Traditional teaching works and progressive teaching fails.

That is the inescapable conclusion of the 2025 international school rankings, published this month by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).

England was the best-performing country outside East Asia, apart from Estonia, entering the top 10 in all subject categories. Most European countries have experienced sharp declines, including former global leader Finland.

England’s unique performance must be due to the unique policies it adopted from 2010 under Conservative education minister Michael Gove. He reversed decades of progressive policies and introduced a so-called “knowledge-rich” curriculum, with facts, dates, times tables and canonical books. Coursework and continuous assessment were replaced with high-stakes final exams.

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Gove also reformed pupil behaviour and school management policies, encouraging traditional approaches to discipline and empowering schools to run themselves.

Although Gove based his reforms on........

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