The international assessments undertaken regularly by PISA reveal just as much as they do about Parents’ role in student success as about the role of Schools.
Andreas Schleisser explains, “just asking your child how was their school day and showing genuine interest in the learning that they are doing can have the same impact as hours of private tutoring. It is something every parent can do, no matter what their education level or social background.”
This is a good piece on PISA in the New York Times, from Thomas Friedman:
It points out PISA findings, that “students whose parents reported that they had read a book with their child ‘every day or almost every day’ or ‘once or twice a week’ during the first year of primary school have markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents reported that they had read a book with their child ‘never or almost never’ or only ‘once or twice a month.’ On average, the score difference is 25 points, the equivalent of well over half a school year.”
I have often argued that Schools rely almost more than any other service on what modern marketeers call ‘co-production’.
Co-production is the engagement strategy used by many banks and supermarkets who try to get the customer involved directly in the service. In banks, you are encouraged to go online and do what the Bank Clerk used to do with your account; and you feel more in control because you do it. In some supermarkets, they hand you a device to tot up your purchases so you save time at the
checkout; again people do the work that used to be done by a Cashier and feel more in control.
In Schools, we badly need co-production. And it works. As Thomas Friedman wisely concludes:
“Better parents can make every teacher more effective.”
