Student benchmarking will shift our focus from local to global competitiveness

Over the years the world has become more interconnected as technology turbocharges globalisation. Today, to be competitive in the workforce, you have to be able to perform at a global level. The internet, remote working and migration have increased the potential pool of employees for businesses beyond national borders and employers are now increasingly looking overseas for the best and brightest to come work for them. 

This means that our schooling system needs to be able to compete not just with other schools in the region but also to outperform other nations as well. School benchmarking assessments at the global level is one of the core tools educators are starting to use to understand how their school is performing compared others and what parts of their curriculum require more resources and better methodology to keep up with the rapidly changing international standards.  

Student benchmarking will encourage better knowledge sharing

Education has always been a difficult industry to get right. The ability to focus on student needs, encourage healthy learning habits and innovate to keep up with changing conditions is not an easy task. That is why collaboration between teachers and institutions is becoming more important than ever, to ensure that our students are getting what they need from their school.

School benchmarking assessments measure how different schools are performing and help highlight the kinds of strategies that work best. Armed with this knowledge educators can begin to look at examples of schools that are exceeding expectations and begin to collaborate on how to update their own methods to help their students succeed.

Student benchmarking will improve our ability to make effective decisions

Decision making, particularly at the levels of the faculty, institution or government requires clean, accurate data to be effective. School benchmarking assessments can help measure schools across the nation and pinpoint where greater attention needs to be paid, where resources need to be allocated and how to update policy to make schooling more effective. Basing these kinds of decisions on hard evidence is a good way to make a greater impact and the process of change more effective.

Student benchmarking will enable a more holistic understanding of student performance

Each student comes to school with their own individual strengths, skills and circumstances. It can be complex to understand where a student might need extra assistance just by looking at periodic curriculum testing. This is where recognised school benchmarking assessment really shines. It takes a more holistic view of the student, looking at their longer-term performance and assessing their skills beyond just what is found in the curriculum, including competencies like problem-solving and critical thinking. 

The OECD Test for Schools takes this a step further by also including a contextual component to their tests. Through a 30-minute questionnaire at the end of the assessment, the student is asked to provide some details about their personal circumstance such as their home life, perspective on school and attitude to learning, which can be used to complete a more complete picture of what drives and enables their success.