. Reading and writing are foundation skills that are conventionally learned in the first years of primary school. Language instruction also supports wider cognitive development as well as social and communication skills.

But what about mathematics? And natural sciences? In most OECD countries, apart from some basic arithmetic, maths and science only made their way into the curriculum after the second industrial revolution. Curriculum reforms of the 1920s and 1930s provided space for maths and science education, often combined with new pedagogical approaches inspired by the child-centred pedagogy and the emerging field of cognitive psychology. In the second half of the 20th century it became generally accepted that basic mathematical understanding, or numeracy, and a basic knowledge of the natural world were as important foundation skills, to be mastered by every child, as literacy.

In 2015 on average across OECD countries, maths counted for 45 minutes of instruction time per day in primary education, and natural science for another 20 minutes. In relative terms, this translates to 17% of time devoted to maths and 8% devoted to science. So, on average primary schools across OECD countries spent approximately the same amount of instruction time on maths and science combined as on language. Thus, the core subjects of language, maths and science account for half of the total instruction time in primary education.

Yet, again, the differences among countries are huge. Korea and Poland provide less than half an hour per day of mathematics, while France, Mexico and Portugal devote more than one hour per day to maths at the primary level. The instruction time spent on maths and science outweighs that for language instruction by more than 25% in Chile, Portugal and Poland, while it counts for 25% or less time than for language instruction in Hungary, the Slovak Republic and Turkey.

Will the third and fourth industrial revolutions shake up the primary school curriculum again, leading to an increase in the time available for maths and science education? Contemporary concerns about STEM education have provoked new interest in the policy discussion on primary school curricula and the relative importance given to maths and science. To equip all students with the basic mathematical and scientific knowledge and understanding, sufficient time should be made available in the curriculum. Of course, time is only one of the variables in curriculum design. Even with all the time in the world, an uninspiring curriculum taught with bad pedagogies will yield poor results. And a badly designed curriculum that puts students under a lot of stress could reinforce maths anxiety and will dissuade students from pursuing maths education later on. Maths and science curricula need to be challenging, pedagogies need to focus on active learning and engagement, and children need sufficient time to understand the basics of maths and science. 

Links:
How is learning time organised in primary and secondary education? Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 38, by Eric Charbonnier
Les indicateurs de l'éducation à la loupe, issue No. 38 (French version)
Photo credit: © OECD

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