Teacher Education in Singapore

Posted on February 11, 2014 by | Leave a comment

The following post was written by Sarah Butrymowicz and was originally published on the Hechinger Ed blog of The Hechinger Report.

Lessons from Abroad: Singapore’s secrets to training world-class teachers

Singapore has been a hot topic in education circles ever since it began to appear near the top of the pack of international assessments in math and science in the mid-90s. The country has been held up as an example of a place where education is being done right: Singapore’s standards were higher and better than ours. Its commitment to education stronger. Its teacher training more rigorous.

This month, I visited the tiny nation to see firsthand just what it’s doing and whether lessons from Singapore are really something the U.S. can replicate. During a week touring schools and talking to students and educators, I had a chance to spend several hours at the National Institute of Education (NIE), the school responsible for training all the country’s teachers. It’s a selective school regarded highly by many in the international education community. But I learned a few things that surprised me:

– The school averages 16,000 applicants for 2,000 slots annually, without bothering to do any outreach to high school students.

Teaching is a sought-after profession in Singapore, so the NIE doesn’t need to send brochures to top students or advertise in schools. It is guaranteed an abundance of good candidates because becoming a teacher is highly prestigious. Admissions staff only look seriously at those in the top third of their class, though, and a competitive interview process weeds out those who might just be interested in the salary the Ministry of Education pays students during their training to become a teacher.

– In 2010, the NIE started a pilot e-portfolio program, which quickly expanded to the entire school. All teacher trainees must collect a sampling of projects and main assignments from each of their classes and write about their philosophy of teaching – and document how that changes as their training goes on. Originally intended as an assessment, the portfolio now has no grades or consequences attached to it. Students must present it to faculty prior to graduating, but NIE administration decided that it was better used as a resource and opportunity for reflection, rather than a high-stakes assessment.

– Once students graduate, they must serve in the classroom for at least three years. In that time, though, they have a lighter workload – about three quarters of what a regular teacher has – and a mentor to help them. They’re also not done with the NIE.

The school offers ongoing training for all teachers and has some courses specifically geared towards beginner teachers. A few are even required by the Ministry of Education for recent grads.

Singapore, of course, is a small, centralized country and not everything that they do can apply to the United States. But there were some marked contrasts—such as the popularity of the teaching profession and the continued relationship between teacher and training program even after they’re in the classroom—that the U.S. could learn from. I’ll be checking in again later this week with more of my observations.

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Interview with Beatriz Pont

Posted on February 3, 2014 by | Leave a comment
Beatriz Pont

Beatriz Pont

Beatriz Pont is Senior Education Policy Analyst in the OECD Education Directorate. At the OECD since 1999, she has focused on education policy analysis and advice. She has managed and contributed to a range of education policy comparative reviews in the area of school improvement, school leadership, equity, adult learning and adult skills. This interview, which is part of the Lead the Change Series of the American Educational Research Association Educational Change Special Interest Group, appears as part of a series that features experts from around the globe, highlights promising research and practice, and offers expert insight on small- and large-scale educational change. Recently, Lead the Change has also published interviews with Diane Ravitch, and the contributors to Leading Educational Change: Global Issues, Challenges, and Lessons on Whole-System Reform (Teachers College Press, 2013) edited by Helen Janc Malone, have participated in a series of blogs from Education Week.

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Scanning the globe

Posted on January 28, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Several reports over the past month highlight issues such as educational funding, early childhood education, new schools and school closure, and curriculum:

Funding

In the Phillipines, http://www.philstar.com argues that the country is not contributing enough to education. While education spending increased from 1999 to 2011 (13.9% to 15%), it has yet to reach the target 20% of the national budget. According to UNESCO, “The share of national income invested in education, which equalled the subregional average in 1999, had fallen behind by 2009 at 2.7 percent of GNP, compared with an average of 3.2 percent for East Asia.” In Canada, The Globe and Mail reports that school boards have increased their spending over the past decade. In Canada as a whole, expenditures have increased 53 per cent – or 5.3 per cent a year, a rate much higher than inflation. In Australia, The Australian Teacher Magazine reports that the government is in the midst of a debate over the funding of education. While the government has committed to a new educational funding system for four years starting from 2014, officials are debating the timeline for the new funding system as well as the question of whether the funding should go to private schools as well as public schools. Meanwhile, The Norway Post reports that the Norwegian government is making plans to increase spending on teacher training.

