School of shock: teenagers get dimmer

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0:32Sonny Loughran:A new school year always feels like a fresh start. New teachers, new classmates, new opportunities. As students head back to the classroom, parents and teachers are teaming up with the same goal, a safe, supportive school year. Every child deserves a bright future, and together, parents and teachers can make it happen. Help your family get back to school ready at nea.org slash back to school.

0:56The Economist

1:02Hello, and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

1:12Today on the show, why Miami is booming, and a radio show that's a microcosm of modern Britain.

1:26But first...

1:39Do good grades matter? Well, you'll be shocked to hear that, at The Economist, many of us really like doing well in exams. And that's not just because we're all geeks and swats. It's also because good test scores can be a predictor of earning more and living longer. And on a national level, a brainier country means more growth. So it matters that across the rich world, those exam results seem to be in long-term decline. Today we have new data from the OECD's PISA tests, tests of 15-year-olds that are carried out every few years in maths, science and reading. Mark Johnson is a senior editor at The Economist.

2:22The latest data shows that students' abilities in these areas have fallen very hard over the last three years. That comes on top of declines that were measured in previous rounds of the PISA testing. And the cumulative effect is that 15-year-olds today in maths and reading are scoring at levels that you might have associated with a 14-year-old 10 years ago. These are global test results. What are they actually testing? So the OECD tests 15-year-olds in several different disciplines, particularly in maths, in science and in reading. In fact, they're more like tests of numerical ability and tests of verbal reasoning.

3:11So not just whether you know your stuff, but whether you can actually apply your knowledge in real world situations, in real world problems. So every time they do these tests, the Asian countries tend to come top. And that indeed is what we've seen this time around. China scores extremely well in all of these disciplines. It's taking part for the first time since 2018. And its children have done far better than those in Western countries. Other Asian countries like Singapore, Japan, Taiwan are also doing very well too. And yet you say there's a general long-term decline. What do you mean by that?

3:54So these tests have been carried out since 2000. Since about 2012, the scores being achieved by 15-year-olds have been flattening out and then falling. And then they took a huge dive in the wake of the pandemic. And now we've seen the average result for kids in OECD countries fall even further by about the same amount that they fell in the pandemic period. That's a little bit of a surprise. You've mentioned the pandemic. What are the other reasons for the decline? Let's just stay on the pandemic for a second. Yes, the youngsters who took this year's PISA tests were 10 when COVID hit. So they did lose some of their school days.

4:39But actually, they've also suffered from problems that have continued after that. So absence rates in schools are somewhat higher than they were before COVID began to spread. At the same time, there is a sense that grades inflated swiftly during the pandemic and that they haven't actually been brought down yet. Some people argue that schools have got lax on discipline. There's some evidence from global surveys suggesting that teachers are spending a bit more time than they were even a few years ago simply keeping order and that's time that's not being spent learning. What about the use of tech?

5:16Well lots of technology has been rolled out in classrooms in the past few years. There is growing doubt about whether this has actually been good for learning. A lot of this has been quite haphazard and there's a sense that maybe it is not pushing up grades. Personally I think it's easily possible to imagine that the right use of the right software can be a big boon to teachers. But I think the stage we're at at the moment is that teachers have thrown quite a lot of mud at the wall and there hasn't necessarily been enough close attention to whether it's working or not. There's also growing questions about AI.

5:53So schools have only had good AI tools for a couple of years now. So it's not clear that we're going to see the impact of that in these latest tests, which of course are measuring the total sum of education that youngsters have achieved up to the age of 15. But there is some evidence in this latest piece around in the survey questions that were asked alongside it, that it is generally the weaker students who are making the most use of AI. So when you use AI as a learning tool, then it can be good. But if you use it as a crutch, if you use it just as a way to get an answer, and if the school system that you study in, if the teachers that you study under are not careful about that, then I think there's every reason to suspect that AI is going to be another drag on grades.

6:45And of course, there's lots of discussion about the use of screens generally by young people, both in schools, in the playground, on their phones, but also when they go home. I think there are good reasons to worry that tablets and phones might be distracting young people from their studies. These are international league tables and there are some countries at the top. What can we learn from those ones? Well, the Asian countries deserve continued study. I think there's a feeling that their experience can't be replicated in the West. It has a lot to do with the emphasis that their societies place on education.

7:26It has a lot to do with the fact that parents there are very willing to stump up for extra lessons. But I think there are also smart policies that we can look at in these countries. So in the West, we often try to bring down class sizes. That's been an obsession for years. Actually, the Asian countries tend to be less fussed about that. They prefer to have fewer teachers with bigger classes, but they pay those teachers better. They train them harder, more intensely, more regularly. And there's plenty of evidence that that produces the best bang for the buck. And outside Asia? If we want to find a good example, a positive example within Europe, we might well look to Britain and specifically to England, the biggest of the school systems in Britain.

