At current count, there have been two thousand, one hundred and seventy-three reports and opinion pieces on Australia’s terrific PISA results. We’ve heard from a journalist, a former PISA director, the Grattan Institute, the Gonski Institute, the Mitchell Institute, ACER, the Innovative Research University Group, The Centre for Independent Studies, the AMSI Schools Project Manager, the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, the Australian Science Teachers Association, Learning First, an education journalist, an education editor, an education lecturer, a psychometrician, an education research fellow, a lecturer in educational assessment, an emeritus professor of education, a plethora of education academics, a shock jock, a shock writer, a federal education minister, a state education minister, another state education minister, a shadow education minister, an economist, a teacher and a writer.
So, that’s just about everyone, right?
Oh dear no – there’s heaps of people not represented. How about “community interest groups” (on perceived or real cultural bias in PISA), parents’ groups, teachers (not educational experts, but the poor long-suffering folk who actually DO the teaching and who administer the tests), students themselves… I’m sure with the right amount of focus groups we could easily double your 2,173 reports (which seems like a very weak lower bound to me). You might ask if the number of reports which have genuine value is a positive integer, and the answer is probably no.
I think I’ve read one intelligent opinion piece in the general media, and a couple intelligent blog posts.
Hah! I have my spoon, but any meaningful pot seems well out of reach.
The op-ed I liked was by Professor John Munro. (No idea who he is.) I also generally like Greg Ashman’s blog, and I gather there exists a semi-visible subculture of not-crazy education commentary.
So the ratio of reports to meaningful actions is currently…
There cannot possibly be meaningful action if there is no prior meaningful understanding of the problem. But the accepted experts on analysing the problem are the same education cultists who got us here.
A point with which I simultaneously agree and cringe.
Hi
To try to answer RF ‘s question…. a negative exponential time series model usually used by actuaries to model demographic populations with finite resources would provide an estimate to the ultimate limit to number of reports
Eg Gompertz Law
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz_function
Steve R
Thanks Steve. Good one. My concern is not with the number of reports but the number of genuinely useful ideas. In this case, the gap between the two is annoying.
RF,
Ok … Then we are on harder ground of rare events ?… Like acurately predicting the next serious earthquake or other major seismic activity. Eg I think Wellington NZ is due a big one in the next 100 years but costing for it is difficult which is why there is a National Insurance disaster fund over there
Steve R