Teenagers to be asked: Is your teacher racist?
PuPiLs will be quizzed on whether they think their teachers are racist under new global education assessments.
The Organisation for economic Cooperation and Development aims to analyse pupils’ attitudes towards ‘cultural diversity’ for the first time.
Fifteen-year-olds will be asked about their understanding of global issues such as migration alongside separate tests in reading, maths and science.
Pupils will also fill in additional questionnaires to measure their ‘openness towards people from other cultures’ and the attitudes of staff at their schools.
The ‘ global competence’ assessments are proposed for the 2018 round of PisA (the Programme for international student Assessment), which is run by the OeCD.
Children from about 80 countries including england are expected to participate.
The OeCD insists the move is necessary because schools need to prepare young people for a world ‘where they will live and work with people from different backgrounds and cultures’.
Pupils completing the PisA questionnaires will be asked about topics such as immigration and whether they enjoy unfamiliar food.
under the plans, they will be asked whether their teachers ‘talk in a respectful way’ and are ‘open to personal contact’ with people from ‘ all cultural or ethnic groups’.
Other potential questions focus on whether staff ‘have lower academic expectations’ for students from some ethnic groups and ‘apply the same criteria’ to grading and disciplining children ‘irrespective of their cultural origin or ethnic group’.
Andreas schleicher, director for education and skills at the OeCD, said it was vital to measure pupils’ perceptions of their teachers’ attitudes to different cultures and ethnicities. He told the Times educational supplement: ‘We are looking at what students perceive to be teachers’ attitudes.
‘We believe that perception will shape and will frame the way in which students learn about global competencies.
‘For example, if you have a teacher who says: “The textbook says i have to teach you about the diversity of cultures, but i think it’s complete nonsense” – in an environment like this a student is not going to engage themselves. but imagine a teacher who confronts them with the difficulties refugees face in england in getting integrated, and then i think you would probably get a very different stance from pupils.’
Chris mcGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real education, yesterday attacked the proposals as ‘political correctness’ and ‘ a step in the wrong direction’. He said: ‘What we’re seeing here is a distraction from what the OeCD should be focusing on.
They should be focusing on literacy, numeracy and science because you can’t really evaluate the social therapy side of education.’
malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of school and College Leaders, warned that a questionnaire was a ‘ crude and potentially unreliable’ way to explore the influence of teachers’ attitudes on students.
mr Trobe added: ‘it is important that we draw on students’ attitudes on these global issues. but i would be very cautious about young people making judgments about their teachers’ attitudes.’
but responding to criticism yesterday, mr schleicher said: ‘i don’t think the capacity of people to collaborate, compete and connect effectively with people from different cultural contexts has much to do with political correctness. it is what employers expect their workers to be ready for.’
‘Step in the wrong direction’