This article, published in The Times Educational Supplement (London), is an in-depth explanation of how the Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM) took shape and became powerful. Here you will meet Sir Michael Barber, who coined the idea of “deliverology,” and learn about his rapid ascent from trade union activist to Tony Blair advisor to McKinsey guru to Pearson strategist.
You will learn about the fierce struggle among advanced nations to have the highest test scores and be #1 on PISA and TIMSS.
You will watch as an ideology of struggle and compete takes over the minds of educators responsible for the care and nurturing of children.
It is an instructive and scary article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks this is very informative. It is so much bigger than we can even imagine.
Thank you for sharing this article. Interesting how instead of learning from Finland’s “trust based model,” we are running, as Diane puts it, a “horse race.”
The title of this article nailed the source and truth of the education/business
merry go-round we are all riding. What is worse is that the world’s children are
forced to ride this without concern for the seat belts needed for those that do not
have the immediate capacity to hang on. They will be cast off and crashed into
the abyss as the backs and hands for those that can survive the ride. Follow
the ticket sales on this global education initiative.
I look at the acronyms like GERM (how appropriate) and PISA (tilted to some
with no concern for others) and think of the global gullibility of those that stand
waiting in line to purchase a ticket. Greed and power, a competition of world
leaders and corporate raiders. The children riding this always changing
arrangement of up and down animals and never knowing the destination or ending
of each one. A mass education experiment reminiscent of the mass education
experiment in China, in the early part of the last century (Tell All The People by Pearl S. Buck).
We are all playing catch up to these education architects for a global workforce and country supremacy. If the inferred theme of my thoughts sounds like some bizarre game
playing, I am thinking it may well be. The serious manipulation of the future through
the minds and futures of children can only be viewed as machiavellian. We are
all engaged in a heated conversation on how to save our public school system and
these people have already developed and sold the plan and are on to the next
phase of how the world should look when they come to some philosophical agreement.
There is the place to come to an agreement from all of you, those educators, parents,
and all of those concerned with what should be a Do No Harm agenda set for the children with the knowledge, input, and approval giving opportunity for all children
no matter their country or their abilities. A loud voice through the internet aimed
at these now known architects of mind and labor design, here and abroad, shouting constructively in a single message for them to understand they do not own and did not birth all of our children and respect a word said from the masses.There are leaders and and speakers in all of these blogs and they can organize and deliver such an important global message. Like the shot heard around the world it just might make some difference, if only to satisfy the importance of stating the case in appropriate and
reasonable terms. Come together!!!
McKinsey, Boston Consulting and other firms realize thought the inherent conflict in developing a true measure of a worthwhile education when they have first been tasked with developing international markets in education testing, curriculum, technology and texts, database sales, and in academies’ management services.
All of these require a homogenous set of standards for maximum profit and efficiency, and there is the root of the problem. Children have to fit into the solutions for the business model to be profitable. The solutions cannot be tailored to them.