Early Childhood Education

In Bulgaria, http://www.novinite.com reports that, in order to avoid a loss of EU funding, new legislation is being drafted and must go into effect by September 2014. Legislation includes revisions to a draft law on pre-school education, which include making pre-school education non-compulsory for 4-year-olds. Meanwhile, The Helsinki Times reports that Finland, where approximately 63% of children aged 1-6 attended daycare in 2012, is considering a new law that would “secure the high quality of early childhood education,” as well as all other issues, including funding and teacher quality.

New Schools and School Closure

According to Norway‘s The Foreigner, Conservative Education Minister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen has proposed lifting current restrictions on establishing private schools. Meanwhile, in Scotland, the government has amended the Children and Young People Bill in order to defer decisions about school closures to new review panels. The aim of establishing these panels is to improve transparency and remove allegations of political bias from the process. In Lithuania, the Education and Science Ministry has approved a network of Russian-language schools, emphasizing that education programs of foreign countries and international organizations must be consistent with the education goals and principles in the Education Law of Lithuania, as well as the law on national security and other legal acts.

Curriculum

In Finland, The Helsinki Times reports that a high school reform task force delivered a proposal to the Minister of Education and Science in which they proposed reducing compulsory subjects, such as the study of Swedish, and introducing new interdisciplinary studies. The proposal has been met with resistance from some teachers and politicians. Meanwhile, in The New York Times, questions about the relationship between identity and the curriculum surface for Palestinian children who are educated in Israel, and Muslims who are educaed in Germany. The debate over language instruction is ongoing in countries such as The Netherlands, Latvia, and Japan.

In Australia, Australian Teacher Magazine reports on a new review of the national curriculum, which leadership feels should be pared back to basics. Kevin Donnely, one of two men who will conduct the review, raises concerns over teaching and learning, and considers the relationship between educational spending and learning outcomes. As he explains, “We really do need to know whether the millions and millions of dollars that’s gone into education over the last 20 years, where results have flatlined or have gone backwards – we want to know how effective that money has been.”

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Global Perspectives on Professional Learning Communities

Posted on January 23, 2014 by | 1 comment
Dr. Jane B. Huffman

Dr. Jane B. Huffman

At the 27th annual International Conference for School Effectiveness and Improvement, held in Yagyakarta, Indonesia, early this January, Dr. Jane B. Huffman presented a paper, “Professional Learning Community Development in High Schools: Conceptualizing the PLC Process through a Global Perspective,” in which she shared her research on the PLC process within multiple Asian cultural contexts. In a recent conversation with IEN Contributing Editor Paul Chua, Huffman defines professional learning communities (PLCs) as “professional educators working collectively and purposefully to create and sustain a culture of learning for all students and adults.” She described PLCs as a multi-dimensional process, including shared and supportive leadership; shared values and vision; collective learning and application; shared personal practice and supportive conditions. Through her research in the U.S. context over the past two years, she has found that successful implementation of PLCs district-wide depends on a coordinated vision of leadership working together towards a common goal, strong interpersonal relationships, and carefully targeted professional learning.

While the PLC process has been practiced and studied in Anglo-American cultures for twenty years, Huffman’s work with the Global PLC Network extends this work to non-Anglo countries including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. Huffman and four research colleagues – one each from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and the U. S. – began the network in 2009 by studying schools in Taiwan and Singapore that were using the PLC model. From those conversations, they began to construct the essential structures of what came to be called the “Global PLC Model.” Their research on the global construct has five facets for development: structures, policy and procedures; leadership; professionalism; learning capacity and a sense of community.

A Dr. Huffman explained, a brief history of the five educational systems show that external and internal differences in educational systems make it impossible to create a ‘boilerplate’ improvement effort that will fit all contexts and meet all teacher and student needs. In Taiwan, the Ministry of Education (MOE) PLC policy began in 2009 and encouraged K-12 teachers to build school-based PLC teams for teacher professional development. Some government programs, such as a high school improvement project (School Actualization Program) and science education (High Scope Program), continue to motivate teachers to establish subject-based or interdisciplinary PLCs for curriculum innovation or professional development. In Singapore, PLCs started in 2000 with the establishment of Teachers Network, and Learning Circles, a teacher collaborative learning model of action research. In China, although the term PLC is seldom used, schools have a long history of enhancing teachers’ professional competency and instructional skills through collaboration and collective inquiry. In Hong Kong, early steps have been initiated to establish policies related to PLCs.

