Monday 17 September 2012

More Of The Same



While we’re on the subject of education, some interesting data sets here comparing educational environments in OECD countries. You can download the data and play with them yourselves, which is brilliant and something I might have a bash at properly when I’ve got a bit more time on my hands.

In the meantime though, three quick observations:

1.    How the hell are they compiling the ‘class size’ data? Japan comes out at 21 students per class. I’ve taught in a lot of schools here and I’ve never taught a class with that number of students. I have, however, taught at quite a few schools in tiny villages in the middle of nowhere that have fewer than 21 students in the entire school. I guess the standard class size of 40 (forty!) must get balanced out by all those backwater schools who only have two students in the entire year. I think the modal average would be far more revealing than the mean. The moral, as ever, is not to take these data at face value.

2.    Japan has the lowest spend on education as a proportion of GDP of any OECD country. Not a good sign, is it? Of course, you shouldn’t take that at face value either. Japan is an aged country. There are proportionally fewer young people that need educating so you’d expect them to absorb proportionally less of the budget. But that much less? I honestly don’t know. Spend per pupil seems fair-to-middling. Either way, it brings me to…

3.    The most interesting, and personally concerning, categories: “% of students in the top quartile who are immigrants,” and in the downloadable data, “% of students in the top quartile who are immigrants who speak another language at home.” I know my kid will feature in neither of those categories exactly, but the comparative ranking of Japan – last, and last by a long way – is all kinds of fucked up.

These two categories are reasonable enough proxies for how successfully a country accommodates immigrant groups. Obviously Japan has relatively low immigration anyway [citation needed], so you wouldn’t expect a huge figure here, but y’know, the demographic timebomb and all that.

This place needs fresh blood so badly and, whatever else it may be, The System is very effective at indoctrinating students with the Spirit of Japan or whatever bollocks they’re calling it now. You would think that the powers that be would be falling over themselves to get immigrant kids up to speed and productive as quickly and as numerously as possible.

But no, we’ve not had a leadership election for a couple of weeks now, so having another ASAP is a far more pressing concern. Everyone has won and all must have prizes.

8 comments:

  1. Even if there are a load of country schools with low class sizes, you'd think the sheer number of people in Tokyo would minimise that. Unless they have worked out the average class size per ken then taken the average from that.

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    1. Yes and no (maybe). Obviously a greater number of full classes will pull that number up, but 40 is still the theoretical maximum, so you're not going to get any with more students than that to really pull the numbers back up.

      It's like legs. There are quite a few people with less than normal, but no-one has more than two (stop it, you at the back). So, if you're precise enough, most people have more than the average number of legs.

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  2. I'll admit I have not spent any real time looking over this, but surely you know, like anyone with a brush with the education industry, private or public, that all the stats are close to useless, as they are gov't reported and not objective in any meaningful sense. I think an ALT who, before or after, is in education in their home country will give a more accurate comparison; as subjective as that is it may not be quite as skewed by self-interest.

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    1. True. Those self reported surveys on how many sexual partners people have had spring to mind. Men always average many more than women. That's obviously impossible unless a lot of those men are enjoying a fair amount of cock as well, which probably isn't the impression they were looking to create.

      I'd still rate them as a bit better than 'close to useless' though, if only because of the ability to compare between equally compromised stats from a number of other countries.

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  3. Can completely understand your concern as a parent here. If I were to become a parent here, I'd probably lose all my hair before the kid could finish elementary school...

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    1. I've been going grey since my mid-twenties, but fortunately all my male relatives have full heads of hair. If it does start going that'll certainly be one of the major causes.

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  4. "They [the findings covered in the report] suggest that it is far too optimistic to think that a major change in classroom teaching practices will be accomplished merely by changing formal systemic frameworks such as the junior high curriculum or textbooks. As we have seen, teachers are ready to ignore parts of the curriculum or else just go through the motions of teaching it." by Peter Cave, in Social Science Japan Journal Vol. 14, No. 2, pp 145–163, from the concluding remarks at the end of "Explaining the Impact of Japan’s Educational Reform: Or, Why Are Junior High Schools So Different from Elementary Schools?"

    So, there you have it (or more of it). The 'experts' are speaking about the problems in layman terms. And putting all that shit into context.

    There's another gem of a quot in P-Cave's paper, but I'm a savin' that for later.

    Anyway. About those numbers... I like to tell 'em, "Yo, byotch word en mi barrio es 'Japan ranks with North Korea at the bottom of rankings in Asia of English language skills'". English, like porn, is a multi-billion dollar industry. You can check with Chris Rock about the porn and these guys - http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=602&catid=18 - about that other stuff.

    L8TR



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    1. Oh yes. We'll certainly be coming to that in due course. Can't say I've read the article (or remember reading it), but it'll definitely get stuck on the pile, so thanks for that.

      Though in all honesty, I've got to say that Cave's use of the demotic is a touch more convincing than yours...

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