The Economist newspaper looks at two ways to improve education for less. Both rely on personalizing teaching for each student.
distance matters little to today?s children, says Rebecca Stacey, assistant head at Ashmount Primary, a north London school which already uses BrightSpark to help both gifted and struggling ten and 11-year-olds. Many pupils have relatives on far-flung continents, and use Skype for family chats, she notes: for them, the world is already local.
For starters, McKinsey says, throwing money at education does not seem to do much good, at least in those countries that already send all their young people to school (see chart). America, for example, increased its spending on schools by 21% between 2000 and 2007, while Britain pumped in 37% more funds. Yet in this period, according to PISA, standards in both countries slipped.[snip]
At the very top of the global educational league table?where only a handful of countries or systems within them manage to attain really high standards?decentralisation is the name of the game.
