Education Performance

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I apologise for being late for this important debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)on initiating it. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who I assume went to St Eddie’s in my constituency, and the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe).

The starting point of my contribution is the importance of us all taking seriously the available evidence and data about education performance. It may be legitimate self-criticism for all of us, wherever we stand in terms of our parties or on the issues discussed today, to say that we all have instincts and prejudices. We all went to school, many of us have children at school and we all have schools in our constituencies. Understandably, those things, as well as our political philosophies, inform our outlook on school policy, but we need to supplement those instincts and prejudices by looking at the data and evidence.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly points to the importance of evidence when comparing countries, so is he a little concerned that we were not listed in the 2003 PISA results because schools did not provide the requisite amount of information? Does he welcome the fact that this Government will make it mandatory for schools to provide such information?

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the next part of my speech. I absolutely share his concern. In fact, I was Schools Minister at the time—I do not know whether he intervened on me with that knowledge—and I remember the difficult conversations we had to have. The subsequent judgment was that the figures, for both 2000 and 2003 I think, were invalid because there were not sufficient schools. All we have to compare is 2006 with 2009.

The hon. Member for South West Norfolk spoke about PISA before I came into the Chamber. I apologise for missing what she said. The Secretary of State has spoken about the PISA outcomes on a number of occasions. Clearly, we must all share his concern about how low down the PISA league table we are for maths, science and reading. There are issues about its methodology and about the new entrants that were not in previous studies, but I will not dwell on them. I share the concern of the hon. Lady and others that we clearly still face a very big challenge.

The hon. Lady referred to Shanghai, which is a part of China that was not in the previous PISA table in 2009 and that went straight in to the current table at No. 1, which is what they used to say on the top 40. It is now top of the PISA league table for maths, science and reading. Clearly, there are lessons that we need to learn from that part of the world.

[Kevin Brennan]

Let me caution my hon. Friend on this matter and recommend that he read the article in The New Yorker, which asked whether help had been given to those taking the tests in Shanghai.

[Stephen Twigg]

I will read that article.

Whenever we discuss test scores, there is always this argument about whether people are being taught to the test. Of course there are other pieces of research that show rather different outcomes. I know that this has been referred to in previous debates, but the trends in international mathematics and science study, which does not cover English or reading, looked at scores in years 3 and 9 between 1995 and 2007. In terms of progress in both mathematics and science, the United Kingdom was towards the top of the most improved countries in the world.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I mentioned TIMSS earlier. Part of the concern about TIMSS is that it is based on the curriculum of a particular country. It is not a standardised test that people sit across countries in the way that PISA is. Moreover, France and Germany did not take part in that study. We were still trailing all the Asian tigers, such as Japan and Hong Kong.

[Mel Stride]

rose—

[Stephen Twigg]

Allow me to respond to the hon. Lady and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman if he still wishes to intervene.

From the information that I have in front of me, I can see that the hon. Lady is correct in what she said about Germany and France. As for Japan, we performed better in science and mathematics in year 3-4 and year 8. I accept her point about the validity of different forms of comparative research. None the less, on TIMSS, we were ahead of Japan and the United States. I know what she will say to that. What I am measuring is the improvement on the absolute score. After the improvement, we are still slightly behind Japan, but in that period we improved faster than Japan, although from a lower base.

[Mel Stride]

Is it not the case that our apparent improvements in the TIMSS can to some degree be attributed to the fact that the cohort of countries that we are looking at in each year has changed and that a number of non-OECD African and Asian countries have entered in more recent times, thus slightly flattering our figures?

[Stephen Twigg]

I do not believe so. I am relying on the particular table in front of me. In each case, it examines a country that was in the 1995 cohort and the 2007 cohort. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman’s criticism is valid. The hon. Lady’s implied criticism is a fairer one because I was relying on the improvement. She is right to say that, if we look at the absolute score for Japan, it is, in every case, slightly better than ours, but we have made a greater improvement in that period. Interestingly, the United States is behind us on not just improvement but the absolute score in every case.

[Mr Mark Field]

In the midst of this battle over evidence—I accept that evidence is important and that getting the figures right does matter—surely the hon. Gentleman does not disagree with the assertion of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk that there is a problem. We are going down the league table, although perhaps not by as many places as might have been predicted. More importantly though, there is a lack of rigour in the choice of subjects that the average student is taking for A-level. We are not looking at academic subjects in the way we were in the past, and that is in stark contrast to many of our most important economic rivals in the 21st century.

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. At the end of the hon. Lady’s speech, she said that there is no contradiction between a high-quality and a high-quantity education system, and that is something with which I passionately agree. I do not necessarily agree with everything that she said in constructing that argument, but I certainly believe that we should be aspiring to that.

Let me take up something that the hon. Lady said and that has also been said by other Government Members. We face a real challenge in changing the attitude of many state comprehensive schools to getting their brightest kids into Oxbridge. As someone who went from a comprehensive school to Oxford—okay, it was quite a long time ago, as the hon. Gentleman will know—I relied on a particular teacher who mentored and encouraged me. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and I was doing A-level economics. Without him, I am not sure whether I would have made that application. I do not think that that situation has changed as much in the subsequent 25 years as I would like. It is not just about Oxbridge, but if we are rightly to criticise Oxbridge for the comparatively low numbers of state school kids getting in, part of the challenge is for the schools as well as for Oxbridge.

[Kevin Brennan]

We are all in danger of confessing our educational backgrounds. I also went to a comprehensive school and ended up studying PPE at Oxford. That just shows how predictable MPs are.

[Stephen Twigg]

Did my hon. Friend study A-level economics?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes, I studied A-level economics and got an A in case anybody asks. Cambridge Assessment sent me an article this week about the PISA studies in which Andreas Schleicher, who is often cited by the Secretary of State as his hero, seemed to suggest that there is no evidence of decline in English pupil performance.

[Stephen Twigg]

I think I will move on from this part of my speech, partly because a lot of Members want to participate in the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

From a whole series of studies, including TIMSS.

[Stephen Twigg]

I am not sure whether TIMSS shows that, but I want to move on. When the hon. Lady spoke about China, she mentioned the cultural attitude to education, and that is clearly a factor. We know that in our own country from the data for achievement by ethnicity. Chinese and Indian children consistently outperform all other sections of the population in tests and exams, even when they are from the poorest families, as measured by free school meals, so there clearly are cultural factors.

In my remaining time, I will say a little about progress over time and highlight some successes in Liverpool. I will say a little about the factors that shape success and then something about learning from elsewhere. I want to say a bit about Teach First and about the US and Swedish experience of chartered schools and free schools respectively and then finish by saying something about E-bac and the surrounding debate around measuring achievement.

Between 1997 and 2010, we saw a significant improvement in the scores in the key stage tests—the SATS—A-levels and GCSEs. The national improvement in the five A* to C measure was from 32% in 1997 to 55% in 2010. I wanted to use that fact to pay particular tribute to the schools in Liverpool, which improved by a more significant margin—from a miserable 24% in 1997 to 53% last year, which was just two points below the national average. Linked to that, because of the success that those children and young people have had in their GCSE results, more of them are staying on at school or college after the age of 16. Nationally, there has been an improvement from 64% in 1997, just below two-thirds, to 79% last year, just below four-fifths. Again, in Liverpool, there was much more significant improvement, from just over 50% in 1997 to 78% last year.

There is a very important debate to be had about why those rates are changing. I agree with the hon. Member for South West Norfolk that improving educational performance is not just about Governments waving a magic wand. We will always have a debate about resources. Resources are not the focus of today’s debate, but spending is clearly a factor. There is also a debate to be had about the appropriate accountability measures and I will return later to that issue. However, improving educational performance is actually about what happens at the school level and the local level. We know that, because we know that schools with very similar intakes that have very similar amounts of money spent on them perform very differently from each other. Improving educational performance cannot be only about the context or the amount of money that is spent, although clearly both those things matter.

I agree with the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock that the head teacher in a school is critical. The quality of leadership around and below the position of head teacher is also important. Governors are important, too; the hon. Gentleman referred to his own role as a governor. All those positions are also vital.

Let us consider what we can learn from elsewhere, because it is important that we examine all the evidence available. I have praised the Government for the expansion of Teach First. One of the earliest decisions that I had to make when I became a Minister in 2002 was about whether we should support a programme that was initially called Teach for London, but eventually became the Teach First programme. We can learn a great deal from the Teach First programme.

