Around the world: The evolution of teaching as a profession is The New Zealand Initiative’s second education report. Released this week, it is the product of a six-week tour around the world to look at how other education systems deal with teacher quality.

By highlighting common misconceptions, digging beyond the headlines of even respectable sources like the OECD, taking messages from the Ministries with a grain of salt, thinking about the cultural translations of language, and testing whether the data supports the stories that these countries tell about themselves, we uncovered some surprising truths.

Common misconceptions about Asian education systems abound; for example, that in Singapore the government controls everything. Indeed, policy implementation in Singapore is efficient, effective, and sustained; one political party has ruled since 1959. But here is the surprise: when it comes to professional development for teachers, Singapore is moving away from a model of top-down, compliance-related training – to bottom-up, in-school, sustained professional development run by teachers, for teachers.

Another common misconception is that Finland is non-competitive, and indeed, Finns interviewed for this report regarded competition with some disdain. However, there seems to be a cultural difference in the meaning of the word ‘competition’. Entrance to teacher training in Finland is highly competitive; 800 primary school teacher trainees are selected each year from a pool of 7,000. Those aspiring to teach must achieve exceptional results in a difficult entrance examination. Also, top-performing teachers are paid bonuses.
 
Ontario tells a story about itself and the OECD regurgitates it. Supposedly, their education success over the last 10 years has been due to peaceful labour relations since the liberal government came to power in 2003. The period previous to that was characterised by acrimony between the government and teachers. The government took out advertising space denigrating the profession, and teachers organised the largest teachers’ strike in North American history.

In 2003, the new governor, with education at the helm of his political platform, worked to re-establish trust. No doubt this is a good thing; in Ontario, over the last 10 years, teaching has become a very attractive profession.

However, a simple look at the data throws up some questions about the story that attributes success to this period of trust. Ontario’s scores in international tests of grade 4 and grade 8 mathematics and science rose between 1995 and 2003, years when the conservative government was in power. Since 2003, performance has declined.
 
International comparisons are useful, but the story a country tells about itself is often carefully constructed. It takes some critical thinking to look beyond the headlines to test whether the facts do, in fact, match the stories.