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Metafilter tags: ChildDevelopment, ChildPsychology, COVID, Cyberbullying, Education, InternetAddiction, LearningLoss, Mathematics, MentalHealth, OECD, Pandemic, PISA, Reading, School, Smartphones, SocialMedia, TeacherShortage, Worldwide
Author: Rhaomi
Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers
Teenagers' mathematics and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries and COVID school closures are only partly to be blamed, the OECD said on Tuesday in its latest survey of global learning standards.The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said it had seen some of the steepest drops in performance since 2000 when it began its usually triennial tests of 15-year-olds reading, maths and science skills.
Nearly 700,000 youths took the two-hour test last year in the OECD's 38 mostly developed country members and 44-non members for the latest study, closely watched by policymakers as the largest international comparison of education performance.
Compared to when the tests were last conducted in 2018, reading performance fell by 10 points on average in OECD countries, and by 15 points in mathematics, a loss equivalent to three-quarters of a year's worth of learning. [...] Countries that provided extra teacher support during COVID school closures scored better and results were generally better in places where easy teacher access for special help was high.
Poorer results tended to be associated with higher rates of mobile phone use for leisure and where schools reported teacher shortages.
OECD: PISA 2022 results overview
Volume I: The State of Learning and Equity in EducationVolume II: Learning During - and From - Disruption
Insights and Interpretations [PDF]
Infographics [PDF]
Surprisingly, the OECD found the unprecedented decline was only partially due to COVID closures:
Analysing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, around half of the students across the OECD experienced closures for more than three months. But the results show no clear difference in performance trends between education systems with limited school closures such as Iceland, Sweden and Chinese Taipei and systems that experienced longer lasting school closures, such as Brazil, Ireland and Jamaica.The study also finds that the availability of teachers to help students in need had the strongest relationship to maths performance across the OECD. Maths scores were 15 points higher on average in places where students agreed they had good access to teachers' support. These students were also more confident than their peers to learn autonomously and remotely. Despite this, only one in five students overall reported having received extra help from teachers in some lessons in 2022. Around eight percent never or almost never received additional support.
The survey also reveals the fast-changing impact of technology on children's educational performance. PISA shows that moderate use of digital devices in school is associated with higher performance, but this depends on the technology being used to support rather than distract from learning.
On average across OECD countries, students who spent up to one hour a day on digital devices for leisure scored 49 points higher in maths than students who spent between five and seven hours per day, after taking into account students' and schools' socio-economic profile.
45% of students reported feeling nervous or anxious if their phones were not near them, on average across OECD countries, and 65% reported being distracted by using digital devices in at least some maths lessons. The proportion topped 80% in Argentina, Brazil, Canada*, Chile, Finland, Latvia*, Mongolia, New Zealand* and Uruguay.
Students who reported being distracted by other students using digital devices in some, most or every maths class scored 15 points lower in PISA maths tests than those who barely experienced this. This represents the equivalent of three-quarters of a year's worth of education, even after accounting for students' and schools' socio-economic profile.
The Guardian: School leaders in England feel lockdown 'broke spell' of bond with parents
"The unquestionable belief that school must be attended was exploded. It's predictable and expected to see that for some families, those have been hard habits to rebuild. And inevitably it's the families who already struggle, who have struggled the hardest to build them," Bennett said. But some headteachers painted an even darker picture of hostile parents who have become unresponsive to a school's requests, with some using private social media forums to harangue individual teachers and school leaders over behaviour decisions or attendance policies. One school leader said he was shocked to see ringleaders orchestrate campaigns against attempts to tighten up behaviour policies and supporting pupils refusing to obey instructions or using social media during lessons.
NYT: School Cellphone Bans Are Trending. Do They Work?
In early October, the British government issued new guidelines recommending that student cellphone use be prohibited in schools nationwide. That followed Italy, which last year banned cellphones during lessons, and China, which two years ago barred children from taking phones to school. A recent report from UNESCO, the United Nations' educational and cultural agency, found that nearly one in four countries now has laws or policies banning or restricting student cellphone use in schools.
The 74: Banning Smartphones at Schools: Research Points to Higher Test Scores, Less Anxiety, More Exercise
The Atlantic: Get Phones Out of Schools Now
To the teachers and administrators I spoke with, this wasn't merely a coincidence. They saw clear links between rising phone addiction and declining mental health, to say nothing of declining academic performance. A common theme in my conversations with them was: We all hate the phones. Keeping students off of their devices during class was a constant struggle. Getting students' attention was harder because they seemed permanently distracted and congenitally distractible. Drama, conflict, bullying, and scandal played out continually during the school day on platforms to which the staff had no access. I asked why they couldn't just ban phones during school hours. They said too many parents would be upset if they could not reach their children during the school day.A lot has changed since 2019. The case for phone-free schools is much stronger now. As my research assistant, Zach Rausch, and I have documented at my Substack, After Babel, evidence of an international epidemic of mental illness, which started around 2012, has continued to accumulate. So, too, has evidence that it was caused in part by social media and the sudden move to smartphones in the early 2010s. Many parents now see the addiction and distraction these devices cause in their children; most of us have heard harrowing stories of self-harming behavior and suicide attempts among our friends' children. Two weeks ago, the United States surgeon general issued an advisory warning that social media can carry "a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents."
The Verge: Social media giants must face child safety lawsuits, judge rules
Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap must proceed with a lawsuit alleging their social platforms have adverse mental health effects on children, a federal court ruled on Tuesday. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected the social media giants' motion to dismiss the dozens of lawsuits accusing the companies of running platforms "addictive" to kids. School districts across the US have filed suit [...] alleging the companies cause physical and emotional harm to children. Meanwhile, 42 states sued Meta last month over claims Facebook and Instagram "profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans." [...] Tuesday's ruling states that the First Amendment and Section 230, which says online platforms shouldn't be treated as the publishers of third-party content, don't shield Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat from all liability in this case.
But as Al Jazeera points out, it's not just about technology -- or grades:
A key factor is "the level of support pupils received from teachers and school staff", according to Irene Hu.Charbonnier agreed that "countries have invested in education over the past 10 years, but maybe they didn't invest efficiently, or sufficiently into the quality of teaching".
[...]
For the first time, the survey also focused on the mental state of students, using nine aspects of their lives to measure their wellbeing, showing correlation between academic performance and anxiety.
In the high-performing countries "many students reported a high fear of failure and limited engagement in extracurricular activities such as sports".
In lower-performing countries, students engaged more in physical and team activities, resulting in "lower levels of anxiety and a greater focus on sports".
The indicators included engagement with school, material and cultural wellbeing, openness to diversity and psychological wellbeing.