Best Practice

What is the purpose of education?

Action research
Confused by the conflicting messages we receive about both the state and the purpose of our education system? Perhaps it is time to go back to first principles to find some clarity, argues Dr Newman Burdett.

The English education system is really rather good overall, that is the suggestion from the recently published Pearson report, The Learning Curve.

But this is in contrast to the 2012 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results which, some claimed, showed it was rather poor, and again in contrast, I have a cutting above my desk from the 2009 PISA results that proclaims (from almost identical results) that England “is among the elite”.

So which view of the evidence is correct? More importantly, does our international ranking really matter? Do Finnish teachers feel dismayed that their results in the PISA tests mean they are slipping down the rankings? Or, like Ireland losing the Eurovision, are they secretly thinking “thank God for that – now we might just be left alone to get on with it”?

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