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England’s Pisa scores could be improved if pupils changed what subjects they studied

Discussion in 'Education news' started by TES_Rosaline, Dec 6, 2018.

  1. TES_Rosaline

    TES_Rosaline Administrator Staff Member

    A new study suggests that England could rise up the table if more pupils took separate sciences:

    ‘Research suggests that England's Pisa scores are influenced by what subjects pupils study at GCSE

    England’s performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) league tables could be boosted if pupils were encouraged to study certain GCSE subjects, new research has suggested.

    A study by Cambridge Assessment found that “the popularity of subjects…could have some influence on England’s performance in Pisa”.

    Cambridge Assessment looked at the correlation between grades in individual GCSE subjects with Pisa ability estimates.’

    What are your views on the research?

  2. ScienceGuy

    ScienceGuy Occasional commenter

    So students taking Separate Sciences (usually the top students in a cohort) get better PISA scores than those taking Double Science (the rest of the cohort). Not really surprising is it.

    If more students take Separate Science then presumably PISA scores will stay the same but the correlation between the options would decrease.
  3. thekillers1

    thekillers1 Lead commenter

  4. phlogiston

    phlogiston Star commenter

    So what's the aim of our secondary education? High PISA scores or well educated kids? Yes, science is important (I would say that) but not all children benefit from an intense focus on science to the exclusion of other subejcts.
    lanokia and Catgirl1964 like this.
  5. install

    install Star commenter

    That would be 'game playing' - the very thing Ofsted tried to accuse schools of doing. Getting students to do subjects they may not want to do so that positions in ranking improve

    And the govt might be accused of maybe 'game playing' as it is eg by telling gcse students that a new '4' is a pass, but telling schools that a '5' would be the 'pass' on League Tables ...
    drvs likes this.
  6. scilady

    scilady New commenter

    Alice K likes this.

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