Dubai: Fifteen-year old students in the UAE have shown remarkable improvement in an international educational assessment test but it is not enough to raise their rank to meet average results of their counterparts in other countries.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 results were announced by the Ministry of Education at their headquarters yesterday.
The results revealed that out of the 65 participating countries, the UAE ranked 48 (434 points) in math, 44 (442 points) in reading and 46 (448 points) in science.
Although the scores show that the UAE remains below the 500 point international average, the Minister of Education, Humaid Mohammad Al Qutami said that the UAE is proud of the PISA 2012 results.
“The results this year were remarkable, we were able to see tangible improvements in the student’s performance in comparison to PISA 2009, as the UAE was one of the only six countries to show a big improvement in scores,” said Al Qutami.
In comparison to 2009, these results showed that the UAE improved in math by 13 points, reading by 10 points and science by 11 points.
“The UAE was also found to be the highest performing Arab country and we were able to beat 17 other countries, which is further proof of our success in PISA 2012,” he added.
The assessment test was taken by 11,500 UAE students from 365 schools across the UAE. Fifty per cent of the participants were Emirati. Dubai had the highest number of participants with 43 per cent.
PISA is an international assessment conducted every three years by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to evaluate the education systems by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in reading, science and mathematics.
In PISA 2012, problems solving was also introduced for the first time. The UAE ranked 40 among the 44 participants with a score of 411.
Female students shine
In both rounds of PISA, females considerably outperformed males in all domains except math were no substantial difference was observed.
In PISA 2012, females significantly beat males in reading, scoring 56 points higher. The lowest skill for both males and females at age 15 was found to be in problem solving.
Aisha Al Merri, Director of the Evaluation and Examination Department at the ministry said that the results of PISA 2012 will help student’s performance in future tests.
“We have already started preparing for PISA 2015. The ministry will commence an extensive programme to extract information from the results we already have to help prepare and improve our student’s performance,” she added.
Students in China, Korea and Singapore were found to have the highest skill levels in PISA 2012. The UAE outperformed Brazil, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Montenegro, Qatar and Tunisia.
With input from Alicherry Nihitha, intern at Gulf News
