Can benchmarks on education output advise on international cooperation strategies?

Co-operation motives

For example, many national governments focus on the BRIC countries and other growth markets such as Mexico and Thailand, while these do not always score high on education benchmarks. Also, the Brazilian government, for instance, offers huge sums of scholarship funding to enable Brazilians to study abroad, an initiative many countries capitalise on. But how can receiving countries and institutions guarantee that foreign students have sufficient knowledge to start their overseas studies?

Perhaps, countries keen to attract well-qualified students may be able to do so by focusing on countries with high benchmark scores. And, taking this further, national strategies for international co-operation could focus on co-operation with – and recruitment from – those countries that score high in the PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS.

Or not?

There are several counterarguments, of course. For example, co-operation and recruitment on growth markets may be beneficial in the long term; educational co-operation now may lay the basis for further educational and social-economic collaboration in the future.

Also, we need to offer more equal opportunities for students from all countries, including those whose national benchmark scores may not be high. And shouldn’t admission of an individual foreign student into a higher education programme be based on an evaluation of the student’s individual credentials, not on whether his or her home country scores well on education benchmarks? A national benchmark outcome doesn’t say anything about individual achievements. And if the quality of incoming students is insufficient, institutions can offer relevant programmes to bring student knowledge up to starting level.

More importantly, it is good to realise that benchmark outputs – like institutional rankings – are strongly dependent on the benchmark methodology that has been selected. A small change in methodology or benchmark definition may result in very different education ‘outputs’ and ranks.

Of benchmarks, rankings, cooperation and limits

Both benchmarks and rankings are limited in what they measure (see this EUA report) and these limits are not always well-understood. National education outcomes are very broad, and ‘good educational outcomes’ resulting from benchmarks might not fit strategies at an institutional level. This may be for different reasons, such as specialisation of the institution, cultural or language issues. Even within countries, educational results may differ greatly between institutions.

So, although national benchmarks may be helpful in a national context, and could give guidance on the strengths of a country, they do not provide a sufficient basis for strategic policy-making on which regions to co-operate with. We also need to be aware of an important pitfall of education benchmark results: namely, the fact that often, a contextual analysis – that gives meaning to the results – is missing. We always need to bear in mind what is actually being measured, and what not. And in whose interest it is that exactly these benchmarks were selected, and not others.