For more on the topic of Professional Learning Communities and how they are being put to use in various countries around the world, readers can look back to Dr. Huffman’s earlier publications and earlier conversation with ICSEI President Dr. Alma Harris, who shared that some of the debates about professional collaboration range from discussions about the best models to follow, about the time and resources available to support these activities, and the issue of impact. In addition, in a recent conversation with IEN, Dr. Philip Hallinger, described the some of the issues related “policy borrowing,” in which countries attempt to utilize policies that have been successful in different contexts.

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Education reform in East Asia

Posted on January 8, 2014 by | 4 comments
Dr. Philip Hallinger

Dr. Philip Hallinger

This post is drawn from a conversation with Dr. Phillip Hallinger, the Joseph Lau Chair Professor and director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.  He spoke with us about some of the issues surrounding the last two decades of education reform in East Asia, which he addresses in his most recent article, “Synthesis of findings from 15 years of educational reform in Thailand: lessons on leading educational change in East Asia,” published in the International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice. 

East Asian countries have been actively pursuing education reform over the past two decades. Largely, goals of such reforms have included student-centered learning, teaching with technology, school-based management, and teacher empowerment – ideas that have originated in either the US, the UK, or Australia, and travelled around the world on what Hallinger calls “the winds of globalization.” As Hallinger explained, where Asian societies years ago were once much more isolated, cultural and national boundaries today are permeable. While this “policy borrowing” can be interpreted as a move to build a more modern education system, it belies a “cultural mismatch” that can render the policy ineffective in practice. As Hallinger (2013) suggests, “where educational changes conflict with fundamental cultural values, the process is likely to encounter even greater resistance and require a longer time frame for implementation” (p. 17).

Hallinger’s (2013) recent article, written with Darren A. Bryant, focuses on Thailand and identifies lessons that can apply broadly to the region and beyond. As Hallinger and Bryant explain, Thailand aimed to expand access to education during the 1990s by increasing compulsory education from six to nine years, and finally to 12 years of free schooling, in an effort to improve the knowledge and skill level of the labor force. However, with the increase in access came concerns over educational quality, and in 1999 the National Education Act (1999) was passed, setting ambitious new goals for teaching and learning that many today feel the country has not attained in the ten years since the initial implementation of the reform. Some have also  linked the country’s recent social unrest to the perception of unequal access to quality education.

Hallinger and Bryant also note that in countries such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Taiwan, there is a similar gap between the vision of educational change and the reality on the ground. In Thailand, for example, despite the government directive that all teachers implement student-centered learning, a survey of 1800 principals found that only about a one-third reported that their teachers actively engaged the reforms in their teaching practice. Hallinger attributes this disappointment to “over-promising,” rather than faulty strategy, and explains that a successful implementation would require more than a decade in any country. In Thailand, “local factors,” such as budget constraints, cultural mismatch, and political instability, have further tested reform efforts.

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Scanning the globe

Posted on December 31, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Photo by Dao Ngoc Thach

Photo by Dao Ngoc Thach

Several reports over the past month highlight the variety of causes that are blamed for failures to improve educational performance around the world. This short scan of reports focusing on issues like school quality and test-score performance, reveals typical concerns about teacher training and teacher quality, questions about the language of instruction and equality of education, as well as questions about the choices policymakers have made and the “policy churn” that can undermine implementation.
 

School Quality

Earlier this year in Sweden, 11,000 students were left without a school to attend when the private education firm that operated it went bankrupt. According to an article published online by Reuters, additional concerns raised about the quality of education in these schools led the opposition Green Party, a long-term proponent of school choice, to issue a public apology in a Swedish newspaper, with the headline: “Forgive us, our policy led our schools astray.”

In Vietnam, concerns have been expressed over the quality of care and education children receive in privately operated preschools. Referring to the government policy to privatize education as a failure, thanhniennews.com writes that limits placed on the growth of public preschool facilities has allowed private preschools “of dubious quality to mushroom.” Another article, posted on Vietnam.net, points out the additional problem of inadequate teacher training in provincial and privately operated preschools.

Test-Score Performance

In Malaysia, we see a debate over the cause of the decline of TIMSS scores. The World Bank released a report that found the decline to be caused by the switch in the language of instruction from Bahasa Malaysia to English. However, an article in The Malay Mail online cites the Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE), for pointing out that in 2007 (the year scores declined sharply), the students had yet to receive their instruction in English. Instead, PAGE attributed the decline to the poor quality of teachers and insufficient teaching hours. The Education Ministry announced plans to form a panel to investigate Malaysian students’ decline in performance.

