World Class Education OR Curriculum Confined Knowledge?

The perception and attitude children develop in their early years continue to support or haunt them through the later years of their lives.
In the same way, the approach and stance these kids formulate during their primary and secondary schooling directs them when they go to universities.

The latest PISA results show the UK's declining position in terms of its students' mathematical, scientific and reading abilities while Finland's claim to have a world class education system has been reinforced with the comparisons.Finland has secured the top position once again and is being closely followed by Hong Kong, China and Canada.

Peter Mortimore's article "A League Table to worry us All " gives detailed insight on UK's rankings in each domain.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2236584,00.html

Some of the issues which have been raised due to the results of this report include:

• UK's performance contrasts sharply with the rising scores in national tests such as SAT's and GCSE's even when the standards of PISA are held constant.


• Boys are outperforming girls in both Science and Maths.


• Streaming and testing regimes are proving to be less beneficial than had been estimated.


• Late compulsory starting age for school at seven is yielding much better outcomes than kindergarden schooling.

Nevertheless, critics claim that all PISA reveals is that if you cannot read the language fluently i.e have an immigrant background which a lot of students in UK do whereas Finland , Sweden, Japan and Korea have a homogeneous population you don't do particularly well at school.

This is an eye opener for many of us as it tells us that even if we are ranking very high in the world class ranking of universities we are gradually falling behind in our primary and secondary schooling.

Finnish and Swedish teachers who possess a high level of autonomy in shaping the curriculum according to their needs in comparison to our highly centralized and politically intervened one makes one ponder what we are aiming for.... world class education or curriculum confined knowledge?

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Comparitive Education

Comparing universities on an individual basis is quite a daunting task but there is actually an established academic field of study which examines educational policy and standards in many countries and is known as Comparative Education.

This field of study is unknown to most but is gaining recognition as prestigious universities such as Stanford, Columbia and Oxford have introduced these programmes.

However, another source of recognition are some large scale projects as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS who strive to assess the extent to which students are capable of full participation in society.

The programme for international student assessment (PISA) is project of the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development (OECD) which examines the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in three domains including scientific literacy, mathematics and reading .

It aspires to answer abstract questions including :

• Are young adults prepared to meet the challenges of the future?



• Are they able to analyse, reason and communicate their ideas effectively?



• Do they have the capacity to continue learning throughout life?



• Are some kinds of teaching and school organization more effective than others?

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), on the other hand provides reliable and timely data on the mathematics and science achievement of U.S. students compared to students of other countries. It is carried out every four years at the fourth and eighth grades covering more than 60 countries of the world.

Such programmes bring out the actual reality of educational standards and their glory and plight as comparisons are made irrespective of financial resources and teaching methodology.

They can prove to be highly beneficial for our nation and its education policy makers as we can simply adopt the methods of the countries whose performance is exemplary and ensure that we maintain or embrace the necessary measures.

A deviating outlier

Whenever we think about universities , the first thing that comes to most peoples' minds is EXAMS!

No matter how much we loathe them,they have been up till now considered as the most reliable and valid assessment procedures in most of the countries worldwide.

While I was researching about the different educational systems , I stumbled over something which caught my eye and I thought would be worthwhile sharing.

The number of exams, university students must and can take in a university differ from country to country and in certain circumstances university to university too.

But Italy, among all other developed countries seems to be highly deviated outlier.

John Hey, an economist and a university of York professor who teaches in Italy as well has put up a page which shows the different trends unknown to most people.

ONE exam per course each year with no right to resit: Canada, United States
ONE exam per course per year with at most one resit: Denmark, France, Germany, Mexico, Switzerland, United Kingdom
ONE exam per course per year with at most two resits: Austria, The Netherlands
(Up to) TEN exams per course per year with right to resit as often as you wish:Italy

http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jdh1/exams/index.htm

This kind of practise is uncommon in any other country of the world but leaves us thinking about the standards of education that would be prevalent in Italy and where does that leave them standing when its counterparts are way ahead leading the world and the university rankings too.

http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2007/overall_rankings/top_400_universities/

What is it that makes us so special and how long will this last?

Without a doubt , it can be claimed that British Universities are some of the best in the world. I know some of you may not agree with me but the majority does think that these are places where development and dissemination of ideas takes place, logical and lateral thinking is encouraged, competitiveness, confrontation and collaboration is a ritual turning these institutions into scholastic Nirvanas.

These are undisputed facts , at least as far as the league tables are concerned but are these institutions really provoking intellectual stimulation, appreciating the freedom to speech and allowing room for contradiction.

With such rapid technological changes taking place and rising Asians ...(you know who I'm talking about .... yes... the Chinese and the Indians) will our universities be able to maintain the same awe and aura? Not only that but what is it that brings our institutions in line with America's universities considering their size and their finances.

Through this blog we shall explore the extent to which these claims are true comparing and contrasting British universities current standing with its glorious past and the unseen competition which lies ahead.

Having studied in a developing country myself, at times I truly feel I'm blessed but there are those moments when I am forced to think that things are really really laid back here and if only these resources and facilities were available to some of the people in developing nations maybe things would have been different today.

I maybe completely wrong but that's what we're here to find out!!!