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China outclasses West in key education survey
PARIS, Dec 3, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Teenagers from four big Chinese regions
outshone Western contemporaries nations in a keenly watched survey of
education capabilities published Tuesday, which also showed no improvement
trend in developed countries over two decades.
The PISA survey 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.
The latest study, which was conducted last year among 600,000 15-year-
old students who all took two-hour tests, showed that students in 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.
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.
– ‘Feed economic strength’ –
Angel Gurria, the OECD’s secretary-general, 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 percent most socio-economically 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
percent most advantaged students in some of these countries.”
He cautioned that these four provinces and municipalities in eastern
China “are far from representing China as a whole.”
Yet their combined populations amount to over 180 million people, and
the size of each region is equivalent to a typical OECD country.
“What makes their achievement even more remarkable is that the level of
income of these four Chinese regions is well below the OECD average,” Gurria
said in a preface to the study.
“The quality of their schools today will feed into the strength of their
economies tomorrow.”
– ‘Virtually no improvement’ –
But Gurria also sounded a word of caution over the Chinese system,
indicating that more care needed to be taken with regards to students’ well-
being.
“When it comes to those social and emotional outcomes, the top-
performing Chinese provinces/municipalities are among the education systems
with most room for improvement,” he said.
Looking at the results of the developed OECD countries, he said it was
“disappointing” that most member states had seen “virtually no improvement in
the performance of their students” since the first PISA survey of 2000.
This outcome came despite expenditure per primary and secondary student
rising by more than 15 percent across OECD countries over the past decade.
The survey said among OECD countries, the mean performances in reading,
mathematics and science remained stable from the previous survey, in 2015,
though some countries outside the group had shown large differences in
performance.
Albania, Estonia, the Chinese region of Macao, Peru and Poland saw
improvements in two subjects over the last two decades.
The OECD praised Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and Uruguay for
enrolling many more 15-year-olds in secondary education “without sacrificing
the quality of the education provided”.
– ‘Postcode a predictor’ –
Gurria also sounded a warning over how ready students were to deal with
the challenges of modern world, where it is important not just to read but to
sort good information from bad.
“Fewer than 1 in 10 students in OECD countries was able to distinguish
between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues pertaining to the content or
source of the information,” he said.
Gurria said that while some countries had shown that socio-economic
status should not be an indicator of educational performance, “it remains
necessary for many countries to promote equity with much greater urgency.”
“Against this background, it is disappointing that in many countries a
student’s or school’s post code remains the strongest predictor of their
achievement,” he said.
BSS/AFP/RY/1631 hrs