New PISA results show the challenges of teaching reading in a digital world

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The OECD has released its latest PISA results, comparing the educational attainment of 600 000 15-year-olds in 79 countries. As ever, reading, mathematics and science are in the spotlight, but this year’s edition also has a focus on wellbeing and sustainable development. In a sign that teachers need sufficient funding and support to deliver quality education for all, 10% of the students tested were not able to complete the most basic reading tasks. Students from difficult socio-economic backgrounds still underperform in most areas.

The OECD has released its latest PISA results, comparing the educational attainment of 600 000 15-year-olds in 79 countries. As ever, reading, mathematics and science are in the spotlight, but this year’s edition also has a focus on wellbeing and sustainable development. In a sign that teachers need sufficient funding and support to deliver quality education for all, 10% of the students tested were not able to complete the most basic reading tasks. Students from difficult socio-economic backgrounds still underperform in most areas.

The OECD’s analysis of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is divided across three volumes. Volume I, What Students Know and Can Do evaluates the quality and equity of learning outcomes in reading, mathematics, science and collaborative problem solving. The headline results show that, in the EU as a whole, the past ten years have seen rising levels of underachievement in science and reading, with stable levels in mathematics. Students from Estonia, Finland and Poland achieved the best results in Europe.

ETUCE welcomes this year’s focus on the wellbeing of students. We also stress the fact that standardised tests like PISA, and the simplistic “league tables” that its complex results are often reduced to, should not be the only incentive for Member States to improve their educational systems. The OECD makes a range of recommendations to improve the school climate and foster a more welcoming and inclusive learning culture. Quality education for all is a fundamental human right and as such governments in Europe are accountable and responsible for it.

For PISA 2018, reading is the subject that gets the most attention. Only 77% of students can read at a level that enables them to use reading for learning. The results also show a sizeable gender gap in reading, where girls outperform boys everywhere in the EU. Nevertheless, in some countries like Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia or Ireland, the number of top performers in reading increased for both boys and girls. The report highlights that evolving technologies have changed the way young people read and exchange information, which in turn has an impact on their reading abilities.

At the same time, the report acknowledges the digital literacy skills which students need to acquire because of the rapid digitalisation of communication and its impact on the nature of reading. The report analyses different ways that technology is affecting education, such as the impact on students and their learning, variations in internet accessibility, and competences for digital literacy. An especially interesting finding that emerges from the data is the fact that students with higher levels of digital literacy display less cyberbullying behavior. Other findings show that 15% of participating students in 2009 did not have access to the internet at home, but that this dropped to 5% in 2018. Within this in mind, it is worth noting that the report finds that fewer than 10% of students can distinguish between facts and opinions. Young people are therefore vulnerable to fake news, especially on social media.

ETUCE also notes that the report discusses the potential use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. We stress that AI, as a new technology whose potential positive and negative impacts on education is still unknown, should only be considered as a tool once we have more information and ethical, transparent processes for its use. This will require meaningful cooperation with and consultation of education personnel and their trade unions.

In an accompanying publication, the European Commission highlights the importance of PISA as a useful assessment which can feed into the strategic framework for European cooperation in the field of education and training. The framework goal is to reduce the number of underachieving students in the EU to below 15% by 2020.