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Singapore Tops Latest OECD PISA Global Education Survey

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Singapore tops latest OECD PISA global education survey

Watch the live webcast from London with Secretary-General Angel Gurría and Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills

06/12/2016 - Singapore outperforms the rest of the world in the OECD’s latest PISA survey, which evaluates the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems. The top OECD countries were Japan, Estonia, Finland and Canada.

The OECD’s PISA 2015 tested around 540,000 15-year-old students in 72 countries and economies on science, reading, maths and collaborative problem-solving. The main focus was on science, an increasingly important part of today’s economy and society.

While spending per student in primary and secondary education increased by almost 20% since 2006 in OECD countries alone, only 12 of the 72 countries and economies assessed in PISA have seen their science performance improve over this period. These include high-performing education systems, such as Singapore and Macao (China), and low-performers, such as Peru and Colombia.

“A decade of scientific breakthroughs has failed to translate into breakthroughs in science performance in schools,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, launching the report in London. “Every country has room for improvement, even the top performers. With high levels of youth unemployment, rising inequality, a significant gender gap, and an urgent need to boost inclusive growth in many countries, more must be done to ensure every child has the best education possible.” Read the full speech.

Around 1 in 10 students across OECD countries, and 1 in 4 in Singapore, perform at the highest level in science. Across the OECD, more than one in five students falls short of baseline proficiency: only in Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong (China), Japan, Macao (China), Singapore and Viet Nam do at least nine out of ten 15-year-old students master the basics that every student should know before leaving school.

This underlines the challenge that all countries, including some of the wealthiest ones, face in meeting Sustainable Development Goal 4 by 2030 to achieve “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

The report reveals the policies in place that successful countries share: high and universal expectations for all students; a strong focus on great teaching; resources targeted at struggling students and schools; and a commitment to coherent, long-term strategies.

Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong (China) and Macao (China) achieve both high standards of excellence overall and equity in education outcomes. A number of countries have improved equity, especially the United States. But in Australia, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, New Zealand and the Slovak Republic, the share of students performing at the highest levels fell at the same time as the share of low performers rose.

“Achieving greater equity in education is not only a social justice imperative, it also fuels economic growth and promotes social cohesion,” added Mr Gurría.

The OECD PISA 2015 Survey underlines that, in the context of massive information flows and rapid change, everyone now needs to be able to “think like a scientist”: to be able to weigh evidence and come to a conclusion; to understand that scientific “truth” may change over time, as new discoveries are made, and as humans develop a greater understanding of natural forces and of technology’s capacities and limitations.

Other key findings include:

Gender gap
  • Gender differences in science tend to be smaller than in reading and mathematics but, on average, in 33 countries and economies, the share of top performers in science is larger among boys than among girls. Finland is the only country in which girls are more likely to be top performers than boys.
  • One in four boys and girls reported that they expect to work in a science-related occupation but opt for very different ones: girls mostly seek positions in the health sector and boys in becoming ICT professionals, scientists or engineers.
Equity in education
  • Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong (China) and Macao (China) achieve high levels of performance and equity in education outcomes.
  • Poorer students are 3 times more likely to be low performers than wealthier students, and immigrant students are more than twice as likely as non-immigrants to be low achievers.
  • On average across countries with relatively large immigrant student populations, attending a school with a high concentration of immigrant students is not associated with poorer student performance, after accounting for the school’s students socio-economic level.
Students’ performance in reading and mathematics
  • Nearly 20% of students in OECD countries, on average, do not attain the baseline level of proficiency in reading. This proportion has remained stable since 2009.
  • On average across OECD countries, the gender gap in reading in favour of girls narrowed by 12 points between 2009 and 2015: boys’ performance improved, particularly among the highest-achieving boys, while girls’ performance deteriorated, particularly among the lowest-achieving girls.
  • More than one in four students in Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong (China), Hong Kong (China), Singapore and Chinese Taipei are top-performing students in mathematics, a higher share than anywhere else.
School performance
  • How much time students spend learning and how science is taught are even more strongly associated with science performance and the expectations of pursuing a science-related career than how well-equipped and staffed the science department is and science teachers’ qualifications.
  • Students in larger schools score higher in science and are more likely than students in smaller schools to expect to work in a science-related occupation in the future. But students in smaller schools reported a better disciplinary climate in their science lessons and they are less likely than students in larger schools to skip days of school and arrive late for school, after accounting for schools’ and students’ socio-economic status.
  • Thirty countries and economies used grade repetition less frequently in 2015 than in 2009; in only five countries did the incidence of grade repetition increase during the period. The use of grade repetition decreased by at least 10 percentage points in Costa Rica, France, Indonesia, Latvia, Macao (China), Malta, Mexico and Tunisia.
For further information, journalists should contact the OECD Media division (tel. + 33 1 45 24 97 00).

