Asian students score top grades worldwide

Chinese teens have topped a global survey of education capabilities, outperforming their wealthier contemporaries in Western nations in reading, maths, and sciences.

In contrast, Filipino children came in last in reading and second to last in maths and science in the PISA survey, which is carried out every three years by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - this time among its 37 member states and 42 partner countries and economies.

India, which last participated in PISA in 2009 when it came 72nd among 73 countries, plans to participate again in PISA in 2021.

The latest study, based on two-hour tests taken by 600,000 15-year-olds last year, showed that students in the four Chinese regions of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang – as well as Singapore – topped the rankings, ahead of their Western counterparts in reading, mathematics, and science.

Asian nations took the top seven slots in math. Following the combined four provinces in China were Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan, and Korea. Estonia, the Netherlands, and Poland rounded out the top 10. The U.S. ranked 37th, behind such countries as Canada, Sweden, the U.K., Germany, France, Australia, Russia, Italy and Hungary.

In science, the four Chinese provinces again excelled, followed by Singapore, Macao, Estonia, Japan, Finland, Korea, Canada, Hong Kong and Taipei to round out the top 10. The U.S. ranked 18th.

“What makes their achievement even more remarkable is that the level of income of these four Chinese regions is well below the average” of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, the report stated, meaning they were not among the wealthiest.

“In many Asian countries, the education of children is priority number one,” said Eric Charbonnier, an education analyst at the OECD.

“Teachers have high-quality training and there have been investments in schools that had difficulties,” he added.

In reading, which the OECD considers its headline indicator of education potential, the best performing OECD state was the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia, followed by Canada, Finland and Ireland.

Bigger European nations languished well behind in the rankings, with Britain in 14th place, Germany 20th and France 23rd. The United States placed 13th in reading.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said the students from the four Chinese provinces had “outperformed by a large margin their peers from all of the other 78 participating education systems.”

Moreover, the 10% most socioeconomically disadvantaged students in these four areas “also showed better reading skills than those of the average student in OECD countries, as well as skills similar to the 10% most advantaged students in some of these countries,” he said at a Paris news conference.

The results were disappointing for the Philippines.

Estanislao Albano, a journalist who specialises in education issues, said: “Philippine education is in disarray, in tatters.”

For the average Filipino student, education is an endurance struggle that pits pupils against poverty, bullying, inaccessible schools, overcrowded classrooms, insufficient numbers of teachers, low government funding, and even hunger.

Because the Pisa maths and science tests are based on English reading comprehension, the Filipino students’ lack of reading proficiency pulled down their scores.

He said the Philippine education department’s policies were partly to blame for the semi-literacy of the students. The results had “not come as a surprise because I knew that the reading proficiency of our school children in public schools is a disgrace”.

A policy of waving students up to the next level no matter what their actual abilities had compounded the problem, he added. Some children “could be the most pampered students in the world” and the result is there are Philippine middle school and high school students who are “non-readers”.

Philippines Education secretary Leonor Briones said the Pisa report “puts in even sharper focus our need to address quality in basic education”.

The latest rankings put Canadian high school students close to the top spot when it comes to reading performance. But within the country, certain provinces fall behind others in maths and sciences.

The most recent results found that 86 percent of Canadian students scored higher in reading proficiency than other OECD countries, which averaged 77 percent.

Canadians also scored higher than average levels in maths and sciences.

But a closer look within the country’s performance shows that some provinces performed better than others.

In reading, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec placed high, while Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick achieved the lowest scores.

Quebec, Ontario and Alberta had the top scores in achievements in math, while P.E.I., Saskatchewan and Manitoba placed last.

Alberta, Ontario and Quebec scored high in science, while Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Manitoba were at the bottom.

When reviewing how the country’s score has changed over time, there was a slight difference in scores since 2012. Canada’s average score in math is 512, compared to 518 in 2012, while the average score in science has gone from 528 in 2015 to 518 in 2018.

However, across the provinces, science and math performance remained stable, with a few exceptions. Math scores in Saskatchewan and B.C. dropped between 2012 and 2018, while science scores in Quebec and B.C. fell between 2015 and 2018.

The PISA report confirmed a “positive relationship between investment in education and average performance,” but found a threshold of $50,000 in cumulative expenditure per student from age 6 to 15.

“After that threshold, there is almost no relationship between the amount invested in education and student performance,” the report said. – Agencies