Education and social cohesion has been on the agenda of the history of education for centuries. The 19 and the 20^th centuries witnessed the creation and evolution of our education system of today, most often driven by governments’ concern to create national and social cohesion.

 

Barry McGaw’s paper looks at education and social cohesion from the angle of educational quality and equity. In so doing he relies on the most important international and comparative data base that exists, namely the OECD’s PISA study. PISA provides direct evidence of the quality of national education systems in terms of the achievement of 15 year olds. Students are assessed in reading literacy, mathematics and science. All OECD countries and many non-OECD countries participate in the study that started in 2000; the present cycle of assessment will end in 2006.

 

As Deputy Director and later Director for Education at OECD, Barry McGaw was the driving force behind this unique study. He retired from OECD in 2005 and returned to active retirement in Australia. His paper, presented as a keynote to the international Pascal Conference in Melbourne recently, sets out some of the key results and policy messages so far from PISA, in an international perspective, coupled with the way that Australia compares with other OECD countries. A particular focus is on the results in terms of quality and equity in education. Throughout the paper McGaw raises a number of the most burning educational policy issues of today and tomorrow.

 

For instance, his analysis of what education systems can do to promote social cohesion and social capital is perhaps one of the most pertinent ever done. He makes it clear that some countries, like for instance Korea and Finland, are capable of performing at the highest level in PISA in term of both quality and equity in education. The message is very clear. Performing well in terms of equity does not having to mean sacrificing quality; and schools do matters in terms of their organisation, teachers and the overall school culture. It is not only the socio-economic background of the students that matters in quality and performance, although this continues to have a strong impact. Needless to say, findings like these strike an optimistic tone for educational reformers.

 

Another important analysis in this paper is related to different types of social capital, and public and private education. Barry McGaw makes a strong point in stressing that it is the schooling and not the school that creates the common experience for students, and thereby sets the foundation for building social capital through education. He distinguishes between bonding and bridging social capital, and argues that schools, given their divide on the bases of gender, faith, social background, wealth, geographic location etc, are well placed to create bonding social capital. He then raises the fundamental question whether schools can build bridging social capital, before going on to argue that this is possible through a strategy of co-location of government and non- government schools, in terms of pooling together some of the resources, like librairies, courses and teachers, at the same location. He presents several interesting ongoing experiments to indicate how this works. He also presents some highly interesting experiences, where schools get a broader and more important partnering role in community-building.

 

Barry McGaw’s paper, its findings and analysis, are an excellent example of what education research can do in helping to solve some of the most hot educational policies problems for today and tomorrow.

 

Jarl Bengtsson  is Chair of the Pascal Advisory Board