The hon. Member for South West Norfolk—or perhaps it was one of her colleagues—spoke about the attractiveness of teaching in some of the toughest schools and how the best teachers often may not want to teach in them. As I say, Teach First began in London before expanding to other parts of the country and the whole basis of the programme was to place some of the brightest graduates from some of the top universities in some of the toughest inner-city schools in London as teachers.

Some of the examples of teachers who have gone through the Teach First programme are truly remarkable. Moreover, the number of teachers who went through the programme and stayed in the education world rather than following other careers that are probably much better paid has been another truly remarkable achievement. Research by Manchester university shows that schools in challenging circumstances where Teach First graduates are first placed have seen a statistically significant improvement in their GCSE results and that there is a positive correlation between the degree of improvement at GCSE level and the number of Teach First graduates in a school.

Teach First is a great programme and a great example of learning from another country, because it was modelled on a scheme in the US that enjoys strong cross-party support. Whatever else happens in the field of education policy, we should all continue to support and encourage the further expansion of the Teach First programme.

Having said that, I should add that there is a need to be cautious when we are studying school reform movements in other parts of the world. When the case is made for the Government’s policy on free schools and academies, great emphasis is placed on the experience of the US charter schools and the Swedish free schools. In preparation for today’s debate, I have looked at some of the evidence from the US and Sweden, and I think that it is fair to say that the evidence from both countries is mixed.

I think that the Secretary of State for Education and the Minister who is here today have both referred to a US programme called KIPP, which is the Knowledge is Power Project. I had an opportunity to visit KIPP schools in New York and Texas some time ago and I was hugely impressed by what was being achieved in those schools. KIPP schools are a great example of how some of these new, more autonomous schools in the US are delivering, particularly for children from some of the poorest backgrounds. There is no doubt that both the US charter schools and the Swedish free schools are hugely popular with the parents of the children who attend them.

However, the evidence about the impact on standards of those schools is mixed. There have been a number of studies in New York that suggest there has been real improvement in the charter schools compared with non-charter schools and that in particular some of the poorest children from ethnic minorities have done better than they might have done otherwise. On the other hand, the Centre for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford university published a report in 2009 that suggested that there is a much more mixed picture across the US, including significant state-by-state variation. That suggests that the extra autonomy granted to those schools may in itself bring benefits—but there are clearly other factors at play in addition to that extra autonomy, which help to determine whether those schools are successful or less successful.

In some ways, the picture in Sweden is quite similar. The Swedish free schools are popular with parents. One piece of research that I looked at showed higher grade point averages in free schools compared with those achieved in other Swedish schools. It has been suggested that in an area with a concentration of free schools, there was a wider positive impact. On the other hand, other significant studies that I looked at earlier today suggest that there has been a general worsening of performance in the Swedish school system in recent years, so that it is perhaps the case that the free schools have not delivered the national system-wide improvement in Sweden that their proponents originally anticipated.

Furthermore, there is real concern in Sweden—this is different from the experience in the US of the charter school system—that the gaps in terms of socio-economic achievement have widened in the country. Admittedly, those gaps in Sweden have always been much narrower than the gaps in the UK, so I still think that we have a lot to learn from Sweden and from some of the other Scandinavian countries. Nevertheless, we still need to tread with care on both sides of this debate, because I have heard both advocates of the Government’s proposals and critics of them somewhat overstating the case for or against by citing evidence from the US and Sweden. As I said, the evidence from those countries is decidedly mixed.

There is a very difficult debate to be had about how we measure how well schools are doing—and, indeed, how such measurement can itself have an impact on what happens in schools. That is really the debate about E-bac. That is a very difficult debate; I do not think that it is easy or straightforward at all. The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock said something that I passionately agree with—that we should make the contextual value added the key indicator of schools. He then added a very important caveat by saying that we must also find a way to make CVA understood. I remember that when I was a Minister I said, “Why can’t people see that the value that this school is adding is actually far more significant than the raw score?” But people did not look at the value that was being added. They looked at the raw score.

