TITLE: Economic Council of Canada

Our findings confirm that education is a cumulative process - skills that are learned well in the early years provide the foundation for future success.

Our research also shows that employers and parents - and, in deed, society as a whole - give conflicting signals to students and teachers. This lack of “coherence” is most evident in the transition from school to work. p. vii

Index

Introduction

In Pulling Together, the Council’s recent statement on links between productivity, innovation and trade... concluded that the problem is systemic - that managers, workers, policymakers and others have not responded to change effectively. p. 1

By and large, formal education in Canada is provided through public funds. But governments at all levels today face an era of acute fiscal restraint. Thus a major policy concern in future decades will be whether society can maintain and enhance both the accessibility and the quality of the education system without making excessive claims on economic resources. p.1

On the other hand, employers are seeking more from the education system. The new jobs that are being created in Canada tend to require a higher level of basic skills, than the jobs that were being created 10 or 20 years ago. At the same time, we observe high drop-out rates from secondary school, and high rates of illiteracy and innumeracy among young people. And Canada devotes fewer resources to training than do many of its trading rivals. p.3

“Coherence” has two dimensions in the present context: (i) the transmission by employers of signals about skill needs and about the preparation of graduates of the education system; and (ii) the accurate reading of those signals by students, parents, and the learning institutions - and, most particularly, their responses to those signals. A principal conclusion that drives our policy suggestions... is that, at the moment, the Canadian system lacks coherence and that improvements can be achieved only with a substantially increased involvement - and commitment - of a wide community of stakeholder. p.3

Recent work shows that the occupational structure in many countries is becoming polarized into good jobs and bad jobs. Such a trend could eventually threaten the principle of equality of opportunity that underlies the Canadian sense of democracy. p.3

Index

A - QUALITY: AN ESSENTIAL ISSUE

A well-known study of American schools enumerates 62 goals, arranged into 10 groups under four major headings:

A. Academic goals

1. Mastery of basic skills and fundamental processes

2. Intellectual development

B. Vocational goals

3. Career education - vocational education

C. Social, civic and cultural goals

4. Interpersonal understanding

5. Citizenship participation

6. Enculturation

7. Moral and ethical character

D. Personal goals

8. Emotional and physical wellbeing

9. Creativity and aesthetic expression

10. Self-realization p.4

A simple, though perhaps too general, definition of the purpose of education is that it prepares young people for the next stage of life... Employment and unemployment statistics show convincingly that there is a clear relationship between years of schooling and labour market success. p.4

Index

1. Enrolment & Drop-out Rates

In 1986, the median level of schooling of the population aged 15 and over was 12.2 years... For people aged 25 to 44, the corresponding figure was 12.8 years. These levels are among the highest in the world... in 1971, the median level of schooling of 25-44-year olds was only 11 years. p.4

These successes must not blind us to our shortcomings. Estimates suggest that as many as 30 percent of our young people do not finish secondary school. p.5

The process and nature of dropping out have changed... Until 1955, most students who dropped out did so when they reached the age when schooling was no longer compulsory. This has changed in that most students today attempt to continue beyond the legal school-leaving age, but some soon find they do not have the ability or motivation... They miss a credit or two in the first year... then another in the next year, and they give up completely in the third. But well before they drop out de facto, they have dropped out psychologically. Dropping out is, just like education itself, a cumulative process. p.5

The secondary-school drop-out rate is somewhat higher among boys than girls. Ethnic background also has an impact. Children from those cultures which value achievement highly and in which parental influence is strong are less prone to drop out of school. p.6

Traditionally, educational achievement has been measured by examinations and tests... best indicators of academic and vocational achievement... deals with mastery of music literacy and numeracy skills... The basic skills are important, not only by themselves but also because they form the indispensable basis for achievement of almost all other goals of education. p.6

And yet, while basic literacy may seem to be a modest aim, Statistics Canada has found that 30 per cent of Canadian adults who have completed their secondary education have difficulty reading and try to avoid situations that require them to read. Some 36 per cent... cannot perform simple sequences of numerical operations...

Much less work has been done in the measurement of the achievement of social, civic, cultural and personal goals through education. Research on effective schools suggests, however, that schools which score high on imparting knowledge (cognitive achievement) tend to do well on these other goals as well.

