The Leaning Tower of PISA
So the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results have been released by the OECD and the b lame game has begun. Reasons for declining results include teacher resourcing, technology, social and economic struggles, and that student-directed learning is the devil's work. The argument being that the structure of teacher-led instruction is closely associated with both student academic achievement and their sense of well-being. So what exactly are these tests and why are they so important? PISA tests the reading, maths and science skills of 15- and 16-year-olds in the OECD ’s 78 member states, as well as a few other volunteer countries. The idea is that these results provide a means to directly comparing different educational systems. The aim of the assessment is that the wealth of new information provided will help identify why some school systems do so well and others not. The others would follow the lead of successful systems, causing results to