KUALA LUMPUR – A closer look at Malaysia’s results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2022 reveals concerns in the country’s education system, including poor performance by boys, and a shortage of teaching staff.
While the Pisa 2022 report, released yesterday, highlighted a drop in overall performance by Malaysian 15-year-olds in mathematics, reading and science compared to 2018, details show that girls have been outperforming boys in the first two domains.
“Girls outperformed boys in mathematics by 10 score points and in reading by 31 score points in Malaysia,” the report stated.
Among low performers in mathematics, Malaysian boys held a larger share, at 63%. But among top performers in this subject, both boys and girls were equal at 1% each.
Boys also held a larger share among low performers in reading, at 66%.
This 66% scored below Level 2 in reading, which is the level where students can identify the main idea of a text of moderate length, find information within the text, and can also reflect on the purpose and form of the text.
Teacher shortage
Compared to when the previous Pisa evaluation was held in 2018, teacher shortages were reportedly worse in 2022.
The 2022 report found that 24% of students in Malaysia were in schools whose principals said that their school’s “capacity to provide instruction is hindered by a lack of teaching staff.”
Additionally, 22% also reported “inadequate or poorly qualified teaching staff.”
In the 2018 evaluation, only 7% reported teacher shortages and 13% cited inadequate or poorly qualified teaching staff.
Despite teaching challenges, 70% of Malaysian students in the Pisa 2022 survey said that their mathematics teacher “showed an interest in student’s learning”.
This is was higher than the average of 63% among the 81 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries that participated in the survey.
Additionally, 80% of students said that their mathematics teacher gave them extra help when they needed it, compared to the OECD average of 70%.
Malaysia’s performance in the Pisa 2022 survey dropped from 2018, with students scoring 388 for reading, compared to 415 in 2018; 409 in mathematics (440 in 2018); and 416 in science (438 in 2018).
Other countries in the survey also registered a drop in performance, with lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022) cited as a key reason. – December 6, 2023