Image credit: Africa Studio via Adobe Stock.

1 April 2023

By John Jerrim

Online fraud is very serious business. We are faced with it every day. Indeed, as I am writing this blog, I’ve just received an email from a prince from a far-off-land who has an “exciting” business opportunity he wishes to discuss with me…….

I’m sure you have all received such emails as well: it is estimated that around 3.4 billion spam emails are sent every day. But how many young people are actually at risk of being duped by such a primitive digital scam?

Given that in many countries today it’s April Fools’ Day, essentially a day where we celebrate gullibility, let’s take a look. (more…)

23 February 2023

By John Jerrim

Once upon a time, when Michael Gove was Secretary of State for education, PISA was all the rage (for the uninitiated, PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment, which compares the performance of 15-year-olds across nearly 100 countries in reading, mathematics and science). As I noted at the time, international evidence was then en vogue, with PISA in particular featuring prominently in education debates. But is PISA now receiving less attention than it use to? In a new academic paper, I take a look… (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for UCL.

11 January 2023

By Andy Green and Neil Kaye 

If nothing else, Sunak’s recently announced plan for all students in England to study Maths to age 18 generated a rich crop of maths related puns in the media. Our analysis shows the plan should be welcomed, at least in principle, as a long-overdue reform – but also how implementing such a policy without the requisite strategic and financial backing would likely lead to wider skills gaps and a worsening of the inequalities already seen amongst young people leaving upper secondary education.

England is amongst a small minority of OECD countries which do not require the study of either Maths or the national language throughout upper secondary education (ages 16-18) (the others being Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the other UK nations). Furthermore, less than half of students in post-16 education study Maths as a discreet subject, many of them instead on courses to re-take GCSE Maths, in which only 20 per cent passed at grade (more…)

15 June 2022

By John Jerrim

Before all our lives were turned upside-down by the coronavirus pandemic, there was much concern over how GCSE examinations were affecting young people’s mental health. For some young people, the stress and anxiety induced by these examinations can be severe. This could then become a vicious circle, whereby anxiety about the exams can lead young people to achieve lower grades on them.

I explore this issue in my new academic paper, investigating whether GCSE grades are indeed lower amongst Year 11 pupils who suffer from high-levels of test anxiety. (more…)

John Jerrim.

How much can we trust government reporting of key statistics? Not just the headline findings, but the basic details underpinning them? Those things that it’s important for consumers of data to know if they want to form their own independent judgement about the strength of the evidence available?

In my new paper released today, and forthcoming in the Review of Education, I report what I consider to be a worrying lack of transparency surrounding some aspects of the reporting of the PISA 2018 data for the UK.

This blog is the first in a series posted today looking into some of the (more…)

John Jerrim.

In my new paper released today, and forthcoming in the Review of Education, I report what I consider to be a worrying lack of transparency surrounding some aspects of the reporting of the PISA 2018 data for the UK.

This blog is the second in a series published today looking into some of the issues. Here I focus upon the non-response bias analysis conducted in England and Northern Ireland – but that didn’t get reported. (more…)

John Jerrim.

The second blog in this series discussed how a non-response bias analysis had to be undertaken for England’s and Northern Ireland’s PISA 2018 data.

The interpretation of the aforementioned bias analyses (by the OECD and the Department for Education) was that the PISA samples for these countries were ‘representative’ and ‘not biased’.

But is this really the case?

This blog presents evidence (more…)

John Jerrim.

With exams cancelled again in 2021, concerns have resurfaced over potential rampant “grade inflation”. Many saw this as a perennial problem throughout the nineties and noughties as GCSE and A-Level pass-marks went up year-upon-year. When the Conservatives came to power in 2010, it was something they vowed to end.

Indeed, some argued it was this obsession, over avoiding grade inflation and maintaining standards, that led to the disaster we saw with the awarding of examination grades last summer.

But how have GCSE standards really changed over time? This blog takes a look. (more…)

John Jerrim.

The results from PISA 2018 are to be released tomorrow. And, as with every PISA release, there will be the usual media circus.

There will, of course, be all the obvious things to look out for – have PISA scores for England in reading/science/maths gone up or down, are any countries doing surprisingly well/badly etc.

But, as always with PISA, the headline results are not always as straightforward to interpret as on initial inspection.

The purpose of this blogpost is therefore to flag some important things to remember when the results are released.

John Jerrim.

PISA has now been running since 2000, with England participating in every cycle. Yet involvement does not come cheap. It costs more than £2m every three years for England, Wales and Northern Ireland to take part. Not to mention the burden it places upon nearly 500 schools.

It therefore seems important that we consider whether all this time and effort is worthwhile. Is England really getting enough out of its continued participation in the PISA study?

This blogpost focuses on four key reasons why England has participated in the PISA study, and the value that they bring.