The “extra” in extracurricular activities

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

It may be tempting for school systems that are trying to reduce expenses to trim the “extras” from their budgets, including school-sponsored extracurricular activities. But are these activities just a luxury that schools can no longer afford? The latest issue of PISA in Focus makes the case that the availability of extracurricular activities at school is positively related both to student performance and to students’ attitudes towards learning.

As part of the PISA 2006 survey, which focused on student performance in science, school principals were asked about the kinds of extracurricular activities they offered their students. On average across OECD countries, 89% of students attend schools whose principals reported that science-related field trips were commonly offered, 56% of students attend schools that hold science competitions, 48% of students are in schools that encourage involvement in extracurricular science projects, 42% are in schools that organise science fairs, and 41% are in schools that have science clubs.

While the types of science-related extracurricular activities vary across countries, their relationship with better student performance is consistent throughout. In 22 of 31 OECD countries and 14 of 17 partner countries and economies, students in schools that offer more science-related extracurricular activities tend to perform better in science than do students in schools that offer fewer such activities. And in 21 OECD countries and 12 partner countries and economies, this positive relationship holds even after accounting for students’ socio-economic background. However, in two countries, the relationship is very different:  in the United States, students in schools that offer fewer of these kinds of science-related activities tend to perform better in science, after accounting for students’ socio-economic backgrounds; while in Montenegro, the relationship is negative both before and after accounting for students’ backgrounds.

And there’s more at play than test scores: PISA also found a link between the availability of school-sponsored extracurricular activities and students’ belief in their ability to handle science-related tasks, known as self-efficacy, and their enjoyment of learning science. In 22 OECD countries, 7 partner countries and 1 partner economy, students in schools that offer more of these kinds of activities tend to have higher levels of self-efficacy in science; and in 20 OECD countries, 2 partner countries and 1 partner economy, they also enjoy learning science more. In no country or economy is there a negative relationship between science-related extracurricular activities and positive attitudes towards learning science.

These findings from PISA can’t determine conclusively whether being exposed to science-related extracurricular activities enhances students’ attitudes towards science or whether students with more positive attitudes towards science are attracted to schools that offer more of such activities; both could be true. But what these results do show is that these kinds of activities are positively related not only to student performance, but also to students’ attitudes towards learning and their belief in their own abilities. With that in mind, school leaders should carefully weigh the benefits of these “extras” against their cost when making tough budgetary decisions.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Link latest issue "Are students more engaged when schools offer extracurricular activities?"
Photo credit: Teen science experiment / Shutterstock

Urban studies

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

To many people, the phrase “inner-city schools” is synonymous with crumbling buildings, frustrated teachers, disengaged students, truancy and violence. In some urban areas, though, city schools and the students who attend them flourish. In fact, three of the top five performers in reading in the PISA 2009 survey—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore—are large cities. So are big cities a boon or a bane for education?

The latest edition of PISA in Focus presents new analyses suggesting that, in some countries, students in large cities—defined as those with over one million inhabitants—score on a par with their top-performing peers in PISA. For instance, students in urban areas in countries like Portugal and Israel, countries that tend to perform around the OECD average in PISA, compare favourably with students in Singapore; and the performance of students in Poland’s urban areas compares easily with that of students in Hong Kong.

But in Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States, the performance of students in large urban areas drags down overall country scores in PISA. This might be because, in these countries, not all students can enjoy the advantages—including a rich cultural environment, more school choice and good job prospects after leaving school—that large urban centres offer. Some of these students may come from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, speak a different language at home than the one spoken at school, or have only one parent to turn to for support and assistance.

However, these new analyses of PISA data also show that an urban environment’s impact on learning is not just related to socio-economic advantage or disadvantage. Even when comparing students of similar backgrounds in OECD countries, those attending schools in urban areas in Chile, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Turkey scored more than 45 points higher—the equivalent of more than one year of formal schooling—than their peers in rural schools. In Hungary, the performance gap between the two groups of students was more than 70 score points wide.

What these analyses tell us is that in order to join the ranks of PISA best-performers, countries may have to provide targeted support to isolated rural communities to ensure that students attending schools in these areas reach their full potential, while those countries whose city-based students underperform will have to figure out how to both embrace a heterogeneous student population and enable these students to tap into the cultural and social advantages that large urban areas offer.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Are large cities educational assets or liabilities?
Photo credit: City student / Shutterstock

“I’ve been driven by goals”

Ellen MacArthur, Founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, was in Paris this week to speak on entrepreneurship and skills at the OECD Forum. She was interviewed by Marilyn Achiron, Editor of the Education Department.

In 2001, a 24-year-old Ellen MacArthur fulfilled a 20-year dream and sailed, single-handedly non-stop around the world in the Vendée Globe. Not only did she achieve her goal, she also came in second in one of the hardest races in sailing. Three years later, she broke the speed record for circumnavigating the globe, alone, on a trimaran.

