{"id":6851,"date":"2016-12-22T08:11:57","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T08:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6851"},"modified":"2016-12-22T08:11:57","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T08:11:57","slug":"pisa-scores-too-high-in-peru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/12\/22\/pisa-scores-too-high-in-peru\/","title":{"rendered":"PISA scores too high in Peru"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Peru's education minister is in trouble\u00a0just when the country's PISA scores have\u00a0risen sharply. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/americas\/21711888-viva-la-ignorancia-small-act-national-suicide-peru?fsrc=permar%7Cimage2\">The Economist<\/a> called it a\u00a0\"small act of national suicide\". \u00a0It's article begins:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"FOR most of this century, Peru\u2019s economy has shone: income per person has doubled in the past dozen years. But education failed to keep up. \u00a0In 2012 Peru ranked last among the 65 countries that took part in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests the reading, maths and science proficiency of 15-year-olds. \u00a0Fortunately, Peru then found an outstanding education minister. \u00a0Jaime Saavedra, an economist whose mother was a teacher, spent ten years at the World Bank, rising to be vice-president for poverty reduction. \u00a0Appointed three years ago to the education portfolio, he was the only minister to keep his job when Pedro Pablo Kuczynski replaced Ollanta Humala as Peru\u2019s president in July. \u00a0He has generalised a previous pilot plan to link teachers\u2019 pay to performance, overhauled teacher training and school management and begun a crash programme of repairing dilapidated school buildings. \u00a0He has also championed a law passed in 2014, which for the first time subjected universities to minimum standards for probity and educational outcomes.\u00a0\u00a0Mr Saavedra\u2019s stewardship has brought results. \u00a0Performance in national tests has risen sharply. \u00a0The latest PISA figures, which were released on December 6th, confirmed this trend: Peru was the fastest improver in Latin America and the fourth-fastest in the world. \u00a0Far from celebrating this achievement, the following day the opposition majority in Peru\u2019s Congress subjected Mr Saavedra to an 11-hour interrogation, conducted with the manners of a playground bully. \u00a0On December 15th it was due to vote to sack him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He's not in trouble, of course, just because of the PISA results (which no one in Congress seems to know\u00a0much about), but for other reasons as well, but you'll need to read the Economist for the detail. \u00a0Meanwhile, Mr\u00a0Saavedra's equivalents in Wales and Scotland paddle on serenely, knowing no one will be sacking them any time soon despite their lack of achievement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peru's education minister is in trouble\u00a0just when the country's PISA scores have\u00a0risen sharply. \u00a0The Economist called it a\u00a0\"small act of national suicide\". \u00a0It's article begins: \"FOR most of this century, Peru\u2019s economy has shone: income per person has doubled in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}