Recently in the news, there was a lot of debate on the performance of our country in PISA - an internationally-acclaimed education assessment of 15 year-old students.
The PISA - Programme for International Students Assessment - is managed by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
This program runs every three years beginning from the year 2000 and Malaysia participated in this Programme in the year 2009.
The 2012 results are now available in the OECD website. The link can be found at the end of this post. You can even try the questions used in the test to have a feel at the kind of questions used in the PISA exam.
How did we fare in the 2012 PISA test?
Let us look at three dimensions, namely reading, mathematics and science.
The following results are for our consumption and reflection of the effectiveness of our education system.
(A) Reading
The average score is 496, and in terms of reading, we scored 420, which is way below the average. The difference is 76, which is very significant. What this means is that the 15 year-old students in our country are two years behind the threshold score.
A rule of thumb is that 38-point difference is equivalent to one year of schooling.
Looking at our neighbors, Singapore scored 542 and Indonesia scored 396.
In terms of ranking, we are positioned at 59, out the 65 participated countries.
(B) Mathematics
The average score is 494, and we scored 421, and the difference is 73. In this regard, we are lagging close to two years behind the average score.
Singapore scored 573 and Indonesia scored 375.
In terms of ranking, we are at number 52.
(C) Science
The benchmark mean score is 501 and we scored 420, and that is a difference of 81. And likewise, we lagged close to two years in terms of education standard.
Singapore scored 551 and Indonesia scored 382.
In terms of ranking, we are positioned at 53.
Overall, our country's score in these three critical areas are way below the average mean, and this is something that our education policy makers need to look at. We are lagging behind among many countries and that is worrying.
There are calls by certain quarter of the citizen to 'overhaul' our education system; and that I leave it to the folks at the relevant ministry to respond and deal with it.
In all honesty, we need to reflect and perform SWOT analysis of the current education system so that we can address the glaring gap and loopholes, thus reforming (or to use the current buzzword 'transforming') the education system to be more advanced and holistic.
At the same time, we also need to benchmark and compare the questions used in PISA with our equivalent national examination for the 15 year-old, PMR.
It will certainly be confusing if we say that our students performs well in the local PMR exam, but failed miserably in the PISA assessment, as evident in the latest 2012 findings.
The next PISA test will be conducted in 2018, and hopefully we shall outperform most countries.
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Source: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results.htm
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