Jón Pétur demands accountability for Iceland’s PISA results

Jón Pétur Zimsen, an Independence Party MP and first deputy chair of parliament’s General and Education Affairs Committee, says Iceland’s latest PISA results were unsurprising and is calling on those who shaped education policy in recent years to take responsibility, mbl.is reports.

“Almost half of children do not graduate with basic reading comprehension after 10 years of schooling. Who is responsible? I am simply looking for that person,” Jón Pétur told mbl.is after a press conference by Inga Sæland, the minister for children and education, who responded to the PISA results.

Jón Pétur said the results had been predictable because little had been done to suggest that the negative trend had been reversed. He said certain people in positions of power had directed education policy in Iceland for years and decades and persisted with their vision and strategy despite the lack of results.

He said he was not only looking for a scapegoat but also for the root of the problem. In his view, those who continued to pursue the same policy should either take responsibility and step aside or change direction “for the benefit of children” and “swallow their own ego and sense of identity”.

Jón Pétur stressed that the problem did not generally lie with teachers. He said teachers were making every effort and that many schools had shown that outstanding results were possible.

However, he said there had not been enough focus on what had worked well. Iceland should compare itself with the countries that perform best in education, he argued, rather than with those that perform worse.