Presentation

Nuno Crato, GCIH, GCIP, is President of Iniciativa Educação and Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at ISEG, University of Lisbon. A prolific science writer and educational essayist, some of his books have been translated into several languages and published internationally, such as his Figuring It Out (Springer 2010). His most recent books include Improving a Country's Education: PISA 2018 Results in 10 Countries (Springer 2021) and Data-Driven Policy Impact Evaluation (Springer 2019, co-edited).

From 2011 to 2015, he was Portugal's Minister of Education and Science. During his tenure, the school dropout rate was reduced from 25% to 13.7%, retention rates improved, compulsory schooling was increased from grades 9 to 12, English was made compulsory from grades 3 to 9, and Portuguese students achieved their best ever results in international surveys such as PISA and TIMSS.

His academic research focuses on stochastic models, time series applications to financial and social problems, and the evaluation of policy measures based on statistical data. He has published numerous articles on econometrics and statistical journals.

Abstract from his speech at the Agir pour l'éducation launch event on January 18, 2023:

How to improve a country's education? An international perspective

Today, we are witnessing real revolutions in scientific studies on education. Firstly, thanks to the collection and processing of international data initiated with the TIMSS and PISA studies in 1995 and 2000, which have shown that education is not doing well. Secondly, the new statistical techniques of counterfactual analysis developed at the end of the last century have made it possible to unravel the causes of the problem, in complex social situations. Thirdly, cognitive science is now capable of identifying the importance of memory and comprehension, deconstructing many myths about learning, and pointing the way to more effective lectures and more solid learning. The beneficiaries of this revolution must be the students. What's stopping us?