What constitutes an efficient educational system?

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David Rabadà

The European Commission has long sought a sound definition of what constitutes an efficient educational system, with the aim of improving investment in education and, presumably, saving money. For this reason, in February 2021, it appointed a panel of experts to define the concept. After much meandering, months of work and discussion, the commission concluded in 2022 that they were not sufficiently expert or knowledgeable to define what an efficient educational system actually is—in other words, they admitted they were not sufficiently competent.

It must be recognised that the crux of the problem lies in what kind of educational system we desire. If we believe that school should be a space for children’s socialisation, where they will learn autonomously with the pupil at the centre, then project-based learning might suffice. However, if we consider that schools ought to be a key vehicle for the transmission of knowledge, with the teacher at the centre, then educators must have an in-depth command of both their subject matter and its didactics—something which project-based education tends to vilify. In any case, if we are to speak of efficiency, in a productive society an education system based on the transmission of knowledge will lead to greater competitiveness and productivity, and thereby to stronger economic growth.

Let us not conflate matters. We may increase the number of years pupils spend in school, but if we do not provide rigorous and demanding curricula, the transmission of knowledge will languish in the depths of failure and decline, and national economic growth will fail to improve. Ultimately, we will be facing an inefficient, obsolete and wasteful education system. Schooling is not synonymous with learning.

In light of the above, an efficient educational system should rest primarily upon the transmission of knowledge, rather than on the mere schooling and socialisation of individuals. The latter is a task shared between educational institutions and society at large, whereas the former—the transmission of truthful and well-founded knowledge—is largely the responsibility of well-educated, expert teachers.

Despite all of this, education policy continues to be shaped more by ideology than by evidence. One need only listen to the statements made by certain ministers and regional education officials when commenting on subject curricula. I myself have heard it said that secondary education involves “too much knowledge” or that “there is no need to learn equations, since most young people will never become mathematicians”. These remarks were made by two different regional education ministers of the Government of Catalonia—statements that speak volumes of their deep and obstinate ignorance.

There is another paradoxical aspect to the absence of a clear definition of what constitutes an efficient education system. We currently live in a time when pedagogues, therapists and educational psychologists have reached record numbers in schools, education departments and ministries. Never before have we had so many faculties of education, nor so many foundations and organisations dedicated to pedagogical research. And yet, we are still unable to arrive at a unified and objective definition of an efficient educational system. In short, something is amiss—and it is not the facts or scientific advances, but rather the ideologies that dominate educational systems. When education is in such a state of disarray, society turns to miracles, which in turn paves the way for false prophets who tell us what we want to hear—especially when it sounds reassuring.

If educational “gurus” promise that emotional and competency-based education will solve everything, that pupils will learn autonomously, that more funding will be invested as a result, and that overall well-being will increase, few will object to the constructivist approach. This has been the pattern from the 1990 LOGSE reform to the more recent LOMLOE. Even when empirical reality has demonstrated that such approaches are harmful and ineffective, many have continued to believe in the promise, despite it being nothing more than a chimera. In part, this is sustained by prejudices that encourage belief, and vested interests that encourage others to believe—but in all cases, it is belief without evidence. For instance, emotional education does not guarantee long-term learning. If, based on cognitive psychology, we use emotional moments to convey new knowledge, what we often achieve is that learners remember the emotion rather than the concept itself. Later, they may be led to believe they are cultured, unaware of the depth of their ignorance.

Certain ideological currents claim that an efficient education system is one that promotes critical thinking among pupils, even in the absence of substantial knowledge transmission. These experts add that project- and competency-based learning fosters such critical thinking. However, it must be acknowledged that without a well-structured and robust knowledge base, it is difficult to think critically, rigorously or accurately about reality. To champion critical thinking without long-term knowledge is, in the short term, to be uncritical of oneself. One cannot be critical without thinking, and one cannot think without having something to think about. In conclusion, without knowledge, there can be no rigorous critical thinking—and this is something we would do well to reflect upon critically.

If anyone doubts the shortcomings of these romantic pedagogies—of competencies and projects—they need only examine Spain’s PISA results. This international assessment systematically evaluates students’ competences in science, language and mathematics. And I stress the term “competences” because these tests do not assess knowledge per se, but rather the skills and reasoning used to solve problems. That is, they measure competencies. Let us suppose, for instance, that someone who can swim will float, while someone who cannot will sink. If a pupil answers that the reason is that swimming decreases an individual’s density, then from a competence-based perspective they have skilfully solved the problem and will pass. But from a physics standpoint, they have confused density with inertia—and would fail.

In the PISA assessments—despite being competence-based tests, and despite our education system being ostensibly competence-oriented—our results have continued to decline year after year. This evaluation is carried out every three years across various countries among 15-year-old pupils, which allows us to track the evolution of pupils’ competencies over time. If our results are declining, the conclusion is straightforward: we are heading in the wrong direction, and our pupils are far from displaying critical thought and intellectual rigour.

In view of all the above, PISA makes it abundantly clear that our education system is far from efficient—unless, of course, we now intend to redefine the very meaning of efficiency. But semantics will not be easily deceived, for the results clearly indicate that the principal competence of the future will be a high intellectual quotient grounded in a high level of knowledge. To innovate on the basis of ideology is not the path to an effective education system—rather, it is the opposite.

In my view, an efficient education system should promote the transition from youth to adulthood by increasing pupils’ autonomy through the acquisition of reliable knowledge, social civility and critically grounded thought. Without these elements, it is impossible to continue constructing knowledge that is useful to society at large and to its progress. In the twelfth century, the theologian Bernard of Chartres famously wrote—later plagiarised by Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century—that we are but dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants; in other words, we continue to learn on the basis of the discoveries made by those who came before us. This accumulated knowledge—if we remember it in time—represents the giants upon whose shoulders we sit as we move forward into the future.

No pupil is likely to arrive at the theory of relativity without a strong command of mathematics. Competency- and project-based education cannot guarantee that tomorrow’s citizens will produce groundbreaking theories such as relativity. If we ignore the knowledge of our past, we will struggle to construct the knowledge of the future—and will likewise fail to achieve an efficient educational system.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons