expense of some of the arts certainly there's there's a worldwide trend to have kids graduate with global skills we need kids who can handle very complicated texts nowadays the literacy requirements for even the most basic jobs to be a carpenter a welder you need very high levels of literacy skills no and same with the math skills and skills it's not that's changed in the last 20 years i think it's not only about which subjects to choose concentrate on but how they are doing that and i heard you say that given the diversity of student population is the teachers can no longer be expected to teach within any particular grade that they should be teaching on skills on the pathway helping those who fall behind and stimulating over achievers at the same time can they realistically it chief that when they're still being charged by that class is test scores so when children are entering school when they're age 5 most 5 year olds will have the skills of

a 5 year old the pre-literacy skills and numeracy skills of a 5 year old some have grievances age 6 skills even though they're age 5 but some of them only age for age 3 and so though when they reach grade one there's already a 4 year age range in their school development so that's the central challenge of teaching everywhere in the world as is handling that diversity and it's not just about ethnic diversity or diversity of so should the social class that that level of diversity is everywhere and so that that's the challenge of teaching and so the teachers really do need to be magicians to be able to handle that in stimulated the the events to ask their make sure that klaus you know provides distant test scores and i may be pressing the same question but how teachers would do that especially given the economic pressures that are put on them in many developed countries i mean it's not a secret that for example in the united states at the you mentioned teachers sometimes have to work several john. to be able to provide for themselves and their

families. united states is quite a special situation in terms of teacher salaries and all that and i will get into that as a canadian because there's many many russians i don't want to sound judgement over here in russia teacher salaries are also pretty low. as well read well trained and dedicated teachers who go to both that but we also need to bring to bear. the science of what quality instruction looks like we have maybe 200 schooling days 5 hours a day 7000 hours but only about 250 of those 1000 hours are actually resulting in real academically engaged time and so so that you know that that's the challenge of teaching and that's everywhere and it's not it's not about cultural differences it's not about standardized testing. so it's not about cultural differences but i think this whole debate about standardized testing god a new cultural dimension recently particularly the united states with all the

controversies surrounding the admission of asian asian american students students that have asian cultural background there are a couple of court cases filed against american universities who do require higher scores of admission for students from particular cultural backgrounds where do you stand in that debate because there are some people who would argue that standardized tests the way they're structured today they advantage people from more collectivist societies people with stronger family culture. disadvantages those of different family backgrounds you know and i think you know you have to think of the learning as things that happen at school in the happen out of school and there are some cultures that spend a lot more time with their kids out of school and you know in the extreme in some of the countries like korea and singapore for example i just talked my calling in japan they have a whole. extra layer of shadow education so it's not just print parents but their

hiring tutors and so on and all in the name of getting these high standardized test scores at a young age to a grade 7 so they can get into the best high school and the biggest and into the best universities and i think that part of it's unfortunate do you think it's something that has to be mitigated against because that mission policy is of many universities suggest that. some students could be discriminated for their academic success for the sake of diversity all for the sake of equality so i mean i would take a pretty hard line no you want to merit credit system so you want equal standards for everyone nowadays when people apply to medical school for example they go through. the cabinet in cutting sam said and then they also have these interviews and these interviews are both leadership skills and how much have you been volunteering you know a whole bunch of other criteria so they just using the tests is the is the 1st

culture but it's still a high 1st filter but once you get past after all for them they're looking at it for personality issues and so on and they think i think that's a more balanced approach that we usually think all for. schools and universities as . something that values of success 1st and foremost i know that you've dedicated your entire career career to kind of trying to level the playing field for on the pro ledge under it's having students is it fair it's you pin the lies the academic success in such a way because this is a relatively new phenomenon and many people feet feel that this extra points a kind of a way to mitigate against the growing asian population of it in the american universities and that population is indeed growing dramatically i mean when you compare admissions scores for black students and asian students statistically many black students don't have a chance should be one set of standards you know people wanted because and any of

these kinds of issues and you can see this in pisa data or even through you know gender differences the variation within the any of those groups is very big compared to the differences between the groups. i think the bigger issue is more standardized test scores to be one marker but we want a lot of other markers that term admissions now speaking about those other markers i think a couple of students in the in the harvard case they specifically claimed that discrimination were taking 2 forms one is higher scores for admission for asian american students and the 2nd one is them being given lower school scores and traits like likeability a little all those other social skills that i had seemed important do you think in general i'm not talking about the specific case but in general is there any correlation between higher test scores. laura's social intelligence if you will

there will be a positive correlation but then you always have to look at say there are 2 children both from the same types of demi backgrounds and you have no $100.00 such people then would there be if correlation it would be a much weaker correlation but certainly the kids who come from more benefit backgrounds are going to be. more opportunities to develop those social skills to observe a correlation but it. it's not as strong as one would think that the reason i'm asking about that is because standardized tests clearly don't measure social skills and mental health but. sometimes this is the prize that one pays for spending every waking hour studying do you think i'm sure you would say that balance is key here but do you think that balance could be cheve when standardized tests are still valued as highly as they are during the admission process you're talking about quite a high level group that it's pretty good to herberger stemberg or whatever but necessary

