Koon Yew Yin
10th Jan 2017

A few days ago, I received a whatsapp with a long heading. It dealt with the education woes of the Malay community and was titled: HASIL DARI DASAR BANGANG, SIAPA YANG BANGANG KALAU BUKAN KITA YANG MEMILIH MEREKA PEMBUAT DASAR BANGANG? SEORANG RAKAN SEJAWAT DI IPT MENULIS

Loosely translated, this is the equivalent in English: PRODUCT OF STUPID POLICY: WHO IS IT THAT IS STUPID IF NOT OURSELVES WHO HAVE CHOSEN THOSE POLICY MAKERS. A FRIEND FROM THE UNIVERSITY WRITES

This post in the social media has gone viral in many Malay chat groups. But I doubt if it will ever appear in the Malay newspapers such as Utusan Malaysia or Berita Harian. Or even be carried or commented on in the English media even though it is worthy of national discussion and analysis.

Here is a quick summary of its contents: Read the rest of this entry »

The Education Ministry is setting a bad moral example to the young generation of Malaysians as it is not even telling a white lie, but a downright lie, on Malaysia’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 results.

It is indeed shocking that a Ministry which is responsible for the moral upbringing of a young generation of Malaysians should be guilty of such immorality as to try to lie its way out of the shame and ignominy of Malaysia’s exclusion from the results and rankings for mathematics, science and reading in the PISA 2015 Report.

Lets get down to the brass tacks – is the Education deputy director-general Datuk Dr. Amin Senin seriously claiming that the Malaysian government’s assertion that Malaysia’s PISA 2015 results for all three subjects have improved from those of PISA 2012 – i.e. mathematics from 404 to 421, Science from 420 to 422 and Reading from 398 to 414 – is recognised by PISA authorities in OECD?

The answer is an unequivocal “NO”, or Malaysia would not have been excluded from the rankings for mathematics, reading and science in PISA 2015, which appears on Page 44 of the PISA 2015 Results Volume 1 (Excellence and Equity in Education). Read the rest of this entry »

The PISA 2015 results were supposed to be the coming-of-age of the Najib premiership, both nationally and internationally – to provide evidence that under Najib’s premiership, with his string of National Transformation Programmes, the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025, and most important of all, his forthcoming and most ambitious 2050 National Transformation (TN50) Plan to replace Vision 2020, Malaysia would not only be able to become a RM2 trillion economy in seven to eight years, but to become the Top 20 nation in the world.

But the PISA 2015 results were a major setback to Najib’s towering ambitions, in particular the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025 objective to achieve above global average and be in top one-third of countries in international educational standards in less than a decade by 2025.

This was why the Malaysian government was so quick off-the-mark to claim credit for good improvement in the OECD-organised PISA 2015 tests – announcing that Malaysia scored 446 in Mathematics, 431 in Reading and 443 in Science as compared to Malaysia’s PISA 2012 results of 421 in Mathematics, 414 in Reading and 422 in Science.

This will be quite creditable improvement if true, as the three sets of PISA results for Malaysia since 2009 would be as follows:

Read the rest of this entry »

by Jennifer Buckingham
Australian Financial Review
December 7, 2016

Problem-based learning is a problem if children don’t have the basic skills to apply.

Two sets of independent international test results released in the past week show Australia’s education system has serious deficiencies.

The results of the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) 2015 showed no change in maths and science scores for Australian students since 1995 while other countries improved, leading to a slide in our international rankings.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 results are even worse – the performance of Australian students in reading, maths and science has significantly decreased over the past 15 years.

There has been a corresponding slide in our international rankings because other countries have either maintained their performance or improved. Read the rest of this entry »

C. M. Rubin
Huffington Post
12/06/2016

“If we look at countries like Singapore, Canada, Estonia, Japan and Finland, who have combined excellence and equity over a number of PISA cycles, we can see what they do: they have high and universal expectations for all students, an unwavering focus on outstanding teaching and they target resources on schools and students that are struggling.” — Andreas Schleicher

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial international survey that evaluates education systems. Once a country is approved for participation by PISA, individual schools are chosen based on stringent criteria to represent all 15 year-olds in that country. In 2015, over half a million 15-year-olds in 72 countries and economies took the two-hour test. Students were assessed in science, mathematics, reading, collaborative problem solving and financial literacy, although the major emphasis of the 2015 test was science literacy. The results were published today.

