Dutch reading education can learn from other countries
With Korea and Thailand, the Netherlands is one of the countries with the most negative trend in reading performance. This is the conclusion of the OECD in the Pisa report, which was published at the end of last year. Which countries are doing better? And what can the Netherlands learn from this?
Picture: HOP
Shanghai: strong teachers to weak schools
A rat race. According to critics, this is the result of the Chinese education system, in which tests at the age of eighteen determine access to universities, a good job, a good salary and ultimately even a suitable partner. Desirable or not, no country in the world still keeps up with the Pisa scores of the competitive Chinese students in mathematics and natural sciences. With reading, only Singapore remains somewhat close.
China's top performance is limited to four Chinese regions on which the OECD is authorized to report: the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. That choice strongly biases the Pisa scores, emails American educational researcher David Rutkowski of Indiana University. In the 2015 Pisa tests, the Chinese government reported the results of four sub-areas for the first time, instead of just Shanghai. This resulted in a sharp drop in scores. In the recently published 2018 report, Guangdong province has been replaced by Zhejiang province. With that, the results have shot through the ceiling. Previously, the Chinese government collected results in many provinces, but did not have to report results on all those provinces. It is as if the Dutch government would only choose the best municipalities for Pisa. '
It is as if the Dutch government chose only the best municipalities for Pisa.
When asked, a spokesperson for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said that the participation of countries as a whole is the starting point of the Pisa studies, but that individual countries themselves decide which regions or municipalities participate. Not only the OECD, but also the World Bank is enthusiastic about the sometimes radical solutions that have been devised in China for tackling educational disadvantages. In the province of Shanghai, high performing schools are mandated by the government to take over the governance of low-performing schools, for example by promoting the deputy principal of the strong school to principal of the weak school. Teachers who aspire to a job as school principal are encouraged to teach in schools where performance is lagging behind. Singapore and Japan are also promoting the transition from strong teachers to weak schools.
Image: Pixabay
Portugal: systematic catch-up
Portugal is regarded as a kind of educational wonder of the world: since the start of the Pisa studies, the country has continued to improve the initially poor educational performance. Until last year, when the scores stabilized. The Portuguese XNUMX-year-olds do rise above their Dutch peers in reading, due to the enormous decline in reading performance
here.
Portugal has been systematically catching up for fifteen years. Governments of the left and right invested financially in education, changed the curriculum and introduced tests for students and prospective teachers. The weekly number of hours of calculations increased from three to five per week with the introduction of a new program. There was a national reading plan. School libraries were expanded. Disadvantaged schools received extra resources
for more intensive education. There was a final test in primary education and more exams in secondary education. Portugal now also tests the general and didactic knowledge of teachers. If you don't get enough points, you can't go to class. That mix of money and measures has worked, write researchers in the report 'Porque melhoraram os resultados Pisa em Portugal' from 2017. The best thing is that not only the results of the best students improved, but also of disadvantaged children.
Portugal now also tests the general and didactic knowledge of teachers. Those who do not get enough points are not allowed to sit in front of the class.
Not all changes in Portugal lasted. The education unions campaigned intensively against the admission test to the profession, eventually with success. After yet another strike, the new socialist minister Tiago Brandao Rodrigues admitted in 2015: the teacher test disappeared. There was also less exam pressure for students. In 2016
the minister in the weekly magazine Expresso a new course. 'The old model is wrong',
is his conclusion. The emphasis on mathematics and Portuguese 'devalues the other subjects'. The effect of these changes on the Pisa results will become apparent in the years to come.
Finland: specialized teams
Without kudos to Finland, no Pisa report would have been complete in recent decades. And when it comes to equality between schools, no other can match the Scandinavian country: 7 percent of the differences in reading performance can be explained by differences between
schools, the other 93 percent is due to the difference between pupils within one and the same school. "In Finland (…) the nearest school is also always the best school," writes OECD education director Andreas Schleicher in his comments on the Pisa results.
