The 2012 PISA results assessing 510,000 15-year-old students in 65 countries in mathematics, science and reading have been hailed as “wake-up” calls in the United Kingdom and the United States provoking much national soul-searching about the mediocrity of their education systems compared to top-performers like Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

In Malaysia, however, the government and the education authorities are very complacent and continue to slumber away although Malaysian students are far behind their peers in UK and US in the assessment in all the three subjects.

Compared to the 2009 PISA, Malaysia improved in math but fell in scores for science and reading: math 421, science 420 and reading 398.

These compare unfavourably with the scores for 15-year-old students in UK (math 494, science 514, reading 499) and US (math 481, science 497, reading 498).

Based on the difference of 38 points on the PISA scale being equivalent to one year of schooling, the 2012 PISA results indicate that Malaysian 15-year-old students are 1.9 to 2.7 years behind their peers in UK in the three subjects: math behind by 1.9 years; science behind by 2.4 years and reading behind by 2.7 years.

It is not only Malaysian 15-year-olds who are 1.9 to 2.7 years behind their peers in the United Kingdom in math, science, and reading (and three to five years behind their peers in Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Macao and Japan), it is clear that the Malaysian political leaders and education planners are many years behind their counterparts in UK and US in their poor response to the 2012 PISA results. Read the rest of this entry »