19, Jan 2012

The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is an international comparative study that began in the year 2000. It aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students from participating countries/economies. Since the year 2000 over 70 countries and economies have participated in PISA to demonstrate their skills in reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy. PISA seeks to measure how well young adults have acquired the knowledge and skills that are required to function as successful members of society. A major goal of PISA is to identify and understand the factors that are associated with educational outcomes and to guide governments in constructing policies that improve these outcomes.

The recently released results, however, brought disappointing news for India. PISA 2009 results are a harsh commentary on the Indian educational system. Take the following question as an example:

Do our teeth become cleaner and cleaner the longer and harder we brush them?
This question was to be answered based on the following two small paragraphs that quoted a dental expert commenting on the right way to brush your teeth.

Only 53 percent students from Himachal Pradesh and 63 percent from Tamil Nadu were able to answer correctly the PISA 2009 plus exams, held last year by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), where India participated for the first time as an additional participant. Although Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are among India’s best-performing States, very few 15-year-olds could fully understand the two simple paragraphs.

In this simple reading item, girls significantly outperformed boys. The overall results were very discouraging, with Indian students trailing so far behind that they beat candidates from just one other country — Kyrgyzstan.

Tamil Nadu attained an average score on the reading literacy scale, a score that is significantly higher than that for Himachal Pradesh. While 17 percent of students in Tamil Nadu exhibited proficiency in reading literacy to participate effectively and productively in life, the corresponding figure for Himachal Pradesh is only 11 percent.

On the mathematical literacy scale, students in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu attained a statistically same average score of 12 and 15 percent respectively. This particular score reflects the proportion of students who are proficient in mathematics at least on the baseline level at which they begin to demonstrate the kind of skills that enable them to use mathematics in ways that are considered fundamental for their future development.

In Tamil Nadu, there was a statistically significant gender difference in scientific literacy, with girls doing much better than the boys. According to Professor Geoff Masters, CEO of ACER, “Girls not only tended to attain higher reading scores than boys, they were also more aware of strategies for understanding, remembering and summarizing information.” In Himachal Pradesh, however, the gender difference was less pronounced. These scores need to be understood in a context wherein 84 percent of the students in Tamil Nadu were not proficient enough in science at levels at which they begin to exhibit the science competencies that enable active participation in life situations related to science and technology.

As part of the PISA 2009 survey, students completed an assessment that tested their literacy in reading, mathematics, and science, as well as an extensive background questionnaire. School principals also completed a survey describing the context of education at their school, including the level of resources in the school and qualifications of staff.

“Students, who are highly aware of effective strategies for learning and also regularly read a wide range of material, tend to demonstrate better reading proficiency than those who either have a lower awareness of effective strategies or read a narrower range of materials regularly.” Professor Masters said, adding that although school-level factors account for a considerable proportion of variation in reading performance between schools, much of this is associated with socioeconomic and demographic factors.  “This suggests that policies around governance, accountability, the investment of educational resources and the overall learning environment are influenced by the social and demographic intake of the school,” Professor Masters said.