Nuffield Foundation review of Mathematics education in high-performing countries

In an attempt to identify various themes that might explain why countries differ in their mathematics attainment rankings, and to discover what identifiable characteristics, if any, countries with high mathematics attainment demonstrate, the Nuffield Foundation commissioned several reviews of aspects of mathematics teaching and learning, both to inform its own work and as a contribution to the national debate about future directions for mathematics education.

This review was prompted by the various international comparisons of mathematics attainment, typically at ages 9 and 14-15 that have appeared over recent years notably TIMSS studies together with the OECD PISA series starting in 2000. England has been a regular participant in these studies.

Key findings from the report:

Reviewing the comparison studies, the report finds that a wide range of countries, from across Europe, Asia and Australasia have performed well on one or more of the sets of tests (17 in total).

The authors suggest that for international comparisons to be usable for policy, four assumptions have to hold but they regard all as having "fundamental difficulties". The assumptions are:

Having reviewed the literature on international comparisons the authors are sceptical about the scope for "policy borrowing" from high-performing countries and they also argue that such policies might be contradictory anyway.

(News story taken from the STEM advisory forum website, 27 May)