The focus on the achievement of cognitive goals should not be interpreted as lack of interest in other goals. It merely acknowledges that high achievement in cognitive field - particularly full mastery of basic skills and fundamental processes - is the indispensable precondition for a first-class vocational education and for the attainment of social, cultural and personal goals... better educated... more likely to take advantage of “recurrent” education later in life... Recurrent education, which is often pursued as a means to attain cultural or personal goals, therefore tends to build upon early achievement. p.7

Index

2. Academic Achievement

a) International Comparisons

Our results for science and mathematics can be summarized as follows: At age 10, Canadian children compare favourably with those in most industrialized countries. By age 13 or 14, Canada’s relative position deteriorates somewhat, though the evidence is mixed. By the end of secondary school, Canada’s achievement is weak, when adjusted for years of schooling, retention rates, and freedom of subject choice. This result is particularly pronounced in science, but seems to hold for mathematics as well. We conclude that Canadian children receive a good start, but from the age of 13 or 14, they begin gradually to fall behind children in other countries.

b) Inter-provincial Comparisons

... after adjustment for selectivity and years of schooling, students in the western provinces achieve better results than those in the central provinces, while these, in turn, outperform students in the Atlantic provinces (in science and literacy)

... In our view, these inter-provincial differences are cause for deep concern and warrant further research. Raising the performance of the weaker provinces would contribute to an improvement in overall Canadian performance. Further analysis of this question will be found in our more detailed research report on education, to be released later this year. p.7

... little dependable intertemporal data... The results suggest that average achievement in the tested subjects has not improved, but rather deteriorated over the last 25 years.

The poorest showing is in language skills. This is also the area giving rise to the largest number of complaints from employers about prospective labour-market entrants. p.8

c) Functional Literacy of Young Adults

Some 38 per cent of Canadians aged 16 to 69 “do not meet everyday reading demands”; a similar proportion “have not mastered the skills needed to deal with everyday numeracy operations.”

If these figures do not improve, our school system will produce well over one million new functional illiterates over the next 10 years. This is a most alarming prospect, and out first priority must be to prevent it. p.8

Index

3. Some Crucial Aspects of Educational Achievement

a) Students

Two simple facts must be kept in mind...: 1) education is a cumulative process; and, 2) motivation is critical for achievement, and achievement acts as an important motivator. p.9

Continuous monitoring of the students’ progress and nourishing a sense of accomplishment are among the most important contributors to educational success. Note that it is the gain in achievement, not the level of achievement that gives satisfaction to the student and is the proper indicator of the quality of teaching. p.9

... Unfortunately, for those who complete secondary school but do not intend to go on to postsecondary education, there is little inducement to perform above the bare minimum required to pass. If prospective employers - or even better, their trade associations - were to make it clear that they want to see secondary school transcripts before hiring and that performing at, say, the 70-per cent level in specified courses is a precondition, this would act as a powerful signal to young students heading for the labour market. pp. 9-10

b) Families, Friends and Peers

... The effects of the family and its socio-economic status on the achievement of children has been documented by innumerable studies. p.10

Parents with a higher socio-economic status may influence their children to aim for more education. Being well-educated themselves, they may be better able to monitor, supervise, and if necessary, personally assist the progress of their offspring. They may be able to afford to hire tutors to improve their children’s results. Their education consciousness may manifest itself by choosing to buy or rent housing in an area known for the high quality of its schools.

Clearly, in those instances (Asian), the cultural background and the traditional respect for parental wishes have a strong effect on achievement. Education-conscious parents can have a major positive effect on the achievement of their children, irrespective of their socioeconomic status...

Classmates and class organization also have an impact... In some countries, like Japan, the students are sorted by school, and the more demanding and academically ambitious secondary schools accept only the best students; however, almost all Japanese teenagers do finish secondary school. Other countries - Germany, for instance - sort the students into schools that are tied to avowedly academic or vocational character. The Canadian and American systems essentially keep most students in the same type of school but sort them into what Ontario calls the advanced, general and basic programs (or streams). The programs differ by academic content. The dilemma seems to be that here we have the worst of both worlds: the advanced program is too weak for the best students and too academic for potential drop-outs - but the drop-outs have few (and unattractive) vocational options.