The Netherlands scores extremely poorly on this point: almost 60 percent of the differences in reading performance here depend on the type of school, only Israel and Lebanon do worse than us. One explanation for equal opportunities in the Finnish system are the interventions for
students with an impending reading delay. Specialists work closely with teachers to identify and help pupils who need extra help at a young age. Teams around this care student meet at least twice a month in Finland. In addition to the teachers involved, this includes a school nurse, a school psychologist and a
social worker represented.
Despite all the praise, Finland's reading results are under pressure. The decrease in reading motivation in the Scandinavian country is even 'dramatic', according to the OECD.
Despite all the praise, Finland's reading results are under pressure. The decrease in reading motivation in the Scandinavian country is even 'dramatic', according to the OECD. Finland still scores better here than the Netherlands. In the Pisa ranking for reading motivation in 79 countries, the Netherlands is at the very bottom.
Pisa does not report on teaching methods and the question whether teachers give purposeful and clear instruction, but according to emeritus lecturer reading education Kees Vernooy, this explains the dramatic score. “Children become demotivated because they are technical
cannot read fluently”, says Vernooy. “And because teaching methods such as News Comprehension for reading comprehension focus too much on reading strategies and are perceived as boring."
Image: Pixabay
Estonia: Success without inspection
Estonia has surpassed Finland in reading performance. The country is fifth in the latest Pisa survey behind the four Chinese provinces and Singapore. As in Portugal, the trend in reading scores in the country is also 'steadily positive'.
The Hechinger Report, an investigative journalism platform from Columbia University, provides a historical explanation for Estonian success in a recent report. Thomas Hatch, professor of education at the same university, endorses this analysis. According to Pisa
In 2018, the differences between schools in Estonia are slightly larger than in Finland, but much smaller than in the Netherlands. The Estonian idea that every student deserves equal educational opportunities dates back to the time when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union, according to education experts at Columbia University. "What we saw, when we visited Estonia, was not a new education system, but an old one," says education researcher Marc Tucker in The Hechinger Report. "It is surprising how they managed to achieve good results with a system that has hardly changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall."
It is surprising how they managed to get good results with a system that has hardly changed since the fall of the wall.
According to professor Thomas Hatch, schools and school leaders in Estonia have considerable autonomy. An education inspectorate like the Dutch does not know the country. However, Estonia does have a modest set of nationally used textbooks, teaching materials and exams that provide focus. Early childhood education is free from 90 months and almost XNUMX percent of children between three and seven years old participate.
Belgium: awareness of crisis
With Austria, Belgium, France and Germany, the OECD ranks the Netherlands in a group of countries where labor migrants from after the Second World War stayed and where labor migrants from the EU and migrants with refugee status have since joined. Qua
educational performance of children with a migration background is the comparison with
those countries the most fair.
It is mustard after the meal, but the Netherlands still gets a lesson afterwards. 'In the Netherlands, segregation in housing has led to segregation in education,' writes OECD director Schleicher. 'In the XNUMXs, the Netherlands chose to house migrants in large, specially constructed housing blocks. In neighboring Flanders, migrants were instead given vouchers to supplement their housing budget. As a result
there were fewer schools with a population of only migrant children. '
In Flanders, where migrants were more evenly distributed, students from migrant families did much better than in the Netherlands.
According to Schleicher, the education of migrant children who grew up in separate neighborhoods was an enormous challenge for the Netherlands. 'In Flanders, where the migrants were more distributed, students from migrant families did much better than in the Netherlands.'
Reading performance is also declining in Belgium, but unlike in the Netherlands, this does lead to a sense of urgency among our southern neighbors. 'Let's stop that dawdling, messing around and nonsense,' said Education Minister Ben Weyts in an interview with the Flemish newspaper De Morgen.
and he advocates special 'language immersion classes' for children with language deficiencies. In the Netherlands, Minister Arie Slob refers to the responsibility of childcare, libraries and parents. 'The aim is to work towards a stronger and more coherent policy in the field of reading promotion.' That is a hollow phrase as long as the quality of Dutch reading education is not addressed in the discussion.
This article appeared in the February issue of the Onderwijsblad