The dilemma that all of us who care about education policy face is how we best measure schools and how we ensure that that measurement does not distort choices. I am concerned about E-bac, but that is not because I am not passionate about history, geography and modern foreign languages; I am passionate about all three of those subjects. However, I am not convinced that making them compulsory for all children, which could happen as a consequence of the E-bac, or emphasising them over other subjects, is necessarily the wisest way to encourage more children to have a passion for, and therefore to learn, foreign languages, history and geography.

The jury is out. We need to look at that issue further. As a Minister, I had some responsibility for the work that we did on modern foreign languages after they were made optional. I had mixed views. In the end, I think that it was probably right that they were made optional. What we sought to do was to encourage primary schools to take up modern foreign language teaching. We have seen a big expansion in such teaching in our primary schools in recent years. I hope that that will result in primary schoolchildren having a passion for foreign languages and that they maintain that passion as they go on to secondary school. That was the thinking behind encouraging language teaching in primary schools.

I can understand the desire of a new Government who are in a hurry to do something quick on E-bac, but I worry that it is effectively being introduced retrospectively. As I said in the Education Bill debate yesterday, there are schools in my constituency that are getting year 10 pupils who are midway through the year to change subjects so that they do E-bac subjects, because the school thinks that it will be measured by the performance in those subjects. I am not convinced that that will either prepare those children well for the world of work or give them a passion for those subjects that they have been told they must switch to.

I will finish by referring to the other thing that I agree with the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock about—the importance of recognising that progress takes time. The political and educational cycles are not exactly the same. When the Minister responds to the debate, he will say that of course the Government want to see progress. We were the same when we were in government.

We all want that progress for good reasons; it is not only to gain political kudos, but because all of us are passionate about children and young people being able to do well at school, so that they are fully equipped and have the best possible chances later in life. However, we often expect change in schools to happen too quickly. We set hurdles that cannot be crossed. As the hon. Gentleman said, schools cannot necessarily improve every year, because they have a different set of children each year. That is not an excuse for failure; it is just a recognition of reality.

When we assess how well schools do, let us look at subjects beyond English and maths, but let us not lose that vital core of literacy and numeracy. Let us look at a school’s progress over the previous five years, and let us look at value added—at how well particular children do at age 16 compared with how they do at age 11.

I very much welcome the opportunity I have had to participate in this debate, and I apologise for taking a bit longer than other Members. However, as I am the only Member on the Opposition Back Benches today, I can assure everyone that everything I have said is on behalf of all Labour Back Benchers. It is vital that we regularly debate education because, in spite of our real policy differences, we all know that education is vital if we are to be a successful economy and a fairer society with greater social mobility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing this debate, which is indeed important, because while some things have unambiguously improved in education in the past 10 or 15 years—we should all be proud and celebrate that—overall there have clearly been insufficient returns on a very large amount of money spent. Universities struggle to differentiate between students and have to take remedial action, as my hon. Friend outlined. We again had employers in the Select Committee on Education this week complaining about the lack of generic skills in the people they see coming forward, and about a lack of work ethic, too. There is a yawning gap between the rich and the poor. Frankly, far too many young people are left behind, with a million young people not in school, not in training and not in a job.

That has all been happening at a time when we have been breaking records year after year in our presumed education performance. The fact is that many of the so-called comparisons are not comparable over time, and not comparable between schools, individual students or groups of students. Although PISA is not perfect, it gives us an anchor point. It gives us an external benchmark with which to compare. It is, of course, not just about our changed place in the league table, as it were. I fully accept that there are difficulties with the methodology and, of course, if the number of countries in the sample is changed, then that will change the rankings. What should concern us, however, is where we were in any year relative to others—both relative to our traditional competitors of Germany, the United States, Japan and so on, and relative to our new competitors, particularly China. A province of China was at the very top of the table, but as everybody knows, a single province comfortably dwarfs the size of our population.

That is doubly important, because the Chinese have already whupped us on low-cost volume manufacturing, and we will never again make t-shirts cheaper than China. It is already ahead of us in natural resources, and what it does not have, it makes up for by bringing it in from Africa and elsewhere. The arenas left for us really to compete and excel in are largely those in which academic achievement is very important, such as advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, the knowledge and creative industries, and education itself. Many of the others in which we need to excel, such as tourism and the non-tradable service sector in general, call for a much higher level of soft skills, interpersonal skills, communication skills and so on than we typically see from 18-year-olds coming out of large parts of the British education system.

