AMIDST all the predictable outbursts of hysteria from some politicians or commentators about the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) survey and the National Improvement Framework levels, it has been reassuring to find in articles by Andrew Denholm of The Herald and most recently by Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, a much more measured assessment of what these results really tell us or don’t tell us.

After some of the mock outrage and self-righteous demands for action, such as scrapping Curriculum for Excellence or reorganising Education Scotland yet again, you could be forgiven for thinking that our educational system had, in the words of one of The Herald’s shriller correspondents, “fallen off a cliff”. At the same time, Education Secretary John Swinney would be ill-advised to use such test results to justify his arguments for major structural changes in education.

First, the recent National Improvement levels are not exactly objective evidence, bearing in mind that they are marked by teachers, most of whom are probably still struggling to apply the rather vague criteria and, as Larry Flanagan wrote, these tests only “confirmed what we know: that poverty remains the single biggest barrier to educational attainment”.

He is also right to argue that we need to put the Pisa results in perspective. We appear to have declined from slightly above average for developed countries to about average in the test scores, ignoring the fact that the survey stresses the point that “small differences between countries and over time may be statistically insignificant”.

I would raise serious doubts about Pisa itself. First, in a relatively limited sample, a handful of scores from a different group of pupils or a different school could make the difference between being above or below average. In addition, it is very difficult to ensure that the sample accurately reflects the system as a whole, especially as schools and pupils are randomly chosen and participation in the tests is not mandatory.

We have to be much more sceptical about whether they really measure significant educational attainment or simply measure how good some young people are at doing this type of test. Some educational systems, especially in Asia, are much more wired up to performing well in tests of this nature while some countries prepare their pupils thoroughly for these tests, with the clear aim of inflating the status of their system, something our schools do not do. We should be grateful for that.

Considering all the cultural, social, political and educational differences, internationally and within countries, it is very doubtful if Pisa is comparing like with like in every aspect. The assumption that so many variable factors have been ironed out is a dangerous one and needs to be called into question in our public discourse about the results.

Above all, as The Herald noted, “We need to remember that Pisa offers only a view of how the picture has changed over three years in just three aspects of education”. It is a very limited and potentially very misleading view. Certainly, as regards reading, we need to keep in mind that, to compare like with like across many different languages and cultures, the tests have been reduced to a sort of common denominator by testing a rather limited and superficial range of skills in a very functional and formulaic way. Obviously this should be less of a problem in Maths or Science, but the fact is that Pisa test formats tend, on the whole, to favour children who are used to doing tests of this nature and ours clearly aren’t.

It is therefore more than likely that some countries have simply become better than we have at performing well in this type of test. However, it certainly does not mean that their educational systems are better or that their children are more inspired to learn. It is simply daft and dangerous to conclude from the results of some dubious educational tests that our educational system is falling behind or that the Curriculum for Education has been a disaster.

Not only should we issue a very large caveat about such tests but also we should have an even greater health warning about the grandstanding utterances of some hypocritical and thoroughly opportunistic politicians over this.

John Hodgart is a retired principal teacher of English.