It was a hoax...


Parents need to stop raising their children on the principles that they must beat everyone in their class, that their school needs to rise up the league tables, or for their country to defeat every other nation on Earth in global education rankings.
We need to stop pushing our kids, by The Guardian

I read this earlier today and immediately thought about those of us in adult education and our battles against the reduction of student achievements to the human capital profit margin. Here are some excerpts from A Layperson's Guide to PIAAC by Brigid Hayes that explain how this process works in Canada.
We live in an age of accountability, performance measurement, the adage that whatever can be measured matters. PIAAC and its predecessor surveys define what matters for literacy practice in this country. ...

In this country, we seem to have an extraordinary emphasis on the five levels to the exclusion of alternative ways of measuring progress demonstrating progress. Literacy discourse relies heavily on questions of literacy levels, how many hours will it take to move somebody from one level to another. ...

Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a shift to have benchmarks that speak almost exclusively of literacy as a work-related practice. Now I would agree that work is where many of us spend most of our time and that workplace practices can contribute to or inhibit the development of literacy practice. But the political discourse in this country has placed literacy as only a workplace and economic issue. Literacy’s role in social cohesion and societal stability is ignored. Other venues for literacy practice and growth, venues such as the community and the family, appear undervalued. ...
We’ve set up a dichotomy between literacy as a social good and literacy as an economic good. Here in Canada, with the jurisdictions split between federal and provincial responsibilities, we have the federal government leading the charge on the economic value of literacy with the provinces focusing on literacy as a form of adult or second chance education. Provinces have been dividing responsibility for literacy from responsibility for workplace training, the latter which is now, more often than not, focused on essential skills.

At the national level, government is focused on results, not necessarily educators or practice. It seems more important to show movement from one level to another. For example, we have funders asking that curriculum focus on one essential skill at a time.

IALS was easy to understand – it mimics grade levels. Levels resemble the grade system that certainly policymakers understand. When I was in government I had a director general say to me, and I quote, “IALS is the ultimate report card,”– he was planning to use it as a means to determine whether we had been successful. ...

PIAAC puts the attention on the individual. Yet the environment in which we are being asked to use the skills is just as important as the skills we have. I could have all the skills in the world only to find that the work environment or personal environment do not demand that I use them. In that case, I am not going to value those skills. By the same token, it’s imperative that we not create barriers of unclear writing and unnecessarily complex text. It’s not just about the individual.

PIAAC and its focus on the individual give short shrift to the challenges faced by adults who are trying to improve their skills. This is not some sort of mechanical process. We need quality programs that are accessible with sufficient funding, teacher training,and resources. Learners need support such as income replacement, childcare, transportation. We need adult friendly programming and institutions. The culture here in Canada values youth education and formal education. This is why adult education sits at the margins. This is why informal education is not valued.