PISA 2012 results

Asia seems to be getting significantly ahead and not only in marks but child/teen suicides as well. It's notable that the Asian kids do spent a lot more time at school or studying, often employing private tutors even after the grueling school days - and the difference to the best European countries is not that huge. Somewhat concerned why Finland has dropped, as we used to be in the Top Three.

Anyway, here they are:
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf

Some key points for those who don't want to load a PDF:

TOP TEN:
1. Shanghai
2. Singapore
3. Hong Kong
4. South-Korea
5. Japan
6. Taiwan
7. Finland
8. Estonia
9. Liechenstein
10. Macao

First North-American nation is Canada at 11. Poor USA struggling at 29. Australia is the best in Oceania at 18. Best developing country is Vietnam at 15, best South-American country is Chile at 50, best Middle-East country is Israel at 40 and best African country is Tunis at 60.

But fear not, dear Kwanzanians ('tis the holiday season!), several EU-countries lag behind you - like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Iceland, Lithuania, Croatia, SWEDEN (!!!), Slovakia and Greece.

Also, time for ancalimon to brush off another anti-Turk conspiracy, as Turkey is at 43.

Finally, don't ask me why PISA has tested three different Chinese cities (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao) instead of using a single total score for the entire nation, LIKE EVERY OTHER NATION TESTED.

Damn you lazy fellow Portuguese, WHY ARE YOU NOT MORE LIKE ME

Denmark is wonderfully mediocre, as always.

But that is true for every large country.

Huh, Vietnam is surprising.

Jhessail said:

Also, time for ancalimon to brush off another anti-Turk conspiracy, as Turkey is at 43.

Click to expand...

Turkish education system sucks. Apart from corrupt and evil politicians, it's truly very hard to control education in Turkey since the it's the country which  has the most students in Europe and social welfare differs a lot among different parts of Turkey so is geography and infrastructure itself which is another huge factor.

For example many Kurdish citizens in Eastern Turkey choose not to send their daughters to school. Unemployment is very high and people can't find jobs when they graduate from university, etc..

But this has nothing to do with Turkish people. It's the system that's at fault. Furthermore Turkish governments keep modifying our educational system every two years or so and it keeps getting worse. The latest project of our government is to shut down private education institutions (called dershane) that were created to fill the gap of problematic education system in Turkey. Our government thinks that they should be illegal because it's not fair that only people who have money to spare can attend these institutions and they think this is creating inequality.    (so they don't actually try to tackle the problem at its the source but they choose to erase the results of the faulty education in Turkey)

Students go to these institutions in order to learn what they could not learn in their schools and in order to score higher in the tests that determine who is going to be accepted to which university.

By the way, I actually have a masters degree in educational administration.

Trevty said:

Jhessail said:

Finally, don't ask me why PISA has tested three different Chinese cities (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao) instead of using a single total score for the entire nation, LIKE EVERY OTHER NATION TESTED.

Click to expand...

Because those three have had significantly different histories that might impact how they score on the test?  I'm not sure though.

Click to expand...

Aren't Shanghai and Hong Kong partially autonomous? Has to do with the British taking them during the Opium War most likely.

Hong Kong is, Shanghai isn't. Not sure if Macao is, since it used to belong to Portugal. Maybe it is and that's why China has 3 ratings instead of one.

Also, not 100% sure but I have the impression that the country in question gets to decide which schools participate in the PISA survey. If that's true, I'm fairly certain that it skews the results of certain countries where inequality between public and private schools is great.

Macau is a Special Administrative Region, I think.

PISA results for Germany are so wonderfully useless, even after ten years.
They still mash together the schools for (mentally) retarded people* with the three different school types (staggered in "difficulty") for normal folks without any difference in weight.
Of course a "Hauptschüler" won't be able to solve certain tasks a pupil from a Gymnasium doesn't think about twice, when his school type never even teaches those or just brushes over them and moves on.

And yet people the media wants people to lose their **** every single time a new one of these arrives because we aren't in the top ten. ****, even the pupils know it's a silly measurement under these conditions. Or at last they did ten years ago.


*if you're dyslexic you're not allowed to participate in Finland for example.

There's been a lot of criticism on these PISA reports, and some of it is reasonable.
Most importantly the methodology behind the reports used to be very secret*
How can you make educational reforms - democratically - based on a report where the full methodology is not disclosed?
The statistical methods are also criticised for being poor and can cause absurd randomness.
Minor changes in questions can change the rating of a country by a lot (pointed out by some Norwegian and Danish statistician)*
The tests are time limited, and students tend to answer them at a different pace:

Dutch students try to answer almost every item.
Towards the end of the test they become hasty and increasingly resort to guessing.

Austrian and German students skip many items, and they do so from the first block on,
which leaves them enough time to finish the test without much accelerating their pace.

Greek students, by contrast, seem to be taken by surprise by the time pressure near the end.
In the first block, their correct-response rate is better than in Portugal and not far away from the US and Italy.
In the last block, however, non-reached items and missing responses add up to 35%, bringing Greece down to one of the last ranks.

Click to expand...

* http://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/dec/03/pisa-methodology-education-oecd-student-performance
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6344672

Most importantly the PISA reports don't - and should not - evaluate the educational system's most important task:
creating rational, critical members of society, able to engage in the political, democratic life.


In short there has been too much secrecy surrounding these tests, and the results are too random to be used.
Sometimes the PISA results have been used as political arguments for Conservative ideals:
more focus on 'measurable' subjects like mathematics and natural sciences and less so on social, political sciences/skills.

The thematic areas are:
- Mathematics
- Reading
- Science (natural sciences)
- Problem solving
- Financial literacy

which is only a small part of what education is about.

There's probably a big difference inside each country to test scores as well. For instance, Massachusetts scores pretty highly in the US compared to most other states.

On another note, turns out Canada is usually spending less than the world average in schooling.

Aye. It seems like a decent enough test to see where in one particular country there are problems, but it's rubbish at an international level.

Wellenbrecher said:

*if you're dyslexic you're not allowed to participate in Finland for example.

Click to expand...

Interesting. Do you have a source for that?

Excuse the ****ty readability, couldn't find anything else in English. Otherwise I only have stuff in German.

No specific countries, but the "mechanics" of exclusion

Interesting list of exclusions in different countries, note Indonesia

[edit]
Excuse me, that doesn't mention exclusions in Finland. :/
Crap.

Oh, I was not really specifically interested in Finland, but it is actually mentioned. Thanks!

Although China can rank very high, it only shows how smart the students are and how much theory they know but it does not show how creative they are. I am sure many of them are really creative but the Chinese education as a whole lacks application learning and fails to appreciate creativity on the same level as intelligence and/or knowledge.

China is trying to move forward with service and technology replacing manufacturing with creativity and innovation replacing factories. In an ever-changing world with organic rather than mechanistic demands on human resources, the current Chinese education is not be aligned with that objective.

So PISA test shows something, but I would still rank the US or Canada, Finland, Japan, Sweden, etc... as having better education system than China. Not necessarily schools, but better education system.

Finally, don't ask me why PISA has tested three different Chinese cities (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao) instead of using a single total score for the entire nation, LIKE EVERY OTHER NATION TESTED.

Click to expand...

The education system in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau are different from one another. Also, two of these cities have higher population than some of the countries on the list. So it is reasonable to measure it this way.

I think the term intelligence is rather vague and can be interpreted somewhat freely.

It is also the most overhyped trait ever.

Give me a wise and toothless simpleton over a cold, unfeeling mathematician any day.

I'd never actually considered the differences in how different nations would take a test before. Weird, how little things like that can change so much.