Educational Attainment: International Rankings

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I think the absolute standard has remained fairly static, but in view of the noble Baroness’s excellent work on education reform, I do not want to enter into a discussion, and I will write to her about that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall that last time we had the PISA results there was a Statement in the other place that was repeated here, but given the fact that we are down three places in maths and our score in science is lower than before, I can perhaps understand why that has not happened again. The Minister will be aware that there is also an OECD survey about continuing professional development among teachers. I am afraid that the average is 11 days per annum, whereas the UK provides only four. How important does he think it is to make sure that the continuing professional development of our teachers is up to that of our competitors?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord on that. Again, it is something that the multi-academy trusts are focusing on intensively in terms of supporting their teachers with CPD. We have an active programme, for instance, in maths. We fund high-quality professional development for maths teachers through our further maths support programme, our core maths support programme, the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics and a number of universities.