I will not talk about what the Government are doing. I was going to say a lot, but most of it has already been said, which is lucky, considering the lateness of the hour. I will talk just about measurement and accountability. The English baccalaureate has filled up our inboxes to a degree that I suppose most of us did not really expect. I have been astounded, actually—

[Stephen Twigg]

indicated dissent.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman has not. Perhaps it is just me. I have attracted comments on the subject like a magnet—I am a very popular fellow, obviously. They have mostly been from teachers, not parents. In fact, I have not had a single parent or child spontaneously mention the English baccalaureate in any way whatever. People are particularly worked up, as we know, about religious studies, music and other subjects. They are particularly exercised about what they call the retrospective nature of the way the proposal was applied. I can understand teachers’ frustration on that in some ways, but only to an extent. The English baccalaureate tells us one really important thing, and I am not sure that we would have found this out any other way: the yawning gap that I mentioned between the rich and the poor. Among kids on free school meals—free school meals are not the only measure of deprivation, but it is the best and most accurate one that we have—only 4% were achieving the English baccalaureate. Overall, it was 16%, so that is a quarter of the level for the cohort as a whole. Even more worrying than the fact that only 4% of those children passed that set of exams, what really scares me is that only 8% were entered for that set of exams. That is truly shocking.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing this very important debate, which has seen excellent contributions and consensus on the need to improve our education performance. Her excellent opening speech reiterated many of the points made in her CentreForum report published earlier in the year entitled “Academic rigour and social mobility: how low income students are being kept out of top jobs”. Both her speech today and that policy paper are worthy of much wider circulation, and I hope that they will receive that, because she has made very important points.

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend’s analysis and, in particular, with her forensic dissection of the UK’s educational performance in recent years: her insightful thesis, if I may describe it thus, that equivalence of qualifications has failed the poorest children; her conclusion that comprehensive reform of our education system is urgently required; and her suggestion that there is much more that we can learn from the best performing nations and regions of the world.

There have been excellent speeches from other hon. Members. It is heartening that a debate on education has been so dominated by my hon. Friends, almost all of whom are, as they say, fresh from the people, having been elected in 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) spoke of her own educational journey and emphasised the importance of the foundation subjects of English and maths and the service that the Russell group provided in publishing details of the facilitating subjects, which just happened to match, if I may say so, the subjects in the English baccalaureate. It is a real concern, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said, that only 4% of students on free school meals achieved the E-bac last year compared with 15.6% nationally. That figure itself—one in six—is lamentably low.

I wonder what the former Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), would have thought when he looked at the five GCSEs or more figures and the increase over the years—it is up to more than 50% today. I wonder whether he thought that most of those achievements would not be in the English baccalaureate subjects. Did he envisage that only 15.6% would achieve a C or more in the English baccalaureate subjects, compared with the more than 50% achieving five or more GCSEs?

[Stephen Twigg]

The Minister raises a serious point. As I said in my speech, I am passionate about the particular subjects involved—history, geography and modern foreign languages—but I think that I would have recognised that some people would be achieving five A* to C grades at GCSE with one of the subjects being religious studies or perhaps music. My concern is that in a laudable attempt to celebrate the subjects that he has added, other subjects will be crowded out.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, but of course there is plenty of room outside the English baccalaureate to study RE, music and art and, indeed, for some pupils to take a vocational subject. We have deliberately kept the English baccalaureate small to enable that to happen.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) spoke of consistent application of school rules and pointed to how dramatically a school can improve its academic performance once behaviour is sorted out. He is absolutely right. He called for more flexibility in the movement of heads going back to teaching. The Government certainly intend to allow more flexibility in terms and conditions for our schools. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby was right to pay tribute to Teach First, and I welcome his support for its expansion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) said that the paucity of aspiration was a key characteristic of poorly performing schools. He is absolutely right. We must grapple with that in all our schools, to ensure that we do not sell children short, particularly those from homes where there is not much aspiration; we need to replicate that aspiration in school. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support for synthetic phonics. I hope that young Master Field is already reading at the age of three and a half.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) is right to be concerned about the growing gap between the independent and state sectors. The OECD has commented on the fact that the gap in the UK is one of the widest among OECD countries. I assure her that we are committed to raising the standard of alternative provision, and to including the voluntary sector and other providers that have a proven record of helping children with challenging behavioural problems.

