Our PISA results made us depression in 2013. Each of strategic organizations of education, including ministry and its different background offices published their ideas on what we should do to rise our students achievement. We have National Core-curricila since decades; teaching books have been changed for being in line with NC;  teachers were attended to different courses relating to competence-based education but nothing changed significantly in results since 2006.

Some researchers pointed out, while teachers' awareness towards their students' keycompetences will not be changed spectacular improvement cannot be expected. The problem is that, teachers in their lessons  mainly deal with theoretical part of the curriculum and have not enough time for improvement of their students' competences.

Why teachers do so???? Only one answer among many else. They feel stress due to the final exams of secondary schools because the results of these exams generally mean enrolling points for students to be attended the universities. Final exams at secondary schools, have two levels in my country. To pass it at higher level means good chance to choose high- quality universities but this type of exam is based particularly on theoretical knowlede.

(The basic level of final exams is addressed to students who would like to continue their study at colleges or not too high-quality universities even want join in vocational trainings. )

In the Kingdom of Bahrain, the PISA results as well as TIMMS have led to a national educational reform initiative in the country. Because the results were so low in comparison to other countries in the world and other countries in the Arab region, the government decided to do something about this and the result was the introduction of educational reforms in K-12 schools that focus on everything from school improvement projects to teacher training and educational leadership training, etc. 

Dear NINA, do you know how the results of this arrangement can be seen???? Please explain it @

Standardization, output-orientation, formalization, a boost for pedagogical diagnostics and classroom-management, substitution of content by methods.

I would say that the educational system has abandoned a huge part of its autonomy in this process of an economization of education. PISA et al were the key instruments of this change in Europe since the 1990ies. 

I have described this development in an article available here (start from p 7)

Article Semioses and Social Change. The Relevance of Semiosis on the...

Dear coleagues, look at this site

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2014/09/us_education_efficiency_ranks_in_bottom_50_percent_study_says.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2

its impact can be strong for us.

álvaro

Mustafa,

Such instruments as PISA are single pictures of a complex social/cultural/educational context...often very different in the respective countries - and NOTHING ON WHICH TO BASE EDUCATIONAL POLICY CHANGE! PISA, etc. have no predictive validity for a nation's GDP and, in fact, such international exercises have NO SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIP TO RESPECTIVE NATION'S ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS ... meaning that countries scoring high on PISA do not have correspondingly high economic or innovation productivity!!!!!

M. L. Johnson, ED.D., Ph.D.

Mustafa,

Two things to consider in education public policy. First: ask the question of "What kind of graduate - skills and knowledge - is desired?" Second: "What are the experiences needed to achieve the goals? Few countries try to educate ALL students through secondary school in the PISA and TIMSS testing protocol; making comparable demographics near impossible. And, in regard to economic competitiveness and PISA/TIMSS scores, Tienken (2008, International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership) examined historic data and found NO significant relationship. Further, there is a difference between Disruptive innovation and Incremental Innovation. NO Nobel Prizes go to theses countries you mentioned  for their Incremental innovation. The Nobel Prizes go to countries where Disruptive innovations are generated AND those countries are seldom at the top of the PISA/TIMSS scores. BEWARE of the intervention chosen; as that program may produce graduates with attributes that do not help your country.

Cheers,

ML

Mustafa,

First, The Swiss-based World Economic Forum made a recommendation that is worth mentioning here; that "Developing countries need to create literacy and basic education programs and developed countries (U.S. etc) should crate education programs focused on innovation development." Thus, determine which category your context fits into and work on that type of programming. Second, do an internet search on Nobel Prize criteria ...the criteria are objective and rigorous  - virtually all of the medicine, chemistry, physics, biology and economics DO NOT come from highest scoring PISA/TIMSS countries. Third, read Tienken's research study on international tests and economic competitiveness...and it does not matter who thinks otherwise; the data speaks without opinion. 

Cheers,

ml