How to Get Good Grades
Education is the handmaiden of economic growth: teach future workers well, it is argued, and they will go on to invigorate the economy. No ___ 31 ___, then, that the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, goes to great lengths to discover how the school systems in its member countries are doing. Every three years, the so-called PISA study will detail and rank the reading, mathematics and science skills of 15-year-olds in each country. But even more important than ranking school systems is knowing how to make them better. That is the aim of a recent study by McKinsey, a consultancy firm.
For starters, McKinsey says, throwing money at education does not seem to do much good, at least in those countries that already send all their young people to school. America, for example, ___ 32 ___ its spending on schools by 21% between 2000 and 2007, while Britain pumped in 37% more funds. Yet in this period, according to PISA, standards in both countries slipped. Many school systems that were not showered with extra funds did much better.
What separates the big spenders from the ___ 33 ___, McKinsey found, is the awareness that different types of school system respond to radically different types of reform. In countries where schools mainly seek to teach pupils to read, write and grasp some basic maths, centralisation seems to work. All teachers should be directed to teach the same lessons from the same textbooks. However, ___ 34 ___ the school system can teach to basic standards, it should pay more attention to collecting detailed data on examination results. This serves not just to make schools accountable, but helps to identify the best teaching methods.
Countries where schools have already attained a higher standard should become pickier in choosing teachers. Another study by McKinsey in 2007 concluded that making teaching a high-status profession was what ___ 35 ___
standards. For instance, schools could recruit teachers from among the best university graduates.
The Economist