The holiday season has provided me with time to read the full PISA Report for England https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pisa-2018-national-report-for-england as well as look at the comparisons with the other Home Nations, while they remain a part of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Anyway, buried in the details is a section that looks at the results of questionnaires sent to headteachers. Now one must assume that headteachers are influenced by the current mood at the time that they completed the questionnaire, and that mood may differ from country to country. What might have been the mood in England and how does it compare with the OECD average?
Generally, it seems that headeachers in England were more optimistic than the average headteacher in the OECD in their answers to a range of questions about factors that might hinder student learning.
| Table 6.5 Pupil and teacher behaviour for learning, reported by headteachers | |||
| Percentage of headteachers who responded “A lot” and “To some extent” to In your school, to what extent is the learning of students hindered by the following? | |||
| England | OECD | Percentage point difference England-OECD | |
| Pupil behaviours | |||
| Students not paying attention | 40 | 59 | -19 |
| Student truancy | 20 | 38 | -18 |
| Students lacking respect for teachers | 11 | 22 | -10 |
| Students skipping classes | 9 | 34 | -25 |
| Students intimidating or bullying other students | 4 | 12 | -8 |
| Student use of alcohol or illegal drugs | 3 | 10 | -7 |
| Teacher behaviours | |||
| Teachers not meeting individual students’ needs | 28 | 30 | -2 |
| Teacher absenteeism | 20 | 18 | 2 |
| Staff resisting change | 10 | 29 | -19 |
| Teachers not being well prepared for classes | 5 | 13 | -8 |
| Teachers being too strict with students | 3 | 12 | -10 |
Source: PISA Report England 2019
Only in teacher absenteeism were headteachers in England gloomier than the OECD average. This seems somewhat surprising given the relatively low level of term-time teacher absence in many schools. Generally, although lack of attention by students was recognised as an issue, even that concerned head teachers less than the average PECD headteacher.
| Table 7.14 Hindrances to learning reported by headteachers and principals | ||||
| Percentage of headteachers who responded “A lot” and “To some extent” to In your school, to what extent is the learning of students hindered by the following? | ||||
| England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales | |
| Pupil behaviours | ||||
| Students not paying attention | 40 | 35 | 49 | 30 |
| Student truancy | 20 | 8 | 35 | 20 |
| Students lacking respect for teachers | 11 | 19 | 22 | 19 |
| Students skipping classes | 9 | 7 | 31 | 14 |
| Students intimidating or bullying other students | 4 | 8 | 13 | 6 |
| Student use of alcohol or illegal drugs | 3 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
| Teacher behaviours | ||||
| Teachers not meeting individual students’ needs | 28 | 14 | 29 | 15 |
| Teacher absenteeism | 20 | 19 | 30 | 14 |
| Staff resisting change | 10 | 14 | 23 | 12 |
| Teachers not being well prepared for classes | 5 | 3 | 3 | 9 |
| Teachers being too strict with students | 3 | 0 | 6 | 7 |
Source: PISA Report England 2019
However, it is interesting to put the views of headteachers in England alongside those of their colleagues in the other Home Nations that completed the PISA questionnaire. On the basis of these responses, one wonder what is going on in some schools in Scotland? The figure for students skipping classes seems difficult to believe if the sample is representative of schools across Scotland and probably also accounts for the high figure for headteachers agreeing that truancy is also seen as an issue by a third of the headteachers compared with a fifth of headteachers in England.
I am not sure what the teacher associations make of the data from these questionnaires, but I am surprised that the government hasn’t made more of it. But, perhaps the views of headteachers looking at schools from their offices isn’t the same as the view from the staffroom?
John Howson 