Today, MacArthur has set herself another challenge: to change, fundamentally, how we think about and use the world’s resources. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, established in 2010, links education and business in a drive towards a circular economy. The idea of the circular economy is based on “systems thinking”, the acknowledgement that nothing occurs in a vacuum; that context matters. And the context we’re all living in right now is that of finite natural resources.

When asked, MacArthur says she is driven by goals; but that seems only half the story: the other half is passion. You hear it when she speaks of her first sailing experience, as a 4-year-old, with her “auntie”: “It was the greatest feeling of freedom I could ever imagine. That boat could have taken us anywhere in the world.” And you hear it when she speaks of her work now: “The ‘big click’ happened when I first started to understand the circular economy. It’s a whole different system. Suddenly I had the same feeling I had as a 4-year-old.”

In her 20s, the context of MacArthur’s life was the confines of impossibly small vessels. “You realise what ‘finite’ means; how you behave when you have limited resources.” Now, the context may seem far larger, but the constraints are no less challenging: “We don’t have enough resources to sustain our economy. You can re-start your boat at the end of a race, but you can’t do that with finite resources.”

In addition to making the case for a circular economy among business leaders her Foundation is piloting, testing and producing materials for secondary school teachers based on systems thinking and “restorative” recycling that can be built into the design of nearly everything we use, from washing machines through cars and carpets to packaging. “When people learn about recycling, they learn that they should be doing less. And everything they’re learning is, at best, just buying time. It doesn’t inspire creativity and innovation. In the circular economy, there’s an extraordinary message about what you can do, not what you can’tdo. And that message comes through in the classroom and in the boardroom.”

MacArthur recounts how, in front of a class of teachers, she takes what looks like a plastic bag, stuffs it into a glass of hot water, watches the bag dissolve and then drinks the nutrient-filled contents of the glass: a show-and-tell of how design for a circular economy can feed (in this case, literally) the future. The teachers, she says, “are not used to seeing that; they’re not used to the idea of a circular economy. It’s an exciting way to teach.” And what they’re learning, at the same time, is a notion that is central to a circular economy: that consumers pay for performance, not for the material product. “You look at how you can design something so that you can re-sell and re-manufacture it.

“The idea of the circular economy is an enabler for young people—and for businesses,” says MacArthur. “The more creative they are, the better. That’s what it’s all about.”

Links:

EllenMacArthur Foundation

OECD Forum 2012

OECD Economic Outlook

OECD Skills Strategy

OECD Work on Green Growth

Photo credit: Nautilus shell / Shutterstock

Another perspective on teachers’ pay

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

Thanks largely to the OECD’s work in compiling internationally comparable data on education,  the issue of teachers’ pay has quietly crept up the political agenda in more than a few countries (take the recent French presidential election and the current US presidential campaign, to name just two). PISA takes the discussion a step further. It asks: does basing teachers’ pay on their effectiveness as teachers help to improve an education system’s overall performance?

As this month’s PISA in Focus notes, about half of OECD countries reward teacher performance in different ways. For example, in the Czech Republic, England, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden and Turkey, outstanding teaching performance is a criterion for decisions on a teacher’s position on the base salary scale. In the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the Slovak Republic, it is a criterion for deciding on supplemental payments that are paid annually. In Austria, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey and the United States, outstanding teaching performance is used as a criterion for deciding supplemental incidental payments.

A look at the overall picture shows no relationship between average student performance in a country and the use of performance-based pay schemes. In other words, some high-performing education systems use performance-based pay while others don't. But the picture changes when taking into account how well teachers are paid overall in comparison with national income. In countries with comparatively low teachers’ salaries (less than 15% above GDP per capita), student performance tends to be better when performance-based pay systems are in place, while in countries where teachers are relatively well-paid (more than 15% above GDP per capita), the opposite is true.

But deciding on whether or not to have performance-based pay for teachers is only the first step. Measures of teacher performance must be clearly defined and be considered by teachers themselves to be fair and accurate. School systems also have to decide whether to reward individual teachers, groups of teachers or schools. And they also have to consider whether to create one “pot”, of a pre-determined sum, out of which rewards will be paid, or to be flexible enough to allow more teachers to earn rewards.

In the end, though, salary is only part of the work environment. Countries that have succeeded in making teaching an attractive profession have often done so not just through pay, but by raising the status of teaching, offering real career prospects, and giving teachers responsibility as professionals and leaders of reform. This requires teacher education that helps teachers to become innovators and researchers in education, not just civil servants who deliver curricula.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Does performance-based pay improve teaching?
Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons From Around The World
Photo credit: Performance / Shutterstock