Articles

Controversy in the making over PISA 2015 results

Published by SchoolAdvisor | Dec 08, 2016

Media reports on PISA 2015 results are conflicting with public data as Malaysia has not been included in the official report.Earlier this week, International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 results were published by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which collected data from 72 countries and economies from across the world. The assessment tested 15 year-old students on science literacy, mathematics and reading. Additionally, it assessed schools on equity in performance between boys and girls, social background and immigrant students’ aids.Singaporean students, as expected, took the global lead in science, literacy, mathematics and reading with a score that is well above the global average. However, Singapore did slightly above average in terms of boys and girls equity, below average in social background and did better than average in terms of helping immigrant students.Education Director General Datuk Dr Amin Senin said that Malaysia has recorded better scores in science, mathematics and reading. These reports claimed that Malaysia got 443 points in science literacy, 431 points in reading and 446 points in mathematics.The reports cited that higher order thinking skills (HOTS) have contributed to this significant improvement in students’ performance.However, upon examination of the PISA results, which are made public online, Malaysia’s scores has not been reported. The list of countries does not include Malaysia.The spotlight has turned to higher order thinking skills (HOTS) issue. HOTS implementation is still in the experimental and training phase, which brings to question how could they have possibly contributed to these results in spite of the fact that HOTS will be fruitful in the near future.The controversy continues as members of the parliament representing DAP demanded clarification of the results. Lim Kit Siang, an MP and the leader of DAP, said that the Education Ministry must explain the alleged scores reported by the media because Malaysia seems to not have participated in the OECD world school report.He said in a statement that Malaysia may have participated in the survey but the country’s results were dropped from the PISA 2015 report.OECD ‘s comprehensive PISA report volume 1 seems to exclude Malaysia’s results due to low coverage and lack of participation which results in an insufficient representation for comparison. Argentina and Kazakhstan have also been excluded for the same reason.Late November, the International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) results were announced which involved 76 countries and assessing 4^th grade students and 8^th grade students. Malaysia participated in this survey and fell 5 places shy of the global average with a score of 465 and made the list of top 30 countries in mathematics literacy. Additionally, Malaysia scored 471 and came at 28th place and below global average in science literacy. The global average for both science and mathematics is 500. The full story is here.More to follow on the story once updates become available.