Currently the world has a very rich and wide array of data about education — PISA results, dropout rates, spending per student, parents’ education levels… Yet few of these figures help us answer the most important question: which educational actions truly improve learning and reduce inequality?
A recent study published in Social Sciences conducted as part of the Horizon Europe project REVERS-ED, examines exactly that: what kinds of statistics can drive more effective and equitable education. The team reviewed major international sources including OECD, Eurostat, UNESCO, and the World Bank and found that most provide snapshots of the educational system, but not maps of change.
Descriptive statistics are useful to better understand show what is happening, such as how many students drop out, what gender gaps persist or which countries’ students perform better. Unfortunately, the research highlights that very few reveal why it happens or which interventions actually reverse these trends. Many resources are dedicated to these types of statistics that only serve to describe reality – referred to as Midas statistics, which “do not provide knowledge about what human actions improve reality and which ones worsen it”. Scheherazade statistics, in turn, introduce the predictive variable of successful actions in order to analyze how results improve thanks to such human actions.
All children worldwide deserve a change, from gathering information about the system to producing knowledge to transform it; from asking “what is happening?” to “what works and why?” Only then can statistics guide policies and practices that go beyond describing inequalities to actually overcoming them.
PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the best school of education in the world