Some fascinating highlights: Just four provinces in China now provide 13% of the world’s top-performing students; Singapore, Canada, Estonia, Japan and Finland have combined excellence and equity over a number of PISA tests, and interestingly these countries have a steadfast commitment to outstanding teaching and to supporting schools and students that are struggling. While socio-economic status accounts for 13% of the variation in science, maths and reading, the 10% most disadvantaged students in Macao (China) and Vietnam outperformed the 10% most advantaged students in 20 PISA participating countries. Read the rest of this entry »

Editorial
The Guardian
6 December 2016

Tony Blair wanted to be remembered for his education reforms, and the latest results from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment – Pisa – the triennial survey of the skills of 15-year-olds suggest that if only he had concentrated on his domestic agenda, he probably would have been.

The Pisa scores are notorious for revealing no consistent message, but it is striking that England’s 15-year-olds are performing about as well as three years ago, where Scotland and Wales, where reform was rebuffed, are in decline.

Overall, the UK’s performance is almost unchanged: a little above the OECD average, still a long way behind Singapore, Japan and Estonia, but well ahead of Italy, Israel and Iceland. There is a marginal improvement in the UK’s ranking, despite a slight decline in scores. Read the rest of this entry »

Jenny Anderson/Amy X. Wang
Quartz
December 06, 2016

Every three years the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tests 15-year-olds around the world on their math, science and reading abilities.

Then, countries around the world celebrate, or panic.

For example, in 2000, the world learned Finland was a global education superpower (that was news to many in Finland too, according to some). Somehow the country managed to start kids in school at 7, have short school days, assign little homework, test kids infrequently, and still eke out amazing results.

Finland’s schools became a top tourist attraction, as educators around the globe flocked to understand their secret (basically, stringent selection of teachers, who are given autonomy to teach).

But what goes up sometimes comes down. In the OECD’s latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking, for 2015, Finland has fallen from its perch (though it remains a very high performer), and Singapore trounced the rest of the world on math, reading and science.

PISA 2015 includes data from 72 countries and economies, including all 35 OECD members and 37 other countries and economies. In some cases, regions stand in for countries: Taiwan’s results are based on testing in Taipei, in Argentina only the city of Buenos Aires participates, and in mainland China, four provinces — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong (B-S-J-G) participate.

In addition, some countries paid to have subnational regions tested separately; the US, for instance, asked for rankings for Massachusetts and North Carolina. Approximately 540,000 students took the test, which aims to capture what students know toward the end of their formal schooling, and how well they can apply that knowledge more broadly. Read the rest of this entry »

I am amazed as to how the Education Ministry can claim that Malaysian students had registered better scores in mathematics, science and reading according to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 results announced in London yesterday, when PISA 2015 authorities have dropped and derecognised Malaysia’s results from the OECD “world school report” in this triennial test, for reasons which have yet to be disclosed.

It is completely unthinkable that the Education Deputy Director-General Datuk Dr. Amin Senin could announce Malaysia’s results for the PISA 2015, claiming better scores in all three PISA domains, scientific literacy, reading literacy and mathematical literacy, when Malaysia was the only one of the 72 countries/economics which took part in the PISA 2015 tests last year but which had been dropped from the PISA 2015 results released yesterday.

The Education Ministry should know why Malaysia had the dishonour and ignominy of being the only one of the 72 participating countries/economies to be dropped and derecognised from the PISA 2015 results announced in London yesterday as well as from the PISA 2015 Report and the Education Ministry owes it to the Malaysian people, and in particular to the 9,660 Form III students from 230 schools and involving 5,750 teachers and 230 administrators who were selected to participate in the PISA 2015 tests, to reveal why Malaysia had been officially dropped and de-recognised from the PISA 2015 tests after Malaysian students had participated in the programme last year. Read the rest of this entry »