and i think there was a recent a scandal of one public school in new york city the same issues there asian parents or asian american parents trying to kind of game the system and put their kids into that school again i would i would always pull back on standardized tests or unnecessary things just like when you go to the doctor you're going to get some standardized tests going every project even a blood pressure checked and so on just the 1st thing but then to think about the person's over old wellness. and their mental health and know about that requires more than the those kinds of standardized tests that you can do so they can work really be done because people and i heard psychologists mention that there is also a mental health toll and we know that for example in many asian countries mental health issues are even more pronounced in western countries but is that something that could be done and are you comfortable off teacher educators

a value adding students on that level because we are ultimately talking about evaluating personalities and not just evaluating them but ranking them in relation to one another is that really the business of a teacher to do that you know we want teachers to know what the signs of early withdrawal are and know what the. signs of children who are anxious and you know quite often it's during the middle school years from sort of great by through grade 8 names id becomes a problem especially among girls and then later in the high school years some of those children branches have long periods of depression so in our research we found that the you know those so students everyone loves to love the top a students are highly engaged very few mental health issues and that we come from all sorts of big groundbreaking story families is absolutely and then there's another group that just after that typically there be students. fairly engaged at

school but real high levels of anxiety and anxiety and depression and they call those the the quiet and because they're often not seen as having any problems or decisions that would be fair to disadvantaged people who are born what actually is a more quiet because you argued before that those kind of quality should be taken into account during the admission process it's more difficult something about anxiety and depression being irish and the people who suffer from anxiety or what have more difficulties engaging in a voluntary ah the sorts of activities it's not because they don't want they may have bigger burdens to overcome to say. yeah i mean i'm i'm working mostly early levels and i'm all about prevention i want to give all children the opportunity to thrive and it starts not just when they start school but from a very young age and there's even some early markers of when you know children are more prone to experience the depression or anxiety you say that about half of all

look the whole population goes through some period of prolonged you know anxiety or depression so you know it's it's the ups and downs that is our 2nd car is a 4 there standardized part of it is about good days bad days but standardized tests will provide you want you want kids who can him. a college material into a really good job center ice test can provide some bench time for that but it's not the be all and end all and so we want those tests to be good we want them to measure some global skills like global reading skills global numeracy skills and so on and then after that. then there's we want to look at the whole personality and is how is it suited to the field are going in dr won't we have to take a very short break now but we'll be back in just a few moments if they think your accident.

oh won't you 1. join me every thursday on the alex simon chill and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. this footage is unique because there's

a tribal lands i'm normally off limits to the public eric's allowed in because he's this is his personal doctor. people here know him simply is dr eric he's rich famous some always on the move saving yachts and flying at croft. he's considered one of the best neurosurgeons in brazil. that's happened. already so says. the busy doing nothing is going to do the population because it's going to people.

welcome back to worlds apart with the president of the international academy of education dr whelan so i know that you personally how to develop a framework that is used for a comparative assessment of schools around the globe based on the testing of 15 year olds in math science and reading if it's so difficult to arrive at their fair assessment within one country why does it make sense to compare schools and students globally there's a lot of advantages to looking at comparisons because you don't you don't know how well you're doing otherwise you know you could you could have. russia you think you're doing well and well it's a good example is germany that everyone thinks about the top students from germany in the doing very well and then when we had this international assessment they found oh they're not doing as well as had thought they were and so having that kind

of international comparison gives you give you some results to to look at and it's not just the test scores we also go to great lengths to develop measures of well being visions of student engagement and so on the piece a framework which you helped develop is often. to size for structurally favoring the east asian educational model and if a look at the latest ranking published in 2015 singapore is number one and predominantly asian countries are in the top 10. given what we discussed before the brig do you think it is a fair and comprehensive measure of school success rather than a cultural values that attribute to high test scores 1st point is old all of the tests are developed by international expert groups and those international expert groups are comprised of people from different countries and they're kind of the most prominent academics in the world in their field and so so the tests are as

good as we're going to get they're very well developed and and they go through all of the kinds of psychometric and elsie's and we do this look at all every single item to see how well making sure that one item is more favoring one country more than another so in that sense i wouldn't say that they're biased towards asian culture or any other culture and our words define so whereas you know the methods and the values that i am better than that culture because singapore for example. the top rank are in pisa 2015 is also one of the most effective in terms of. reducing childhood obesity they have a program that subjects students to shaming and very very restrictive eating and exercise regimen some of some of those tactics would be considered in canada for example child abuse i think. doesn't really make sense to compare test scores without accounting for how you arrive at those tests so i would put it the other

way around i would say what are the test scores and then why is that that they're like one of the processes and some of the processes personally i would like to see in canada anyway have a colleague where miss new is one of the newest members of the international cademy . he's from japan and she has a daughter this just got into the high school that she wanted but per year now persisted exam stress and every night she was studying and studying and finally she did the test and she got into the school she wanted i don't like that and when i look at the results for japan compared with canada or australia i mean pretty equal footing and we're talking about differences of you know 20 or 30 points on the pisa test 30 points is about were happier of schooling. so. people spend way too much time emphasizing the differences in the rankings and things like that but yeah but i mean it's hard not to do that when those tables are published every