Other launch events taking place include: Paris with Gabriela Ramos, OECD Chief of Staff and G20 Sherpa, and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, French Education Minister; Brussels with Douglas Frantz, OECD Deputy Secretary-General, and Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport; Berlin with Heino von Meyer, OECD Head of Berlin Centre and Cornelia Quennet-Thielen, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Education and Research; Rome with Francesco Avvisati, OECD PISA analyst, and Anna Maria Ajello, president of INVALSI; and a webinar for Latin American media with OECD Chief of Staff and G20 Sherpa Gabriela Ramos.

The report, together with country analysis, summaries and data, is available at www.oecd.org/pisa/

http://www.oecd.org/education/singapore-tops-latest-oecd-pisa-global-education-survey.htm

PISA 2015.png


Notes:
  • B-S-J-G (China) = Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong
  • FYROM = Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
  • CABA (Argentina) = Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (Autonomous City of Buenos Aires)
 
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Singapore tops latest OECD PISA global education survey

Watch the live webcast from London with Secretary-General Angel Gurría and Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills

06/12/2016 - Singapore outperforms the rest of the world in the OECD’s latest PISA survey, which evaluates the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems. The top OECD countries were Japan, Estonia, Finland and Canada.

The OECD’s PISA 2015 tested around 540,000 15-year-old students in 72 countries and economies on science, reading, maths and collaborative problem-solving. The main focus was on science, an increasingly important part of today’s economy and society.

While spending per student in primary and secondary education increased by almost 20% since 2006 in OECD countries alone, only 12 of the 72 countries and economies assessed in PISA have seen their science performance improve over this period. These include high-performing education systems, such as Singapore and Macao (China), and low-performers, such as Peru and Colombia.

“A decade of scientific breakthroughs has failed to translate into breakthroughs in science performance in schools,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, launching the report in London. “Every country has room for improvement, even the top performers. With high levels of youth unemployment, rising inequality, a significant gender gap, and an urgent need to boost inclusive growth in many countries, more must be done to ensure every child has the best education possible.” Read the full speech.

Around 1 in 10 students across OECD countries, and 1 in 4 in Singapore, perform at the highest level in science. Across the OECD, more than one in five students falls short of baseline proficiency: only in Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong (China), Japan, Macao (China), Singapore and Viet Nam do at least nine out of ten 15-year-old students master the basics that every student should know before leaving school.

This underlines the challenge that all countries, including some of the wealthiest ones, face in meeting Sustainable Development Goal 4 by 2030 to achieve “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

The report reveals the policies in place that successful countries share: high and universal expectations for all students; a strong focus on great teaching; resources targeted at struggling students and schools; and a commitment to coherent, long-term strategies.

Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong (China) and Macao (China) achieve both high standards of excellence overall and equity in education outcomes. A number of countries have improved equity, especially the United States. But in Australia, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, New Zealand and the Slovak Republic, the share of students performing at the highest levels fell at the same time as the share of low performers rose.

“Achieving greater equity in education is not only a social justice imperative, it also fuels economic growth and promotes social cohesion,” added Mr Gurría.

