Brussels, 08/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - The results of the latest PISA (the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment) show a slight improvement in the educational systems of the EU for the criteria analysed compared to 2006, particularly as regards reading comprehension. Finland came third behind Shanghai (China) and Korea. The PISA study is an excellent barometer to assess the health of the European education systems compared to those of the developed world, allowing the member states precisely to define the criteria they need to work on to aim for excellence. “By exposing weaknesses in education systems and illustrating what could work, the survey can help us to raise our game in Europe. It is clear that by investing in education and making better use of resources, the best performers are securing their future economic growth”, said Education Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou.
PISA is a survey which is carried out every three years on 15-year-olds in 30 member countries of the OECD and 27 partner countries. It assesses the acquisition of essential knowledge and skills at the end of compulsory schooling. The tests are in reading, mathematics and sciences. The education ministers of the EU set much store by the PISA results, because it makes it possible to see where a country is compared to the other education systems and, above all, to assess the level of the students as regards their skills in reading, maths and sciences. The strategic framework for European cooperation in educational matters has the aim of bringing the number of people with insufficient basic skills, especially in reading, maths and sciences, to a level below 15% by 2020, as part of the education priorities to feed into the EUROPE 2020 strategy.
Excellent results for Finland. The Commission particularly welcome the excellent results achieved by Finland in the PISA study, confirming that Europe can aspire to excellence. However, much remains to be done overall to guarantee the best level of schooling possible for all children. This is a particularly big challenge given the emergence of new areas of excellence in Asia. Nonetheless, PISA shows encouraging results for a number of European countries, particularly Poland, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Romania and Bulgaria, which have all improved their level from 2006.
Major disparities between member states. These encouraging results cannot, however, hide the gulf which persists between the systems, schools and levels of the students from one country to the next. Even though the proportion of students obtaining poor results in terms of mastery of their mother tongue is slowly falling, this proportion is still too high and differs greatly between member states, with the lowest level at 10% and the highest at 40%.
Towards inclusive education and top-quality programmes. The results of Finland and the other top countries show that policies which promote inclusive education may also have a positive effect on the general objectives in terms of education, the Commission stresses. They also show that investing in high-quality study programmes and teacher training can significantly improve our schools' performances.
Overall, the PISA survey shows that: 1) Shanghai/China, Finland, Korea, Hong Kong/China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan achieved the best performances; 2) Shanghai, which took part in the assessment for the first time, came top of the class in terms of reading comprehension. Additionally, more than 25% of young people from this region showed advanced ability in mathematics, compared to 3% for the countries of the OECD overall; 3) some countries made considerable progress in reading comprehension, particularly Chile, Israel and Poland, but also Portugal, Korea, Hungary and Germany; 4) in mathematics, Mexico, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Germany have seen rapid improvements; 5) for sciences, the results improved the most in Turkey, Portugal, Korea, Italy, Norway, the United States and Poland; 6) girls tend to read better than boys in all countries. This gap has not closed since 2006 and has even widened in a number of countries; 7) the best school systems are also the fairest (students obtain good results irrespective of their socio-economic background); the best systems make teacher salaries a priority, along with reducing class size; 8) the best-performing systems are those which allow schools to develop their own programmes and define their own evaluation policies; 9) schools which apply strict discipline with good teacher and pupil relations get the best results in reading comprehension; 10) public and private schools get similar results; 11) autonomy at a local level and effective responsabilisation give the best results. (I.L./transl.fl)