Before starting this I know my personal concerns are going to affect my judgement. I believe that our education system is fundamentally flawed and that we are no longer serving the best interests of our children. I know this will colour my thoughts on this issue so excuse me if I rant a little!
Looking at Educase review it talks about how more people from a diverse background are gaining degrees in HE. What it doesn't tell you is where those degrees lead to? All of the Chinese and Indian graduates - are there jobs for them? Do they gain a degree then work in a call centre/factory etc?
The action analytics seems to point towards using analytics to improve opportunities for learning across all groups rather than looking at the old model of HE providing learning to spend its funds. I see it advocates using analytics to provide further opportunities to improve the uptake of education across poorer groups of society and spur students on into achieving higher levels of qualifications.
Part 2
As for the PISA results - I keep getting errors trying to access them but I have looked at other work on the forum and noted that in comparison with near neighbors/similar systems the UK is fairly on a par with both those and the averages. Having seen education systems in countries like China and India there is no real like for like comparison. I will come back to this section.