Dubai: The grades of thousands of students, who sat for the final international assessment tests on Thursday will determine if the UAE National Agenda goals have been met.
The tests, which started on Monday and came to an end Thursday, saw the participation of 54,762 students from 317 public schools and private schools that follow the ministry curriculum, the Ministry of Education announced.
The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), which monitors private schools in Dubai, on the other hand said around 18,000 private students took the exams.
The wait now begins to see if students’ rankings have improved in keeping with the goals of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
In 2014, Shaikh Mohammad announced the UAE National Agenda has two main objectives regarding the UAE’s ranking in international assessments tests — to be among the top 20 highest performing countries in PISA (Programme for International Students Assessment) and among the top 15 in TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), by the year 2021.
Khawla Al Mualla, assistant undersecretary for educational policies at the ministry said these tests are significant because the ministry adopted them to measure the performance of their students, teaching staff and even the effectiveness of their curriculum.
“They are also important because they help us see how students are doing in comparison to others across the world. The tests measure their performance in core subjects such as reading and writing (through the PISA test) as well as math and science, through TIMSS.”
The KHDA on the other hand said a total of 5,840 students sat for the PISA exams and 6,800 grade four students and 5,400 grade eight students took TIMSS exams.
Meeting the UAE’s national agenda goals can be challenging because their performance in the last international assessment tests was below the international average.
The PISA exams, which are taken every three years- 2012 results showed 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. The UAE remains below the 500 point international average.
