International assessments in education: what difference do they really make?
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By Jennie Golding and Mary Richardson
Nations around the world continue to subscribe to large-scale international assessments of educational attainment (ILSAs), at considerable cost in both time and (usually, government) money. Participation in ILSAs carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (for example PISA) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement ( for example TIMSS and PIRLS) recognises that knowledge and skills are strategic resources that provide the foundations for a nation’s economic performance. ILSAs allow comparative judgments to be made about specific areas of national curricula; they also usually include surveys of learner (and teacher, and sometimes parent) viewpoints and experiences in those areas. They are a potentially rich source of information, and there is no doubt that the findings influence policy and practice in participating countries.
For example, in England, the establishment of the large Maths Hubs and the mastery based pedagogy programme from 2013 resulted from comparative work triggered by the sustained high performance of learners in several far eastern countries in ILSAs. However, the claims that ILSAs can improve standards and augment policy are often challenged (see for example, Wagemaker et al, 2020; Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2013). What can these test results really tell us?
In mathematics and science education, the principal ILSAs are PISA and TIMSS. PISA assesses 15-year-olds’ mathematics and science literacies (how well they can apply their mathematics and science learning to a variety of contexts), as well of their reading literacy. TIMSS assesses the curriculum learning and reported experiences of learners aged 9/10 and 13/14 (in England, year 5 and year 9 respectively) in mathematics and science. Both ILSAs are repeated over time with directly comparable tests – PISA usually every three years, and TIMSS every four years, and these cycles allow for some understanding of changes over time.
In Autumn 2023 the reports from PISA 2022 showed that for England and many other countries, 15-year-olds’ performance in both mathematics and science, unsurprisingly, still showed a slight dip from the previous, pre-pandemic cycle. The International Report for TIMSS 2023 is now available, with the performance of England’s learners further explored in the TIMSS National Report for England.
We have had the fascinating experience of co-leading the analysis of TIMSS 2023 data for England, compiling some comparative information and then reporting initial findings; the assessments were delivered by Pearson UK. The published National Report analyses average performance in mathematics and science across a reasonably representative and large sample of year 5 and year 9 learners in England.
We found, fairly conclusively, that mathematics performance in both year groups has recovered to pre-pandemic levels – and that performance in science in both year 5 and year 9 has, remarkably, increased significantly since TIMSS 2019. In both year groups, England’s young people perform strongly when compared with learners in other participating English-speaking countries, and also with those in available European comparators. In terms of international ranking, the highest-performing pupils are in some of the east Asian countries – but in both mathematics and science and both year groups, England’s young people score highly among the next group of countries. Importantly, TIMSS questions are well-aligned with our own national curriculum, and the assessment tasks represent well-valued aspects of our own mathematics and science curriculum (examples are given in the report, and more can be found on the TIMSS website).
Such findings represent remarkable achievements by the teachers and learners in our schools: we know that since the last cycle of TIMSS in 2019 they have all dealt with a succession of sustained and unprecedented challenges to usual teaching and learning, and this level of performance would simply not have been possible without a great deal of resilience and hard work on the part of all concerned. This serves as a reminder to value and nurture our teachers, and to recognise also the efforts of learners in our schools. Of course, there is no cause for complacency, since not all groups of pupils, in all schools, are currently benefiting from that very pleasing recovery in performance. Our next task is to understand who those under-served learners are, and the ways in which their particular challenges might be addressed.
A second National Report volume will be published in early March 2025, analysing the other aspects of TIMSS data already available at a high level in the International Report: performance by gender, socio-economic status, and first language; variety of school and home characteristics of learners; and their experiences in learning mathematics and science.