year is and i personally heard a number of asian educators from to pounce on from china say that pisa ratings is something that prevents them from pushing for reforms in their own countries because the governments of those countries considers their school systems already near perfect don't you think that there is also an adverse effect in such a cross cultural comparison you still want to know how you're doing you know would you want to know how well you're doing obesity for example you look at the levels would be able to look a 3 way comparing your weight and my weight but what's clear to me is that for me to my ideal weight what i need to do is probably very different from what you have to do because we have different metabolism we have different eating habits we have different exercise regimens so on so what's the point of comparing this ultimate figure when everything that goes into it is so different i think we tire selves and

not sort of this business of culture and one of the discussion yesterday but that is there are some universals are some good results that you want most universals are we want children to be able to read and read well they're going to need in this new economy the knowledge economy we want them to be skilled in mathematics and known in digital skills. well those are universals and so. having having that right balance of pressure and support from the top and the capacity of the teachers in the schools and i think that's that's the struggle is establishing the right balance but you can't just throw the measurement i mean you know so. suggestive that i'm just asking you questions about how good it is and how serious you know educators and policymakers should take it because in one of your talks you said that there are crowds have a tendency of asking for silver bullets and critics of peas a claim that this evaluation system has turned into exactly that that. educators

and some policymakers i'm going for a short term fix this in order to keep the country high in the rankings you're out of them meaningful and substantial changes how seriously do you think those test scores should be taken out those test scores those ranking in that banking system no we really push countries to. look at their own test scores over time so so any any measure whether it's any any social indicator derives its meaning from comparison to some standard you know will birth weight or obesity so one or variation among groups which could be variation among countries or variation among communities within the country and then funny through trends over time i don't want countries to focus on their trends over time this is how well we're doing and so on the other big advantage of having these kinds of test scores is you can look much more seriously issues about equality inequity whatever what are the gender

differences with what is the gap between kids from poor backgrounds and rich backgrounds the equity says what are the factors that lead to good outcomes and in this we're going to educational prosperity we're saying it's having them plus environment having good quality instruction good. resources learning time is a big one and then family and community support those 5 things together are would drive good schooling no comes not just test scores but good schooling oakum the good schooling elkan so much broader than test scores for math science and reading in the i mean it's important impossible to. understand how much of a test scores cover but can you give us your hunch well we've been working hard at broadening the set of 0 comes from we call them the prosperity 0 comes so it includes not only academic achievement ataman our poor kids going school but good measures of student wellbeing not just you know things like an outsider asian

countries doing on measures of students well being i'm not sure in the most recent study but but no they're not always in the in the top 10 so there is a cost is there every illustration that there is a cost i think there is a cost i mean there's a lot of discussion about teen suicides and things like that but you also get that at the other extreme too are kids of very low scores but test scores aren't the right measure for that you know let me ask you a technical question because pieces run by the organisation for economic co-operation and development which naturally has an economic and sort of outcome oriented focused do they have the expertise to be the arbiter of global educational governance they've. done a remarkable job of situating themselves there but in between then between those 3 years cycles i think what's more important is there's been a worldwide trend towards developing country level achievement to state level

achievement even schools and so on and so that's where i would want to look and so when we work with schools we are really trying to get them to sit use test scores to set some goals and then monitor progress towards old school. i like being able to have children read well by the h 8 or 9. and then really getting them to focus over what i call a relentless focus on the foundations for success the things that i mentioned quality instruction have been inclusive environment and so on that's when you're going to have educational prosperity for a country and finally there are lots of concerns among psychologists about the ever increasing economic pressures on children particularly young children the with. specialist connecting it to a much higher incidence of mental health issues in the so-called generation and younger kids. what do you say to those who say that we are over educating and

stilling child hold from our kids the one thing this piece was told us and we would notice. is there is the skills have been remarkably stable over the last 20 years all of the o.e.c.d. countries that started in the year 2000 none of them had gone up or down more than a 2 and a half points which is a very trivial amount of good reading intervention will increase children schools with 50 points and really interesting for me is. russia has. over the last 1520 years there's been a little bit a little bit a little bit and the most recent one in 2015 they're right on a par with the average for the o.e.c.d. and also on the par with the united states and then say that is because russia is too can't. make well on a ranking system rather than introducing any substantial a long lasting changes you know when i look at the russian data one thing that is quite striking is there's a big divide between kids in rural areas and in cities you don't have so much what

we call horizontal segregation that is schools for the rich and schools for the poor there are more homogeneous than many other countries but you have a lot of variation in the vertical segregation comes from tests that. streamed them into certain kinds of programs and. i'm not a big proponent of streaming because i think kids are denied their opportunities and that's one of the downsides of because it will concede even though in russia they. surprising have worked for the better because of the introduction of standardized tests for university admissions many of the kids from far away areas and. talons and villages were able to get access to the best education they can go and that's a good thing well dr wilkins it's been quite a great pleasure talking to you i wish i could have asked you to get more questions but we have to leave it there thank you very much short term and i encourage our

viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages out and hope to see you again same place same time here on worlds apart.

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