Finnbay.com reports that Krista Kiuru, Finland‘s Minister of Education and Science, has allocated €22.5 million in state aid to promote equality in education for the period 2014-2015 to regain Finland’s top seat in PISA. “Success of Finnish education in international comparisons must be regained by having educational equality and non-discrimination,” said Kiuru.

Educational Improvement and “Policy Churn”

Despite declines in New Zealand students’ test scores, The Otago Daily Times reports that Education Minister Hekia Parata will not do anything differently. Parata attributes the slide to 10 years of a changing education system and not its controversial National Standards assessments, or a lack of school funding. According to Parata, Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD’s Secretary-General, has assured her that the country is already doing “what they recommend should be done when you want a whole of system change.”

The Nation has reported that the recent political upheaval in Thailand could mean that the sweeping curriculum-based overhaul of the education system might not come to fruition. The country had planned radical changes, such as decreasing the number of school hours for primary students from 800 to 600 per year, and requiring that students learn outside of the classroom for up to 400 hours per year. In addition, the Pheu Thai party’s controversial, yet “much-touted election policy” called the One Tablet PC Per Child Project, might not be implemented. Other policies at risk of being shelved include changes to the university admission system, promotion of vocational education, and the ongoing effort to improve Thailand’s international educational ranking.

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Widespread call to improve vocational education

Posted on December 18, 2013 by | Leave a comment
Christopher Furlong, BBC

Christopher Furlong, BBC

News reports from this past month have shown that many countries are rethinking the role of vocational training in their education systems.

In Denmark, www.dr.dk reports that the government is considering new academic entrance requirements to vocational programs that some fear would result in thousands of students being barred from such programs.

Denmark is not alone in it’s effort to “raise the bar” on vocational education. The BBC reported that a survey of British employers showed almost 60% believe the government does not do enough to provide students with the vocational training they need.  The Guardian has also reported that a new standard will be applied to vocational education, allowing for diplomas endorsed by companies such as Kawasaki, Honda, and Volvo, but also hotels and even the Royal Ballet School, which is backing a qualification in performing arts.

Similarly, Thailand is also pledging to reform education to meet the demands of employers by reforming their system of vocational education. As reported in The Nation, the Education Ministry shared plans to work with the private sector to jointly design curriculum and training programs that give students real-life experiences as well as an academic education. The Thai government will also work with Germany, Australia, Japan and China – countries that have large investments in Thailand. However, in an earlier article, The Nation also reported that some researchers have expressed concerns that the government could still be doing more.

Similar news reports, collected from online sources over the past month, show a widespread call to improve vocational education, to reconsider the academic curriculum, and for educators to work alongside employers. These reports can be found coming from countries such as Malaysia, Nigeria, The United Arab Emirates, Liberia, Sudan, Ghana, Ireland, and India.

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Scanning the Globe: Access, Protests, and PISA 2012

Posted on December 9, 2013 by | 1 comment

A quick review of the headlines on education and educational policy we’ve seen from around the world over the last few weeks reveals continuing concerns about issues of access and financing in both developed and developing countries.  Australian Teacher Magazine reported on concerns about the extent to which the current Australian government will support the previously approved “Gonski” reforms, and Education International raised questions about a bill that will introduce an income cap to Japan’s tuition-free program for public high schools. An article in The Hindu described how school cancellations caused by excessive holidays and weather can interfere with the requirements for increased instructional time in India’s Right to Education Act. Euronews reported on the difficulties that students in countries like Uganda, Kenya, and Mexico face just getting to school.

Protests over the past few weeks included those over conditions for education and support for educators in the Ukraine that took place as part of the demonstrations against the government’s efforts to delay an association agreement with Europe; rallies against education cuts in Spain; and protests by students at the University of Copenhagen in response to a working paper from the University administration describing proposals designed to get students to complete their courses on time.

But the big news, at least for a moment, was OECD’s release of the 2012 PISA results including overviews, country-specific notes, full reports and data.  We pulled together headlines from around the world, many of which labeled the results “bad news,” except in countries like Lichtenstein, Poland, Estonia and the usual high-performing Asian countries and portions of countries (like Shanghai).  Alexander Russo rounded-up the responses in the United States and The Times Education Supplement put together their own list of news and opinion.