The OECD PISA 2015 Survey underlines that, in the context of massive information flows and rapid change, everyone now needs to be able to “think like a scientist”: to be able to weigh evidence and come to a conclusion; to understand that scientific “truth” may change over time, as new discoveries are made, and as humans develop a greater understanding of natural forces and of technology’s capacities and limitations.

Other key findings include:

Gender gap
  • Gender differences in science tend to be smaller than in reading and mathematics but, on average, in 33 countries and economies, the share of top performers in science is larger among boys than among girls. Finland is the only country in which girls are more likely to be top performers than boys.
  • One in four boys and girls reported that they expect to work in a science-related occupation but opt for very different ones: girls mostly seek positions in the health sector and boys in becoming ICT professionals, scientists or engineers.
Equity in education
  • Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong (China) and Macao (China) achieve high levels of performance and equity in education outcomes.
  • Poorer students are 3 times more likely to be low performers than wealthier students, and immigrant students are more than twice as likely as non-immigrants to be low achievers.
  • On average across countries with relatively large immigrant student populations, attending a school with a high concentration of immigrant students is not associated with poorer student performance, after accounting for the school’s students socio-economic level.
Students’ performance in reading and mathematics
  • Nearly 20% of students in OECD countries, on average, do not attain the baseline level of proficiency in reading. This proportion has remained stable since 2009.
  • On average across OECD countries, the gender gap in reading in favour of girls narrowed by 12 points between 2009 and 2015: boys’ performance improved, particularly among the highest-achieving boys, while girls’ performance deteriorated, particularly among the lowest-achieving girls.
  • More than one in four students in Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong (China), Hong Kong (China), Singapore and Chinese Taipei are top-performing students in mathematics, a higher share than anywhere else.
School performance
  • How much time students spend learning and how science is taught are even more strongly associated with science performance and the expectations of pursuing a science-related career than how well-equipped and staffed the science department is and science teachers’ qualifications.
  • Students in larger schools score higher in science and are more likely than students in smaller schools to expect to work in a science-related occupation in the future. But students in smaller schools reported a better disciplinary climate in their science lessons and they are less likely than students in larger schools to skip days of school and arrive late for school, after accounting for schools’ and students’ socio-economic status.
  • Thirty countries and economies used grade repetition less frequently in 2015 than in 2009; in only five countries did the incidence of grade repetition increase during the period. The use of grade repetition decreased by at least 10 percentage points in Costa Rica, France, Indonesia, Latvia, Macao (China), Malta, Mexico and Tunisia.
For further information, journalists should contact the OECD Media division (tel. + 33 1 45 24 97 00).

Other launch events taking place include: Paris with Gabriela Ramos, OECD Chief of Staff and G20 Sherpa, and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, French Education Minister; Brussels with Douglas Frantz, OECD Deputy Secretary-General, and Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport; Berlin with Heino von Meyer, OECD Head of Berlin Centre and Cornelia Quennet-Thielen, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Education and Research; Rome with Francesco Avvisati, OECD PISA analyst, and Anna Maria Ajello, president of INVALSI; and a webinar for Latin American media with OECD Chief of Staff and G20 Sherpa Gabriela Ramos.

The report, together with country analysis, summaries and data, is available at www.oecd.org/pisa/

http://www.oecd.org/education/singapore-tops-latest-oecd-pisa-global-education-survey.htm

View attachment 358177


Congrats to Singapore, well done!

Unlike previous years, in PISA 2015 four entities from China Mainland, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Guangdong, participated in PISA 2015; their combined results are reported as “B-S-J-G (China)”. Because these regions are sampled as one entity, results are not reported separately by province or municipality. China Hong Kong, Macao and Chinese Taipei are reported as other three entities.
 
. . .
we slip in the ranking in math and reading, far behind the top 10. Singapore is the benchmark. as always.
 
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Singapore is doing so well because of one special ethnic group … according to this:

https://defence.pk/threads/iq-test-...n-china-and-korea.259586/page-35#post-8980546
https://defence.pk/threads/iq-test-...n-china-and-korea.259586/page-35#post-8984157

Congrats to Singapore, well done!

