03 Feb 2014
Education for ‘Global Citizenship’: Beyond the ‘Fuzzword’ By Sobhi Tawil
By Sobhi Tawil, UNESCO. The notion of ‘global citizenship’ has recently gained prominence in international development discourse through the recently-adopted United Nations Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative. Indeed, among the three priority areas outlined in this global initiative, the third aims to ‘foster global citizenship’. Making sense of ‘fuzzwords” The notion of ‘global citizenship’, however,... Read More
27 Jan 2014
PIAAC (the PISA for Adults): a Powerful Tool for the OECD Skills Strategy By Oscar Valiente
By Oscar Valiente, University of Glasgow. The OECD launched the first results of the International Report of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) in October 2013 in Brussels, and a series of dissemination events have been taking place in different parts of the world over the past months. PIAAC assesses the performance of the adult... Read More
20 Jan 2014
Making PISA in Shanghai By Kai-ming Cheng
By Kai-ming Cheng, University of Hong Kong. The PISA 2012 results were published in December 2013; Shanghai again tops the ranking, followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, then South Korea, Taiwan, Japan. So what’s new? First, Finland, which used to be the top, is still doing very well, but has dropped out of pole position. Second,... Read More
16 Jan 2014
PISA in Peru: Achieving Poorly, But Improving By Santiago Cueto
By Santiago Cueto, Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE), Peru. As in the past, the recent results of the PISA assessment for Peru generated pessimistic comments about the abilities of our students and the quality of our education system. Are our students achieving poorly? Without a doubt. Are we worse than in previous assessments?... Read More
13 Jan 2014
PISA for Development: One World, One Measure for Learning? By Angeline M. Barrett
By Angeline M. Barrett, University of Bristol. Technical work has started on PISA for Development, the three year project, conceived as a pilot, which aims to “enhance” PISA survey instruments to make them more relevant for “developing countries” whilst at the same time producing scores on the same scales as the “main” PISA assessment. The... Read More
10 Jan 2014
PISA in Low and Middle Income Countries By Simone Bloem
By Simone Bloem, formerly OECD. Over the past decade, the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) has become the worlds’ premier yardstick for evaluating the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems. In December 2013, the latest results of the fifth survey round – PISA 2012 – were published and have resulted in active public... Read More
08 Jan 2014
PISA for Development and the Post-2015 Agenda By Michael Davidson, Michael Ward and Alejandro Gomez Palma
By Michael Davidson, Michael Ward and Alejandro Gomez Palma, OECD. As part of its contribution to the post-2015 education framework, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is attempting to enhance its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to make it more relevant to developing countries. These ideas, outlined in an OECD brochure released... Read More
31 Dec 2013
LEARNING AND NOT LEARNING: That Was the Year That Was – 2013
By Kenneth King, NORRAG and University of Edinburgh. The NORRAG Blog has appeared 115 times since June 2012, and this is the 76th and last blog of 2013. There is little doubt that LEARNING has been one of the biggest themes of the year. Lessons learnt in 12 years of the MDGs have been discussed... Read More
17 Dec 2013
Education and Skills Goals and Targets Post-2015: What Use of Evidence by the UN-Related Education Post-2015 Processes?
By Robert Palmer and Kenneth King. Evidence, Data and Development Post-2015 As we approach the end of 2013, we can look back on the tremendous flurry of post-2015 activity that has taken place over the last 12 months (and more). We have seen various formal post-2015 engines turn on and come up to full power;... Read More
12 Dec 2013
Education Among Goals Ahead of the Post-2015 Game
By Gina Bergh and Jonathan Couturier at the Overseas Development Institute. It’s been a hectic year for the post-2015 development agenda, with a stream of high and low level panels, consultations, working groups and proposals flooding the policy space. So we set out to assess the proposals up to now likely to carry weight as... Read More