Concerns about the orchestration of the announcement and the media blitz surrounding it were raised on both sides of the Atlantic, by Paul Morris on the Institute of London Blog as well as Richard Rothstein and Martin Carnoy from the Economic Policy Institute in the US. While Marc Tucker and Tom Friedman agreed on some of the multiple factors that might contribute to Shanghai’s success, Adam Minter, Junheng Li, and Diane Ravitch pointed to some of the problems and concerns about the Chinese education system expressed both inside and outside China (as well with some of the concerns about vast numbers of students in Shanghai who are unrepresented in the PISA tests).

Although slipping a bit in math, Finland – along with several other European high-performers like Estonia (discussed by Pasi Sahlberg), Poland (discussed by Amanda Ripley), and Liechtenstein – still serves as a focus for some examinations of the ingredients of a successful education system. Given the domination of the rankings by the Asian high-performers however, some of the main story lines for the next few years seem to be set. On the one hand, stories about success on PISA will highlight how hard students’ work and the amount of time students spend on schoolwork while mentioning concerns about the amount of pressure on students and the need to support the development of higher-order skills. (See for example, reports from the BBC about South Korea and a report in the Japan News that credits Japan’s strong performance on PISA 2012 in part to a decision by the Japanese Ministry to back-off a commitment to “pressure-free” education and an increase in the volume of study content and the number of class hours). On the other hand, others will continue to point to the many issues of inequality and the social and economic factors that play into these results and other comparisons (see for example stories from France, and the US; while it does not focus on PISA, a recent article from the Asia Pacific Journal of Education explores the inequitable distribution resources across schools in South Korea).

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Pisa 2012 headlines from around the world

Posted on December 4, 2013 by | 1 comment

The release of the Pisa 2012 rankings produced a flood of headlines around the world, many of them noting what was seen as bad news (except in many parts of Asia). Below, we provide a list of headlines from around the world that we put together based on a quick, unsystematic scan of mostly English-language publications:

Asia

Australia, News.com.au

PISA report finds Australian teenagers education worse than 10 years ago
“AUSTRALIAN teenagers’ reading and maths skills have fallen so far in a decade that nearly half lack basic maths skills and a third are practically illiterate.”

China, China Daily

Asia tops OECD’s latest education survey

“Asia outperformed the rest of the world in the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey published on Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).”

Hong Kong, South China Morning Post

Shanghai teens still world’s best at reading, maths, science in Pisa survey

“Mainland city’s 15-year-olds the best at reading, maths and science, global survey finds, but HK youngsters are snapping at their heels.”

Japan, The Japan Times

Nation’s kids top fields in PISA test

“For the first time ever, Japanese 15-year-olds topped the list in reading and science performance in an international academic survey last year covering 34 developed countries, according to data released Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”

South Korea, The Korea Herald

Korea tops OECD in math proficiency

“The performance of Korean students proves the country’s established education system and also strong zeal for education, according to the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation.”

Malaysia, malay mail

PISA: Malaysia up in maths, down in science and reading

Malaysian students scored higher in mathematics but registered declines in both reading ability and science, according to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey released today.

New Zealand, New Zealand Herald

Significant drops in NZ educational achievement – OECD report

“New Zealand educational achievement has dropped significantly in the core subjects of science, maths and reading, according to a OECD report.”

Singapore, Channel NewsAsia

S’pore edges up in PISA rankings as weaker students improve

“An international study of 15-year-olds’ mathematics, science and reading skills shows Singapore has made progress when it comes to helping weaker students level up to their peers.”

 

Europe

Finland, Yle.fi

Finnish pupils’ PISA results decline

“As expected, Finland has dropped in the OECD’s comparison of test results from 15-year-old pupils in 65 countries and regions. It placed 12th in mathematics, which was the main theme this year. However Finland ranked best in Europe in the other two categories: reading and science.”

France, Rfi.fr

French falling behind in maths says Pisa global education survey

“A global education survey released today showed that France has dropped to an average position in international maths tests and needs to improve educational results for immigrants and the poor.”

Germany, The Local

Germans improve Pisa education results

“German schoolchildren are improving in international comparisons, inching up the Pisa scale but still remain behind not only education giants such as Singapore and Hong Kong, but also Switzerland and the Netherlands.”

Liechtenstein, The Telegraph

OECD education report: Liechtenstein uses tiny classes and a specially-tailored maths programme to beat the competition

“With teachers on up to 130,000 euros per year, classrooms rarely over 15 pupils, and lucrative banking, hi-tech or industry jobs up for grabs, motivation is high”

Norway, The Nordic Page

Norway Left Behind Denmark and Finland in New PISA Survey

“Norwegian students have demonstrated the worst performance in math and science since 2009, but they are better in reading, shows OECD’s PISA survey.”

