Parents offer solutions after Denmark posts worst PISA results

Parents across Denmark are calling for more academic demands, practical learning and greater respect for teachers after the country recorded its worst-ever PISA results, DR reports. Education Minister Magnus Heunicke has invited parents to what he calls Denmark’s largest parents’ meeting in Herlev on Thursday evening.

All parents with children in Danish public schools have been invited to the meeting, which begins at 7.30pm. Organisers are preparing hundreds of litres of coffee, large quantities of traybake and rows of chairs moved from classrooms.

The invitation was issued after the latest PISA results showed a historic decline in Danish pupils’ reading and mathematics skills. Because many parents live far from Herlev, DR asked parents from across the country what they would tell the minister if they had the opportunity.

DR’s nine regional outlets also asked listeners to vote on the topics they wanted discussed. The poll was not representative, and 1,020 listeners took part.

Parents want higher expectations

Rasmus Andresen, whose child is in fifth grade in Næstved, wants homework to return to schoolchildren’s daily lives.

“It has become too vague and too easy,” he said. “It is fine to demand a little from children instead of constantly having to protect them. I do not think that is good.”

Although Andresen remembers that homework was not popular when he was at school, he feels powerless when he checks Aula and sees that his son has not been assigned a single page of homework.

“You cannot be a strict parent at home, and then the children go to school and are comforted if they feel they have been given too much homework,” he said.

More learning outside the classroom

Randi Jacobsen, who has three children in public school, wants pupils to spend more time learning about the society around them in southern Jutland, where the family lives.

“Maybe we need to move away from everything having to be so academic,” she said. “Many children fall behind because everything is so academic. The children should go out and see how society works. They do not do that in classrooms where they sit looking at the board.”

Calls for greater respect for teachers

In his invitation, Heunicke said he wanted to hear parents’ “perspectives on possible solutions” to the challenges facing public schools.

Stine Grønbech Hansen lives on Bornholm. If she could attend the meeting, she would ask the minister to listen to the adults who work in schools every day.

“The people who are in the classrooms, the pedagogues and teachers, know what it is about and what they need. That is why it is important to involve them,” she said.

Thomas Kristensen in northern Jutland also sympathises with teachers who have to manage classes of up to 28 pupils.

“I think that is too many. Far too many,” he said.

He also believes schools have lost some of the respect for teachers that he remembers from his own childhood.

“Back then, there was more respect for teachers, so there was not as much disruption in the classrooms as there can be today,” he said.

PISA is a large international study conducted every three years. It tests 15-year-old pupils in mathematics, reading and science, while also asking about their background, wellbeing and school environment. In Denmark, 6,200 pupils from 283 schools and educational institutions took part, including public and private institutions. The pupils completed the study last year, but the results were published this week.