... Students in the general and basic streams often regard themselves as stigmatized and are much more likely to drop out of school. This is very different and much worse outcome than that of the German system, where the quality of vocational education is very high and where no stigma is attached to vocational schools and education. p.11

Index

c) Teachers

The progress of learning is the criterion that measures good teaching, and regular testing can help to measure progress. p.12

Teachers want, rightly, to be regarded and appreciated as professionals, but often they feel as mere cogs in a huge education machine in which they are the day-to-day decision makers in the classroom but have only limited influence on school-wide decisions and even less at the school-district level.... Only too often, the way to promotion lies along the path of supervision of extracurricular programs and haphazard accumulation of post-graduate degrees that may or may not be relevant to the quality of teaching... The more time is spent on administrative and disciplinary action, the less actual teaching can take place. p.12

d) Schools and School Resources

... what makes a school effective? Yet a thorough review of 187 relevant studies devoted to examining the effects of one or more of these inputs shows no persuasive evidence confirming such effects.

What are these influences? Current literature on effective schools summarizes these influences under the name of school ethos (spirit). p.12

First, effective schools are clearly committed to high expectations and norms... Second, ... a high percentage of classroom time is devoted to active teaching and... active learning… Third, the school environment encourages pupils to accept its school norms... clean, attractive and in good repair... Teachers must be accessible... outside class time… In short, the school is a social organization... much depends on the chief executive officer - the principal...

While it is true that private schools, on the whole, draw their pupils from the higher socio-economic strata, results from U.S. religious schools show that the achievement gain is higher than one would expect on the basis of social background alone. This does not mean that all schools must be privatized. Rather, it suggests that achievement can be improved in the public school system by reducing interference, increasing the principal’s freedom, disseminating the results of assessments, and increasing parental freedom of choice among schools. p.13

Index

e) The Opportunity to Learn

School is not the only source of learning for young people, but it is critical for the learning of mathematics and science...

Scholastic achievement depends to a large extent on the “opportunity to learn” - a concept developed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)

One of the consistent findings of IEA studies has been that “students who have greater opportunities to learn knowledge and skills included in the achievement tests are likely to have higher levels of achievement”.

As another review of IEA results points out, “this general finding also appeal to common sense. Students tend to learn what they are taught.” Why is it important to highlight this seemingly banal conclusion? Because there is growing evidence that the Canadian curriculum is less rich than those found in many industrialized countries. p.13

One of the most damning arguments against the practice of “tracking” or “streaming” is that many youngsters are incorrectly assigned to a lower stream and are then intellectually malnourished because they are “fed” much less than they are able to absorb... Less harm is done by keeping the “true” slow learners in a program with richer content, even if they cannot absorb all that is offered.

In every subject, the opportunity to learn is influenced by the time devoted to teaching the subject. If we wish to improve achievement in subjects deemed essential, it will be necessary to impose strict time limits on the time devoted to elective subjects.

... The fragmentary international evidence available suggests that there is indeed a systematic correlation between the length of the school year and higher educational achievement; however, longer school days and greater amounts of time devoted to a given subject do not have a recognizable effect on achievement... What conclusions can we draw...? p. 14

The IEA Classroom Environment Study concludes that the effective use of available time for learning (“time on the task”) is at least as important as the assigned amount of time... The longer school year is not the cause of higher achievement, but both are reflections or results of the importance that society attaches to educational achievement. p. 15

Index

f) Summary

Education is a cumulative process... In particular, the students’ self-motivation is an essential factor.

Effective schools... substantial degree of autonomy, giving the principal ands the senior teaching staff the possibility to plan... in a collaborative manner... requires a collegial relationship and a sense of community

Teachers are also role models; their knowledge, enthusiasm, conscientious work, sensitivity, and appreciative feedback are all-important ingredients of the ethos of effective schools.

Students must feel that their parents, and indeed society as a whole, assign the highest importance to education and that doing the acceptable minimum is not enough... The effect of parents’ attitudes on the achievement of their children is greater and more important that that of their socio-economic status. p.16

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