Unlike previous years, in PISA 2015 four entities from China Mainland, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Guangdong, participated in PISA 2015; their combined results are reported as “B-S-J-G (China)”. Because these regions are sampled as one entity, results are not reported separately by province or municipality. China Hong Kong, Macao and Chinese Taipei are reported as other three entities.
More efforts should be made.

Congrats, Singapore.
 
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Vietnam is ahead of UK, France and the US in both math and science. Not too bad.

Surprisingly, we are ahead of China mainland in science.


Vietnam is doing well, congrats!

Im surprised B-S-J-G did so poorly, especially in reading.


Among China entities, it's no surprise that more urbanized HK, Macao and Taipei perform better (congrats! @Chinese-Dragon @TaiShang) than a much wider region of B-S-J-G. And even being less urbanized relatively speaking, B-S-J-G do perform well in Science and Maths, perhaps Reading test is an area yet to be improved.
 
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Vietnam is doing well, congrats!




Among China entities, it's no surprise that more urbanized HK, Macao and Taipei perform better (congrats! @Chinese-Dragon @TaiShang) than a much wider region of B-S-J-G. And even being less urbanized relatively speaking, B-S-J-G do perform well in Science and Maths, perhaps Reading test is an area yet to be improved.
Yes, there are many rural places in Jiangsu and Guangdong (even in rural regions of Beijing & Shanghai).
Education there should be overhauled.

Congrats to SG again.
It is the benchmark of all the Chinese-speaking regions around the world.
 
Last edited:
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Vietnam is ahead of UK, France and the US in both math and science. Not too bad.

Surprisingly, we are ahead of China mainland in science.
Vietnam always does well, not only in PISA, but also in Global Hunger Index, GINI coefficient, etc.. She outperforms all countries at the same level of economic development.

we slip in the ranking in math and reading, far behind the top 10. Singapore is the benchmark. as always.
Everything's going to be just fine. After all, Vietnam is not as rich and urbanized as Singapore.
I believe Vietnam will dominate the PISA when she is a high income country.
YBID5X[XVT%FHBCYYY(]26U.gif
 
. . .
government expenditure

-1x-1.png


High Education investment + East Asian genetics, based on the fundamental principle of Meritocracy(i have elaborated on this crucial factor countless times in other threads already)

= high IQ

Education is the key to intelligence.

One is never too old to study.

Even my 73 year old older colleague is currently undertaking a security management course.
 
Last edited:
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Vietnam always does well, not only in PISA, but also in Global Hunger Index, GINI coefficient, etc.. She outperforms all countries at the same level of economic development.


Everything's going to be just fine. After all, Vietnam is not as rich and urbanized as Singapore.
I believe Vietnam will dominate the PISA when she is a high income country.
View attachment 358184
Yes considering the little money Vietnam spends on education, I believe too, we should reach the top 10 in a decade.
 
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Pisa tests: Singapore top in global education rankings
By Sean CoughlanEducation correspondent
_92840088_singapore1.jpg

Image copyright NTU
Image caption Singapore has been ranked as having the highest-achieving schools
Singapore has the highest achieving students in international education rankings, with its teenagers coming top in tests in maths, reading and science.


The influential Pisa rankings, run by the OECD, are based on tests taken by 15-year-olds in more than 70 countries.

The UK remains a middle-ranking performer - behind countries such as Japan, Estonia, Finland and Vietnam.

OECD education director Andreas Schleicher said Singapore was "not only doing well, but getting further ahead".

Singapore, named as the top rated country for maths and science in another ranking last week, is in first place in all the Pisa test subjects, ahead of school systems across Europe, north and south America.

What is Pisa? In three sentences

The Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) provides education rankings based on international tests taken by 15-year-olds in maths, reading and science.

The tests, run by the OECD and taken every three years, have become increasingly influential on politicians who see their countries and their policies being measured against these global school league tables.

Asian countries continue to dominate, with Singapore rated as best, replacing Shanghai, which is now part of a combined entry for China.

