Programme for International Student Assessment

And even within an institution, they will undoubtedly come across courses that they're taking with instructors that have different sort of academic integrity guidelines as they relate to AI in the sense that some will allow it and others will say no you're not allowed to use AI and then of course there's the third group that would say yes you're allowed to use it with checks and balances and in certain types of circumstances, you are allowed to use the technology.

Before we go to the phones on this, I wanted to ask about how you use the PISA scores for students and the work that you've done there to examine the impact of AI use.

Tell me what your findings are.

Yeah, so for the listeners, PISA is the Program in International Student Assessment.

It's one of those things that we often hear about every three years when you hear about how well Canadian students are doing relative to other countries in reading, math and science.

The research that I've been doing with colleagues overseas is looking at those test scores and how Canadian students are doing, but also looking at the surveys that are attached to those tests, which look at things like growth mindset and perseverance and curiosity and interest.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's fair to say math performance overall, if you look at PISA scores, has not been helped in this era of technology.

And we've had a lot of math ed tech.

It's not like we've lacked for investment in the technology, so hardware and software.

What level have you reached? How can I meet you at your point of need with challenging stretch you know, opportunities to learn? And how can I monitor the progress that you make across the years of school? Now, the relevance of all of that for Australia is that while we don't very often acknowledge it, we face a similar problem.

So if you go back just a few weeks to when PISA results were released, you look at the media around that little event, what you'll see is that there's a lot of comparative talk.

We're still above the OECD level.

We've come down a little bit.

So in countries like Australia and England and the US, the response has been over decades to say, well, let's be clear about what every teacher should teach and every student should learn in each year of school.

Let's develop a national curriculum.

and put that out there let's let's describe the standards that all students of in a particular year of school should be expected to meet let's have systematic ways of doing that so the response has been to tighten up or to be more prescriptive in terms of curriculum assessment reporting processes but if you look across as i say in my book if you look across the three countries that i just mentioned What you see, from PISA at least, is that over the period that the 15-year-olds in 2022, over the period that they were in school, the 10 years that they were in school, from five years to 15 years of age, All three countries had a national curriculum, national assessment processes, national testing arrangements and so on in place, and yet in none of those countries did we see any improvement in reading, mathematics or science.

So that in itself I think is interesting.

But at the end of the day, our kids don't win.

Every single one of the independent pieces of research that have come in has showed an improvement, whether that's PAT results, whether that's curriculum insights, whether that's PISA, whether that's our phonics checks.

Every single thing has gone up.

And the way I'm representing the data is the way that it is provided to me by the Ministry of Education.

Not only the sector's challenge, it was the country's challenge.

Just right after COVID, we were the country that conducted the first time in PISA assessment.

Today, we actually got the second assessment performance.

They announced it globally.

And it seems, if we look at the GigaMap, people who can browse on that and will notice that in Mongolia, not only are schools connected at a basic level, but they think the average speed is around 99 megabits per second.

So there's quite a lot that can be done when those learners each have hands on a laptop, which is fantastic.

In terms of what you feel this access and this now this ambition, what has that achieved really? What's the difference and the opportunity that children today have as they move forward? I mean, it's very exciting to hear about the excellent improvements in the PISA scores that must feel, you know, a great, great reward for everyone's sort of hard work.

What are some of the differences that you've seen, those real advantages?

She might feel like she's winning, But at the end of the day, our kids don't win.

Every single one of the independent pieces of research that have come in has showed an improvement, whether that's PAT results, whether that's curriculum insights, whether that's PISA, whether that's our phonics checks.

Every single thing has gone up.

And the way I'm representing the data is the way that it is provided to me by the Ministry of Education.

She might feel like she's winning, but at the end of the day, our kids don't win.

Every single one of the independent pieces of research that have come in has showed an improvement, whether that's PAT results, whether that's curriculum insights, whether that's PISA, whether that's our phonics checks.

Every single thing has gone up.

And the way I'm representing the data is the way that it is provided to me by the Ministry of Education.