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) said during her contribution that more widely based GCSEs, such as the pilot GCSE in boxing that she cited, can be valued without necessarily having to claim that they are the equivalent of academic GCSEs. That is an important point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) provided an important analysis of the PISA figures from 2000 to 2009. We are determined to address the long tail of underachievement, another factor that was found in many PISA surveys.

The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) quoted Andreas Schleicher. However, as politicians tend to do, he failed to give the full quotation. It is true that he said that there has been

“very little change over the last 10 years.”

But he went on to say that we are an average performer and that

“improvement on the equality front from a social perspective somewhat declined; performance is average.”

He meant that in a pejorative sense, not as something to be happy with.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire was right to point to the weakness of the figure for five or more A to C grades, and the inevitable focus on the border between grades C and D. We are considering the matter, but measures that look at the performance of the lowest quintile will help to address the problem. A column in the performance tables will show what schools have achieved for pupils qualifying for the pupil premium. Schools will not then be able to say, “Well, this is our intake and this is why we are performing poorly” if we consider GCSE results only of those children who qualify for the pupil premium.

My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) asked about school places. We are doing a significant amount to tackle the problem. There has been an increase in the birth rate since 2001, which is now feeding through into an increase in primary school numbers, and there is £800 million of basic need capital funding to cover shortages. Capital funding is a priority, albeit that it rather short in the current circumstances.

The hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) cited Australia. We are introducing a scholarship fund—an education endowment fund—of £125 million, to be administered by the Sutton Trust. Teachers will be able to bid for funds to allow them to undertake further study in their academic field, or to improve their teaching skills. That important initiative is on similar lines to the one that she mentioned.

I shall now address the debate more generally. The challenges that we face in the 21st century and the opportunities that we now enjoy are more global in scope than ever before, as many hon. Members have pointed out. The days are long gone when we could afford to educate a minority of our children well, while hoping that the rest would be okay. As we heard, China and India are already turning out more engineers, computer scientists and university graduates than the whole of Europe and America combined.

The success of other nations in educating more of their young people to a higher level is part of their resolute determination to secure their future prosperity. It is no longer good enough to say that we as a nation are doing better than we did in the past. What matters now is not so much how we are doing compared to the past, but how we are doing compared to the rest and, in particular, how we are doing compared to the best of the rest.

We need to ask ourselves how our 16-year-olds are doing when compared with those in the US, Singapore, China and Scandinavia. Sadly, the answer is that we are not doing anywhere near well enough. Across the globe, other nations are outpacing us, accelerating reforms, creating more innovation and pulling ahead in international comparisons.

As has been pointed out, in recent years the UK has slipped down the international league tables. Indeed, when the PISA tables were first published, to the disbelief of the German education establishment they demonstrated that its education system was nowhere near being the global leader it had always thought. In Germany, it became known as “PISA-shock”. Most important, it stimulated a furious debate about how Germany could catch up, and that is the approach that we should be taking. We should not be saying, “Now that the figures are low, this academic or that will not believe them.” That was not being said in the years after 2000 by Labour Ministers or civil servants when the figures showed us being fourth, seventh and eighth in science, literacy and maths.

Similarly, when the United States was confronted with evidence showing that that 15-year-olds in the far east were comfortably outperforming their pupils in maths and science, it was described as a “Sputnik moment”. Most important, it again prompted radical reform of science education in the US. The good news is that the coalition Government are determined to ensure that the latest PISA study leads to similar action here. We are doing so by using examples of what works in the best-performing education nations.

As well as the OECD’s findings, another invaluable contribution was made by Sir Michael Barber and McKinsey. The seminal 2007 report, “How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top”, provided a blueprint for all nations serious about reforming their education systems of what they needed to do to catch up. The 2010 report, “How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better”, provided further invaluable insights for all nations aspiring to improve their education system.