British parents should be more like the tiger mothers of east Asian countries if they want their children to succeed at school, according to a leading education expert. Andreas Schleicher, the man in charge of the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), said that teenagers in countries like South Korea and Singapore are set to pull even further ahead of their peers in England when the next set of rankings is published in 2023. In the last Pisa tables, published in 2019, the UK did not make the top ten. The rankings were topped by China, Singapore, and Macau. The real secret of the tiger economies, said Schleicher, is in the relationship between teachers, parents and pupils. Instead of worrying that driving children to excel causes stress and mental health problems, parents in Britain “could do a lot more like [tiger mothers] to achieve better results”. “What we can learn from the tiger economies is that parents are not customers of education but active participants,” he said. Like tiger mums, British parents should “accept the authority of the teacher, rather than undermine it. It is really, really important that parents accept that teachers have high expectations [of children]. Parents often lower these expectations. If your child’s teacher is tough, try to help your child succeed and be more resilient and you will have a very successful learning outcome”.
Source: The Sunday Times
Categories: TIOB News