Memento: In this file photo, parents take pictures of their children outside a high school in Beijing after they finished their national college exams. — AP
AS a ninth-grader, Shanghai’s Li Sixin spent more
than three hours on homework a night and took tutorials in Mathematics,
Physics and Chemistry on the weekends.
When she was tapped to take an exam last year given to half a
million students around the world, Sixin breezed through it. “I felt the
test was just easy,” said Sixin, who was a student at Shanghai Wenlai
Middle School at the time and now attends high school.
The long hours which focused on schoolwork — and a heavy emphasis on
test-taking skills — help explain why young students like Sixin in
China’s financial hub once again dominated an international test for
15-year-olds called the Programme for International Student Assessment
(Pisa).
Students from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan —
all from Asia — were right behind. In the wealthy city of Shanghai,
where affluent families can afford to pay for tutors, the results are
not representative of China overall, although they are ranked as a group
alongside national averages for countries such as the United States and
Japan.
Still, they are indicative of education trends in China and
elsewhere in Asia — societies where test results determine entrance into
prestigious universities and often one’s eventual career path.
Shanghai scored an average of 613 on Maths, as compared with the
nearest rival Singapore (573), and the global average of 494. Hong Kong
ranked third in Maths, scoring 561, while Japan was ranked seventh and
scored 536. The test is given every three years.
In China, educators say hard work is key to their students’
impressive showing. “They listen carefully in the class and do their
homework,” said Bai Bing, the headmaster of Sixin’s school, where about
40 students were chosen to take the global test.
Still, Chinese educational experts say the results are at most
partial and covers up shortcomings in creating well-rounded, critical
thinking individuals. “This should not be considered a pride for us
because overall, it still measures one’s test-taking ability. You can
have the best answer for a theoretical model but can you build a factory
on a test paper?” asked Xiong Binqi, a Shanghai-based scholar on
education.
“The biggest criticism is that China’s education has sacrificed
everything else for test scores, such as life skills, character
building, mental health, and physical health,” said Xiong.
“Shanghai is an exception, and it is by no means representative of
China,” said Jiang Xueqin, deputy principal at the High School Attached
to Tsinghua University in Beijing. “It’s an international city where its
residents pay great attention to education and where there are many
universities.”
Affluent Shanghai parents annually spend an average of 6,000 yuan
(RM3,190) on English and Math tutors and 9,600 yuan (RM5,100) on weekend
lessons.
Shanghai Normal University president Zhang Minxuan said Pisa does
not measure students’ social abilities, physical health and aesthetics,
and he cautioned against extrapolating to the rest of the country.
“Shanghai students’ top placement in Pisa is no proof of equal
development of education in China,” he said, as reported by Shanghai
Education News. “There’s no denying, China’s education still has a long
way to go.”
By Didi Tang — AP
Are the Chinese cheating in PISA or are we cheating ourselves?
Andreas Schleicher
Whenever an American or European wins an Olympic gold medal, we cheer
them as heroes. When a Chinese does, the first reflex seems to be that
they must have been doping; or if that's taking it too far, that it must
have been the result of inhumane training.
There seem to be parallels to this in education. Only hours
after results from the latest PISA assessment showed Shanghai's school
system leading the field,
Time magazine concluded the Chinese
must have been cheating. They didn't bother to read the PISA 2012
Technical Background Annex, which shows there was no cheating,
whatsoever, involved. Nor did they speak with the experts who had drawn
the samples or with the international auditors who had carefully
reviewed and validated the sample for Shanghai and those of other
countries.
Others were quick to suggest that resident internal migrants
might not be covered by Shanghai's PISA sample, because years ago those
migrants wouldn't have had access to Shanghai's schools. But, like many
things in China, that has long changed and, as described by PISA,
resident migrants were covered by the PISA samples in exactly the way
they are covered in other countries and education systems. Still, it
seems to be easier to cling to old stereotypes than keep up with changes
on the ground (or to read the PISA report).
