Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the reasons for the current ranking of UK schools in the Programme for International Student Assessment survey; and whether they intend to propose measures to improve the performance of UK schools in the survey.

The Government is committed to raising standards of achievement in English, mathematics and science. The pupils who sat the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment in England were born around the year 2000 and have therefore experienced only some of the changes we have introduced since 2010, and none of the changes to primary education. We have introduced rigorous new English, maths and science curricula and new qualifications to match expectations set in the highest performing jurisdictions internationally.

For mathematics, we are providing £41m over the next four years to introduce mathematics ‘mastery’ in primary schools, based on successful teaching approaches from south-east Asia. We are funding the networks of Science Learning Partnerships and Maths Hubs to improve the quality of science and maths teaching in primary and secondary schools. We also offer significant financial incentives to attract top science and mathematics graduates into teaching and are investing up to £67m over four years to train up to an additional 2,500 maths and physics teachers and upskill 15,000 existing teachers in these subjects by the end of this parliament.

In English we have introduced a phonics check at the beginning of compulsory schooling which aims to ensure all pupils acquire the basics in literacy before the end of primary school.