A scientific approach that ignores the PISA study?

The publication of the latest results of the PISA study has once again brought its share of analyses and explanations, but also adjustments, solutions and new reforms. While the initial mediocre results came as a shock, they have since been greeted with growing public indifference. On the frontline, teachers anticipated these declining scores and watched with resignation as reforms and counter-reforms took shape without addressing the root of the problem.

The coalition agreement, which outlines education policy for the coming years, remains in the neoliberal vein, using a very specific interpretation of the aforementioned scientific support. This approach completely ignores the causes of the PISA (or other) results and avoids asking the right questions. Other countries, however, seem to be taking a different tack.

In France, the newly appointed Minister of Education has chosen to go back to basics: revising and simplifying primary school curricula and labeling textbooks, reintroducing grade repetition, making the transition to collège conditional, promulgating level groups, putting an end to academic correction for baccalaureate grades – these solutions read like a conservative turnaround. All of this is complemented by the use of AI for special needs students and a number of other contemporary measures to demonstrate that we’re on the road to the 21st century, not back to the 19th.

On this side of the border, Luxembourgish teachers are incredulous: Do we still have the right to demand at school?

The French Academy defines “exiger” (to demand) as “an obligation to be fulfilled” and/or “what an individual, a group, a collectivity requires or expects of others”. The concept of demand can therefore only function with an authority that has the right to formulate this demand. In Luxembourg, however, the reforms of the last decade have gradually deprived the school of this authority.

Irrespective of developments in society, since the 2009 reform, the political choice has been to transform “primary school teachers” (historically the bearers of authority) and secondary school teachers into “civil servants within the framework of education” for the purposes of governance. In fact, from this managerial point of view, change is more easily implemented in a highly hierarchical context that reduces the worker in contact with the raw material to a mere executor. Based on neoliberal organizational theories, production must be adapted to the wishes of consumers, with numerous internal and external experts and various audits framing the process.

In a very short period of time, the Luxembourg school system has seen a multitude of experts, institutions and external audits carry out countless evaluations (the only thing that escaped evaluation was the reform itself). Many parallel and redundant concepts have been developed and proposals for improvement have been made to schools with little or no attention paid to their possible implementation. On the other hand, the law gives parents the right to be involved in many areas (cycle lengthening, PDS changes, CI proposals, CC supervision, etc.). The combination of these two factors completely undermines the credibility of the expert in the field, while leaving him/her with full responsibility. This deliberate erosion of authority in and out of school, and the permissiveness imposed (rather than the requirement) is putting our society at risk and is beginning to have an impact on law enforcement and the judiciary.

Demanding, excellence, a taste for effort and a job well done, rigor, consequences – all these concepts (and even values) no longer fit the image of Luxembourg’s public basic schools and secondary schools as portrayed by current policy.

For demanding parents who demand a demanding school, the creation of “international” public schools offers a seemingly attractive alternative, while the more well-off can opt for private schools, supported and often even subsidized by the ministry.

And yet, every good teacher must be demanding with his or her students, a prerequisite for bringing them to the peak of their abilities. However, the current tendency in Luxembourg’s national education system to prioritize living together (at any cost) over the transmission of knowledge (which in no way excludes living together), while at the same time demanding (!) that schools increase their efficiency and the performance of their students, means that teachers have to square the circle – the wave of burnout that is overwhelming those who have chosen to remain in contact with their students speaks volumes about the feasibility of this (impossible) mission.

Will we in Luxembourg wait for the results of the next study to put learning back at the heart of school? Or will these results finally sound the death knell for the public school system, which will then be dismantled and privatized for obscure reasons of efficiency that do little to conceal the monetization of education along Anglo-Saxon lines?

The coalition agreement hides the real problems and continues the undermining of public schools, using carrots and sticks, while cunningly increasing the pressure on schools. This makes it impossible for the school to fulfill its primary mission, which is gradually being pushed into the background. Far from being a step towards democracy, the rejection of authority in schools is a step towards authoritarianism – a phenomenon that schools will undoubtedly once again be called upon to combat effectively without authority.

Press release of the Education and Science Syndicate (SEW) of the OGBL,
January 9, 2024