How Shanghai Does It: Insights and Lessons from the Highest-Ranking Education System in the World

Abstract

Education is widely recognized as a fundamental right and as one of the most powerful instruments for economic growth and poverty alleviation. Education is critical to the World Bank Group's mission to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity in the world by 2030. It also features prominently in the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to transform the world. The fourth of these global goals calls for access to quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. In fact, quality education is essential for any country aiming for sustained and diversified economic growth. The question that policy makers are constantly asking is how to achieve quality in education in the face of daunting challenges. The World Bank's Education Strategy 2020 calls for investing early, investing smartly, and investing for all-with a particular emphasis on strengthening education systems and raising learning outcomes. Worldwide, education systems differ in history, context, policy focus, and implementation, as well as results. Through its financing, development knowledge, and global partnerships, the World Bank Group aspires to bring the best global and comparative evidence to individual country contexts. This study, How Shanghai Does It, provides many exciting, valuable, and relevant lessons from Shanghai, one of the world's best-performing education systems according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). By analyzing and benchmarking education policies and practices pertaining to teachers, school financing, student assessment, and school autonomy and accountability, the study provides an unparalleled and comprehensive account of the insights and lessons from Shanghai. The account reveals that Shanghai has managed to strategically plan, develop, and establish a set of highly coherent and synergistic education policies that have together boosted education results. Furthermore, the study reveals a second secret-that Shanghai implements its education policies consistently and constantly strives to innovate and reform to meet new challenges. The breadth of the information and analysis in this study is both practical and relevant, not only for education systems aspiring to achieve Shanghai's success, but for Shanghai itself in view of the rapidly changing landscape of social demography and educational purpose and technology in the region and globally. xii

Exploring the Mysteries of School Success in Shanghai

“…This knowledge flows, in various parts, from studies such as PISA and even more sophisticated research in China itself. Insights provide a solid collection of pedagogical and other practices that appear to make a positive difference to a range of student outcomes (e.g., Liang, Kidwai, & Zhang, 2016;Ryan, Kang, Mitchell, & Erickson, 2009;Qian, Walker, & Yang, 2017).…”

“…Specifically on the education front, interest has been driven largely by Shanghai's quite remarkable performance on PISA. Due to its PISA performance, Shanghai has been cited as a successful society in various education reports (e.g., Jensen, Sonnemann, Boberts-Hull, & Hunter, 2016;Liang, Kidwai, & Zhang, 2016;Tucker, 2011). Everyone seems to have an opinion on how this has happened and what it means.…”

Building Teacher Capacity to Educate the Whole Child. Lessons from Comparative Experience

“…The SABER framework can be used to provide a systemic characterization of a country's education policies and institutions. For example, a World Bank study of education in Shanghai finds very high coherence between policy and implementation using the framework (Liang, Kidwai, & Zhang, 2016). Central to such high fidelity in the implementation of coherent education policies is attracting and developing an excellent teaching force, aligned with "Clear learning objectives and standards, compact and well-aligned teaching learning materials, and efficient evaluation systems for all subjects across all grade levels" (Ibid., xviii).…”

Efficient Deployment of Teachers

“…However, teachers in Shanghai report spending more time per week than in other TALIS countries on planning their lessons and student counselling. Teachers with outstanding achievement in both teaching and nonteaching tasks are honored with the title of "model teacher" and a monetary reward (Liang, Kidwai and Zhang, 2016).…”

“…Shanghai, for example, offers teachers incentives to teach in hard-to-staff rural and semi urban schools. Teachers who choose to work at rural schools could receive priority in admission to graduate schools and therefore accreditation to higher teacher ranks, one-time monetary stipends, as well as compensation (Liang, Kidwai, and Zhang 2016).…”