Sep 21, 2026 · 29 min · 12 segments
September saw the launch of the results from the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA for short. Run by the OECD, PISA includes maths, reading and science tests for…
Luke SibietaGuest
Tom RichmondHost
The UK is well behind Scandinavian countries, as well as the Netherlands, Spain and Japan.
think these belonging scores suggest that this issue does need more attention despite England's good piece of performance overall, or is that the wrong way to think about it?
On one level, on a very clear level, you want pupils to feel belonging to their school, their place, their community.
It feels like trying to get schools to create a sense of belonging is kind of burdening schools with too much responsibility.
Schools are often seen as the main emergency service and the main vehicle for policy in so many dimensions at the moment.
So burdening them with another expectation of create belonging in your community would seem to be a lot to place on schools and a lot to place on education for that matter.
It feels like it's a wider phenomenon in society and maybe wider than actually policy focus in terms of how we behave as individuals within our society.
Yes, I think there are lots of things going on that clearly could affect the sense of belonging, but I'm sure schools would be dragged into that conversation whether they like it or not from a policy perspective.
Lots for policymakers to ponder there about how we could potentially improve the sense of belonging over time.
The UK is well behind Scandinavian countries, as well as the Netherlands, Spain and Japan.
think these belonging scores suggest that this issue does need more attention despite England's good piece of performance overall, or is that the wrong way to think about it?
On one level, on a very clear level, you want pupils to feel belonging to their school, their place, their community.
It feels like trying to get schools to create a sense of belonging is kind of burdening schools with too much responsibility.
Schools are often seen as the main emergency service and the main vehicle for policy in so many dimensions at the moment.
So burdening them with another expectation of create belonging in your community would seem to be a lot to place on schools and a lot to place on education for that matter.
It feels like it's a wider phenomenon in society and maybe wider than actually policy focus in terms of how we behave as individuals within our society.
Yes, I think there are lots of things going on that clearly could affect the sense of belonging, but I'm sure schools would be dragged into that conversation whether they like it or not from a policy perspective.
Lots for policymakers to ponder there about how we could potentially improve the sense of belonging over time.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