Spain, El País

No improvement in math, but Spanish students edge up in reading and science

“OECD’s latest Pisa global education survey places Spain slightly below average”

UK, The Guardian

UK students stuck in educational doldrums, OECD study finds

“Influential Pisa report says Britain’s mid-table position is virtually unchanged from 2009 as attainment gap persists”

 

North & South America

Argentina, Infobae (via Google Translate)

Argentina deepens the decline in its educational quality

the international survey ranked “the country 59th among 65 nations. Seven out of 10 young people got the lowest grade in math.”

Brazil, Jornal do Brasil (via Google Translate)

Despite advances in education, Brazil occupies the lowest position Pisa

“Brazil is still in the lower levels of the ranking. Among the 65 countries compared, Brazil ranked 58th. However, since 2003, Brazil has the biggest gains in performance in mathematics, out of the 356 points that year and reaching 391 points in 2012, according to data released on Tuesday.”

Canada, The Globe and Mail

Canada’s fall in math-education ranking sets off alarm bells

“Canada has dropped out of the top 10 in international math education standings, a decline that is raising alarms about the country’s future prosperity.”

Chile, La Tercera (via Google Translate)

Chile rose two points in math, but their results stagnate

“The country scored 423 points, while the OECD countries averaged 71 more. School of Shanghai achieved 613 points. Since 2006, Chile has increased every year 1.9 results in Mathematics. Since 2000, the rise in Reading has been three points.”

United States, This Week in Education

Vietnam wins! (Pisa 2013)

(Alexander Russo’s roundup of headlines and stories about PISA 2013 from around the US)

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Next steps for Education in Ontario

Posted on December 2, 2013 by | Leave a comment

This post is drawn from a conversation with Lindy Amato, Director of Professional Affairs at the Ontario Teachers’ Federation.  She spoke with us about some of the next steps in education and educational policy in Ontario and shared links to a number of related resources and news reports:

Recently, Ontario has been cited by OECD and others as an educational “success” story and a “system on the move.”  That success has been marked by a concerted focus on a small set of key goals, collaboration, and the development of a high level of trust among all involved in the educational system.  Over the past ten years, those key goals included:

  • increasing achievement scores
  • raising the number of graduates from high school
  • narrowing achievement gaps
  • building public confidence in the public education system.

As Amato put it “everybody climbed on board, there was labor peace for the most part, and that was the focus for every teacher, every director, every school, and every minister.” This climate of cooperation facilitated collaborations between the Government and the teachers’ organizations on diverse initiatives including teacher performance appraisal, a New Teacher Induction Program, and the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program.  In a widely circulated paper, Michael Fullan, has also described how far the system has come from what he called good but stagnant results and a “downtrodden state” in 2003 and laid out what the next steps might be.

From Amato’s perspective, the challenge is to maintain the gains, address performance areas that need improvement, and then go further. In particular, the government wants to address declines in math scores as well as a continuing performance gap between aboriginal students and other students.  The Premier Kathleen Wynne also recently emphasized the need to broaden the focus of the educational system to include higher order skills, creativity, citizenship, and other capacities needed for work and life in the 21st Century.  “That’s the tension in the system,” Amato explained, “to address those challenges and make further improvements.” The tension is reflected in the desire by some to move away from the traditional, content-heavy curriculum and allow much more flexibility in learning experiences while the system continues to rely on assessments of relatively narrow academic outcomes.

Adding to the challenges, concerns about the economy and the implications for the education budget are coming to the forefront with new negotiations between the teachers’ unions and the government slated to take place in the spring.  Although negotiations over the past ten years generally went smoothly, the most recent round was much more contentious. Ontario’s oversupply of teachers is another cause for concern.  The Toronto Globe and Mail cited one report revealing that almost a third of teacher education graduates in and near Ontario in 2011 were unable to find jobs in their fields, a sharp increase from about three percent in 2006.  In response, the government announced an expanded initial teacher education program to be launched in 2015.  The program is designed to halve the number of teachers who graduate every year while doubling the length of time required to get a degree.

Looking ahead, the next round of negotiations between the provincial government and the teachers’ unions will be crucial not only in determining if and how these issues will be addressed, but also setting the tone and determining whether the coming years will be accompanied by the same kind of trust, coherence, and collaboration that characterized the last ten years.  Adding to the uncertainty, the current government is a minority government and the next call for elections may come in the middle of the education negotiations expected to begin next spring.

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