Singapore has replaced Shanghai as the previous top-ranked education system - with Shanghai no longer appearing as a separate entry in these school rankings.

There had been debate over whether Shanghai was representative of school standards across China - and this year, for the first time, Shanghai is included in a wider figure for China, based on schools in four provinces.

_92848581_reading_maths_800.png


This combined Chinese ranking is in the top 10 for maths and science, but does not make the top 20 for reading.

Hong Kong and Macao also appear among the high-achieving education systems.

The US has again failed to make progress.

"We're losing ground - a troubling prospect when, in today's knowledge-based economy, the best jobs can go anywhere in the world,'' said the US Education Secretary, John King.

Asian countries on top

Asian education systems dominate the upper reaches of the these results tables - accounting for the top seven places for maths, with Singapore followed by Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Japan, China and South Korea.

_92838710_013473187.jpg

Image copyright PA
Image caption The UK's test results remain behind the top-performing Asian education systems


Finland, Estonia and Ireland are the only non-Asian nations to get into any of the top five rankings across all three subjects.

Mr Schleicher said that Asian countries such as Singapore managed to achieve excellence without wide differences between children from wealthy and disadvantaged families.

He described Vietnam's progress as "quite remarkable", coming ahead of Germany and Switzerland in science - and ahead of the US in science and maths.

_92838702_schleicher.jpg

Image caption Andreas Schleicher says Singapore has high results without a big gap between rich and poor
Among South American countries, Mr Schleicher highlighted the improvements in Peru and Colombia.


But the UK has failed to make any substantial improvement - despite education ministers in England making the Pisa rankings an important measurement of progress.
  • In maths, the UK is ranked 27th, slipping down a place from three years ago, the lowest since it began participating in the Pisa tests in 2000
  • In reading, the UK is ranked 22nd, up from 23rd, having fallen out of the top 20 in 2006
  • The UK's most successful subject is science, up from 21st to 15th place - the highest placing since 2006, although the test score has declined
Within the UK, Wales had the lowest results at every subject.

Education Secretary Kirsty Williams said: "We can all agree we are not yet where we want to be."

But she said that "hard work is underway" to make improvements in Wales - and that it was important to "stay the course".

Scotland trails behind England and Northern Ireland - recording its worst results in these Pisa rankings.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said the "results underline the case for radical reform of Scotland's education system".

England had the strongest results in the UK, but compared with previous years, Mr Schleicher said "performance hasn't moved at all".

The OECD education chief highlighted concerns about the impact of teacher shortages - saying that an education system could never exceed the quality of its teachers.

"There is clearly a perceived shortage," he said, warning that head teachers saw a teacher shortage as "a major bottleneck" to raising standards.

So why is Singapore so successful at education?

Singapore only became an independent country in 1965.

And while in the UK the Beatles were singing We Can Work It Out, in Singapore they were really having to work it out, as this new nation had a poor, unskilled, mostly illiterate workforce.

_92840092_singapore2.jpg

Image copyright NTU SINGAPORE
Image caption Singapore made a priority of recruiting top graduates into teaching
The small Asian country focused relentlessly on education as a way of developing its economy and raising living standards.

And from being among the world's poorest, with a mix of ethnicities, religions and languages, Singapore has overtaken the wealthiest countries in Europe, North America and Asia to become the number one in education.

Prof Sing Kong Lee, vice-president of Nanyang Technological University, which houses Singapore's National Institute of Education, said a key factor had been the standard of teaching.

"Singapore invested heavily in a quality teaching force - to raise up the prestige and status of teaching and to attract the best graduates," said Prof Lee.

The country recruits its teachers from the top 5% of graduates in a system that is highly centralised.

All teachers are trained at the National Institute of Education, and Prof Lee said this single route ensured quality control and that all new teachers could "confidently go through to the classroom".

This had to be a consistent, long-term approach, sustained over decades, said Prof Lee.

Education was an "eco-system", he said, and "you can't change one part in isolation".
 
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