The latest PISA tests suggest that reforming education is slow and hard, but eminently possible

Football fans must wait for four years between World Cups. Education nerds get their fill of global competition every three. The sixth Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test of the science, maths and reading skills of 15-year-olds from across the world, was published by the OECD club of mostly rich countries on December 6th. Its results have important lessons for policymakers worldwide.Some 540,000 pupils in 72 countries or regions'each of whom had finished at least six years of school'sat similar computer-based tests last year. The OECD then crunched the results into a standardised scale. The average result for each subject is about 490 points. Scoring 30 points above that total is roughly akin to completing an extra year's worth of schooling.Singapore, the consistently high-achiever in PISA, now does even better: it is the top-performing country in each subject area. The average pupil's maths score of 564 suggests Singaporean teens are roughly three years ahead of their American peers, with a score of 470.Other East Asian countries also score highly across most domains, as they have done since PISA was launched 15 year ago....Continue reading
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