ANDREAS SCHLEICHER, the man behind the largest international study on education systems, has an alarming irony to tell the world: education is the sector most deprived of the necessary information to guide it.
'No other sector in society can survive with so little information as education does. Many of our practices are based on guesses and traditions,' Schleicher told a large audience of policymakers and educators at the international conference on the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) study held at Chinese University last week.
The head of the Indicators and Analysis Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Directorate for Education called on all governments to base their education policy on evidence-based research: 'If you don't have good evidence, everybody can challenge you and education would become a matter of political negotiation.'
Schleicher's message comes at the right time for Hong Kong, with its financially stretched education sector on the brink of turning into a political battle ground for resources.
For the OECD, Pisa was their immediate response to the problem. The triennial study was launched eight years ago to assess 15-year-old students' literary skills in reading, mathematics and science, issuing its first, landmark report in 2000. Despite its short history, it has already become a major force driving education reforms in many countries today.
'During one of the coffee breaks at a meeting between the most senior education officials of the OECD countries in 1995, our director felt very frustrated. He told me that every official said his country had the best education system and it had all the recipes for success. We know that's not true but we need to create a better empirical foundation to support our point,' Schleicher said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.