India chickens out of international students assessment programme again
MUMBAI: After an embarrassing show in 2009, India has backed out of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) slated for 2015. The programme is a global evaluation process by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) secretariat that gauges where schoolchildren stand alongside their peers from other countries.
This academic Olympics measures the performance of 15 year olds in reading, math and science. Indians were put to test for the first time in 2009. On the global stage, they stood second last among 73 countries, only beating Kyrgyzstan. India had also stayed away from the evaluation round in 2012.
This time around, sources said India shied away from the assessment as government officials felt our children were not prepared for such a test.
"Unfortunately, India hasn't signed up for PISA 2015, and didn't participate in the PISA 2012 round either," said Juliet Evans, who handles communication and administration for the PISA Secretariat. "India didn't sign up for the PISA 2012 assessment because when countries were asked to sign up for that assessment, India had only signed up for the PISA 2009 assessment, which it carried out a year later," she said.
Unlike India, several other countries like Costa Rica, Malaysia, Georgia and the UAE who had carried out the PISA evaluation in 2010 have signed up for the upcoming assessment. In the last assessment,
Tamil Nadu and
Himachal Pradesh were put through the PISA evaluation, but they performed miserably. The idea was that the entire country would participate in the next round of assessment but now that plan has also been dropped.
The assessment is based on two-hour tests that half a million students are put through. China's Shanghai province, which participated in PISA for the first time like the two Indian states, scored the highest in reading. It also topped the charts in math and science. "More than one-quarter of Shanghai's 15-year-olds demonstrated advanced mathematical thinking skills to solve complex problems, compared to an
OECD average of just 3%," noted the analysis.
In math, considered India's strong point, the states finished second and third last, beating only Kyrgyzstan; the English test threw up the same result. Girls were better than boys and science results were the worst, where Himachal stood last. TN was slightly better and finished third from bottom. The average 15-year old Indian is over 200 points behind the global topper.
Experts estimate that an Indian class VIII student is at the same level as a South Korean class III student in math abilities or a class II student from Shanghai when it comes to reading skills.
What is PISA?
PISA, or the Programme for International Student Assessment, evaluates education systems in 70 countries by testing the academic abilities of 15-year-old students in each country. Skills and knowledge that students have acquired at the end of compulsory education in reading, math, problem solving and scientific literacy are tested.
India chickens out of international students assessment programme again - Times Of India