True, like other emerging economies, Shanghai is still
building its education system and not every 15-year-old makes it yet to
high school. As a result of this and other factors, the PISA 2012 sample
covers only 79 per cent of the 15-year-olds in Shanghai. But that is
far from unique. Even the United States, the country with the longest
track record of universal high-school education, covered less than 90
per cent of its 15-year-olds in PISA – and it didn't include Puerto Rico
in its PISA sample, a territory that is unlikely to have pulled up US
average performance.
International comparisons are never easy and they are never perfect.
But anyone who takes a serious look at the facts and figures will
concede that the samples used for PISA result in robust and
internationally comparable data. They have been carefully designed and
validated to be fit for purpose in collaboration with the world's
leading experts, and the tests are administered under strict and
internationally comparable conditions. Anyone who really wants to find
out can review the underlying data.
Short of arguments about methodology, some people turn to
dismissing Shanghai's strong performance by saying that Shanghai's
students are only good on the kind of tasks that are easy to teach and
easy to test, and that those things are losing in relevance because they
are also the kind of things that are easy to digitise, automate and
outsource. But while the latter is true, the former is not. Consider
this: Only 2 per cent of American 15-year-olds and 3 per cent of
European ones reach the highest level of math performance in PISA,
demonstrating that they can conceptualise, generalise and use math based
on their investigations and apply their knowledge in novel contexts. In
Shanghai it is over 30 per cent. Educators in Shanghai have simply
understood that the world economy will pay an ever-rising premium on
excellence and no longer value people for what they know, but for what
they can do with what they know.
PISA didn't just test what 15-year-olds know in mathematics,
it also asked them what they believe makes them succeed. In many
countries, students were quick to blame everyone but themselves: More
than three-quarters of the students in France, an average performer on
the PISA test, said the course material was simply too hard, two-thirds
said the teacher did not get students interested in the material, and
half said their teacher did not explain the concepts well or they were
just unlucky. The results are very different for Shanghai. Students
there believe they will succeed if they try hard and they trust their
teachers to help them succeed. That tells us a lot about school
education. And guess which of these two countries keeps improving and
which is not? The fact that students in some countries consistently
believe that achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than
inherited intelligence, suggests that education and its social context
can make a difference in instilling the values that foster success in
education.
And even those who claim that the relative standing of
countries in PISA mainly reflects social and cultural factors must
concede that educational improvement is possible: in mathematics,
countries like Brazil, Turkey, Mexico or Tunisia rose from the bottom;
Italy, Portugal and the Russian Federation have advanced to the average
of the industrialised world or close to it; Germany and Poland rose from
average to good; and Shanghai and Singapore have moved from good to
great. Indeed, of the 65 participating countries, 45 saw improvement in
at least one subject area. These countries didn't change their culture,
or the composition of their population, nor did they fire their
teachers. They changed their education policies and practices. Learning
from these countries should be our focus. We will be cheating ourselves
and the children in our schools if we miss that chance.
International comparisons are never easy and they aren't
perfect. But PISA shows what is possible in education, it takes away
excuses from those who are complacent, and it helps countries see
themselves in the mirror of the educational results and educational
opportunities delivered by the world's leaders in education.
The world
has become indifferent to tradition and past reputations, unforgiving of
frailty and ignorant of custom or practice. Success will go to those
individuals, institutions and countries which are swift to adapt, slow
to complain and open to change. And the task for governments is to help
citizens rise to this challenge. PISA can help to make that happen.
Andreas Schleicher is deputy director for Education and
Skills, and special adviser on education policy to the OECD's Secretary
General.
In response to criticisms and questions regarding the
validity of high scores achieved by 15-year-olds from Shanghai, China,
in the recent PISA assessment, he posted this article to the OECD's
education blog
http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.fr/.
Sources: The Sydney Morning Herald
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