Michael Gove blames Labour for international league table performance

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/01/michael-gove-labour-international-league-table

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Michael Gove has pointed to "children educated almost entirely under Labour" to explain England's lacklustre performance in international education league tables to be published later this week.

The relative positions of England, Scotland and Wales are expected to be little changed when the OECD releases its latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) on Tuesday, setting off another political battle over the direction of England's state schools.

"The results due out this week are a verdict on the last government. These tests were taken in 2012 by children who had been educated almost entirely under Labour and before most of our reforms had even been introduced," said the education secretary. "The real test of our reforms will be how we do in a decade's time."

But Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, fired the first shots with a commentary piece in the Sunday Times arguing that Gove's reforms were not helping. "All his frenetic attention-seeking changes of the past three years – structural reforms, curriculum rewrites, multiplying assessment criteria – have not delivered the step change in standards we need," Hunt said.

Reports over the weekend said the UK had "stagnated" in the latest tests, following the fall in the OECD league table it suffered in the 2009 edition of Pisa.

England sits near the Pisa average in terms of performance, but Hunt said the country needed to emulate the successful education systems of China, Singapore and South Korea, which have climbed to the top of the OECD rankings.

Hunt said the quality of teachers and training in China's high-tech Shanghai corridor contrasted with the government's efforts to allow unqualified teachers in English classrooms.

"In Shanghai all teachers have a teaching qualification and undergo 240 hours of professional development within the first five years of their career," Hunt said.

"Contrast this with Gove's attack on the status of teaching in England … In England the South Leeds academy can advertise for 'an unqualified maths teacher' with four GCSEs. How is that going to help us win the global race?" Hunt said, referring to a secondary school in Yorkshire that recently posted that job ad.

Whitehall sources pointed out that the 12,000 English 15-year-olds who sat the OECD's tests at the end of 2012 would have had eight years in school under a Labour government, and just two years under the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

"In the past, these tests have shown that, despite constantly rising exam results, our performance stagnated as others raced ahead," Gove said on Sunday. "Our reforms are rooting out grade inflation, restoring rigour to the curriculum, giving headteachers more freedom, improving the quality of teachers and ensuring young people leave school with the skills they need to compete."

The triennial survey of reading, maths and science attainment by 15-year-olds in 66 countries has been criticised for its complex methods, and for the standardised tests it uses to judge reading and mathematical ability across countries as diverse as Qatar, Macau and Russia.

Around the world governments are preparing for good and bad news. New Zealand has seen its rankings slip substantially since the 2009 tests, when it was among the leaders, according to comments by the country's education minister Hekia Parata last week.

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