8:12Its youngsters have got some of the better results out of this latest round of PISA testing. Their abilities in science seem to have gone up. Their abilities in maths and in literacy have stayed about level at a time when so many other countries are heading down. It's spent much of the last 15 years doing things that other school systems have rejected. It's actually returned to a slightly more old-fashioned type of schooling, some might say, with more fact-filled curriculums. People prefer to say knowledge-rich at a time when policymakers elsewhere have been talking about soft skills. It's toughened its inspections.

8:54It's tried to encourage teachers to go back to a more tried and tested kind of teaching and to put sort of progressive methods aside. Lots of people hate this, but I think the latest results suggest that it's worth another look. Mark, thank you very much. Thank you.

9:38half a million customers. Bill has securely processed over a trillion dollars in transactions. That's proven infrastructure. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.com slash proven and get a$150 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs.

10:16Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.

10:39Miami has long been a draw for its fabulous climate, its exciting nightlife, and as a gateway to Latin America. Now, very different groups are investing in the city, from tech, property and politics, all of which is changing the culture and prospects of this sunny city. 15 years ago, central Miami's economy was roughly a quarter of the size of Manhattan's. It's now half the size, and the ratio is rising. Kerry and Richmond Jones is our international economics correspondent. The very rich are moving in, people like Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg. And they are just some of the foreign investors, American businesses, and even politicians that see the future of America in Miami.

11:33Aside from its beautiful weather, explain to me the draw of Miami. So the easiest way to think about why people are moving to Miami is to split them into two buckets. So there are those that are coming from inside America, mostly from places like San Francisco and New York, where it's very, very expensive to live. Office rents are really expensive. Taxes are quite high. These places are controlled mostly by Democrats. at. Florida is a really attractive alternative, right? Zero state income tax. Property levies on the priciest homes are less than 1%. The city government offers lots of incentives that are kind of tended towards the well-paid, I would say.

12:08So you get a tax break in Florida if you pay an employee above the median wage for the state. Florida's officials are also very aggressive and very business friendly. So if you think about Francis Suarez, who was the mayor until 2025, really aggressively courted investors. And that counts for American investors, people like Ken Griffin, who got personal phone calls. And then also, he flew around the world. He went to the Gulf at least three times, trying to drum up business and steal it away from the cities that he was visiting to get it back to Miami. You say foreign investors are coming to the city too.

12:43Who is that? Absolutely. If you go into Miami today, the hotels on South Beach, which is kind of the main beach strip of the city are absolutely packed with investors, hedge fund managers, consultants, people having a good time who would otherwise be in the Gulf, but due to security, have chosen not to go there this year. The mayor's work has paid off. So Saudi Arabia has opened an office in the city. Gulf governments own everything from hotels to crypto exchanges based in Miami. They're regular visitors to the F1. And there's also been a second wave of capital from Latin America, obviously Miami has got these long associations with various countries in South America.

13:22But recently, a lot of the continent has been taken over by more right wing politicians that have loosened capital controls. And when Latin American investors have thought about where they want to kind of store their newly freed wealth, a lot of them have chosen assets in Miami, particularly luxury condos. Presumably for a lot of people, Donald Trump himself is also a draw. Absolutely. Donald Trump has given South Florida this sense of a political centre of gravity in the last couple of years. Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago, where he spends more time than anywhere other than DC, is just up the road in Palm Beach.

13:57On top of that, he has another hotel in East Miami that he spends a lot of time at. He's also absolutely packed his inner circle of politicians and policymakers and aides with Floridians. And in turn, people like Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles, Todd Blanche have staffs full of people who've made their way up in state politics in Florida. So it very much feels like a kind of national Republican centre at the moment. And you can see that when you walk around the streets of Palm Beach. So the amount of lobbyists that have opened up in Palm Beach is amazing in between these private banks and art galleries.

14:36Ballard, which was once a Florida lobbying company, is now America's biggest lobbyist and it's got its main office in Palm Beach. How has this influx actually changed Miami? Let's start with the bits of Miami that are doing really well because there are quite a lot actually. So between 2020 and 2024, the metro area of Miami's GDP grew by almost 25%. That's much higher than America's growing. A lot of this boom comes from property. So that now makes up about a fifth of the economy. Construction jobs are soaring. Corporate services, things like law, private family offices are absolutely booming.

15:13And that also counts for the services that rich and wealthy families often demand. So schools are massively oversubscribed in Miami, particularly the best ones. It sounds like a lot of this boom actually predated Trump's second term, but even so, is all of this sustainable longer term? It did predate Trump. One challenge is that in 2029, in theory, Trump will leave office. And at that point, the city is going to have to kind of sustain this new era of exclusivity by itself. Because remember as well, that even from 2020 to 2024, when Trump was not in power, he was still very much this huge, huge pull that theoretically could change after 2029.

15:57But you're right, there's a lot of stuff in Miami that is quite different to what we've seen to booming cities in America before. And the question is, is that a problem? The biggest is the knowledge economy. Florida's economy is the fourth biggest state economy in America. But last year, the state spent less on research, development and productivity than 10 other states. And of course, on the one hand, if your economy is just made up of lots of very wealthy people living and meeting and doing business, perhaps you don't need a super educated population, right? The super educated finance guys and tech workers can stay in New York and San Francisco and Miami can still do very well from the meeting of those worlds.

16:38But nevertheless, we haven't really seen a sustainable boom like it and it raises the question, as easily as this money flowed into Miami, can it flow out? And isn't this a massive hurricane zone? 100 % it's almost unbelievable so in 2025 there were 1750 million dollar plus houses that sold in Miami that's almost half the sales in America and these homes are completely uninsurable because they're more or less all built either on South Beach which is a totally flat strip of sand at sea level or Coconut Grove which also is totally flat and at sea level Miami is really vulnerable to hurricanes. Weather forecasters reckon that in no other city is as much economic damage going to be done by a potential hurricane.

17:22And then also longer term, it's just so vulnerable to sea level rises. So if you get much further above 1.5 degrees centigrade as a kind of global temperature rise, you end up with a situation where basically most of Miami is underwater. And because it's just so flat, and also the rock base underneath Miami is made of porous rocks, it's very difficult to put the seawall up like people are discussing doing in the Netherlands. So it's indefensible against big sea level rises. Not exactly, you'd think, where you would want to stake your$50 million future. Miami is undoubtedly in the middle of an extraordinary boom.

18:00But when you speak to the people, the investors and the firms and the workers that are moving there, you also can't help but feel it's a little bit short-sighted. And I think that raises the question for me about how long it's going to last and how quickly those new emigres will abandon the city as soon as things start to go downhill. Kerriam, thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me.

18:53Sonny Loughran:What do Brits care about? If you only read the headlines, you'd be forgiven for thinking of topics like immigration and the economy. Sonny Loughran is a Britain correspondent at The Economist. But if you really want to know what occupies their minds day to day, refer to the descriptions of BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show. And good afternoon, welcome to the Jeremy Vine show BBC Radio 2. Great to have you here. Mr Vine is the channel's longest serving presenter and helms its lunchtime current affairs programme. Reading through his showreel is like combing through Britain's subconscious. In four words, today's show, Nazi Arctic Autism, CARP.

19:34BBC Radio 2

19:41Sonny Loughran:One recent programme examined social housing and vertical drinking. Another, last December, explored pornography and garden centres. Despite the advent of video, podcasts and smartphones, radio remains incredibly popular here in Britain. The country listens to about as much radio as it did 20 years ago, roughly 1 billion hours every week and Radio 2 is by far the most popular station. Part of its appeal is its simplicity. It's easy to listen to and that's by design. Radio 2 was born out of the BBC's belief that light entertainment can draw audiences in before directing them towards higher brow programming.

20:24In our time from the BBC World Service the pro...

20:33Sonny Loughran:Today, Radio 2 remains cheerfully unpretentious. Its poppy and nationalistic music choices, a mix of classics like The Beatles and new chart-toppers like Dua Lipa's Houdini, are one example.

20:52Sonny Loughran:Mr Vine's programme, which I used to produce, is another. It switches seamlessly between sophistication and silliness. At one moment, a defence expert might provide analysis on the war in Iran. What if Trump were to say to you, Jennifer, look, we took out the whole regime on day one, that's a success? Well, I think that would be very disingenuous. And of course, there may be military successes in there, but we have to look at what it does. Minutes later, enthusiasts might celebrate the resurgence of 10-pin bowling. Tom, are you with us still? I am, Jeremy, yes. Score? Well, I'm four rounds in.

21:29Sonny Loughran:You know, there's a phrase that some people say. I don't necessarily agree with this. Some people do say you're either good at bowling or good in bed. And I'm delighted to say that I'm on a paltry 25th. The online world is one of atomization, algorithms and loneliness. Listening to the radio, however, is a collective experience. Tune in and you're constantly reminded of the millions of people listening with you.

21:53Sonny Loughran:There's a togetherness in knowing that someone 200 miles away is listening to the same song as you Phone-in radio shows are responsive to the public mood almost by definition Mass fly-tipping was a topic of concern on Radio 2 long before the House of Lords began its inquiry on the same subject Years before the Online Safety Act became law parents phoned in to fret about what their children were seeing online As Will suggested, it's going to be so hard to control it. Maybe we just had to accept it is part of their lives now. We cannot, we absolutely cannot accept it's part of their lives. The damage is far too great.

22:32Sonny Loughran:Those hoping to sample the public mood could do worse than tune in. They might also begin to understand Britain's enduring love of radio.