Asia, with Singapore in the lead, stands out once again in the latest OECD Pisa 2022 education survey. A study marked by an “unprecedented drop” in student performance after the Covid crisis, including in France.
The latest version of the Pisa study, published this Tuesday, has been surveying the performance of education systems since 2000, through the skills in science, mathematics and reading comprehension of 15-year-old students. The exercises were submitted in 2022 to 690,000 young people from 81 countries and territories.
As for the previous edition, where four Chinese metropolises and provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, which were unable to participate this time) came first, several Asian countries are among the best students.
Singapore is well ahead in mathematicsscience and reading, as in 2016.
It is followed by Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea in maths. “We continue to have Asian countries, and particularly in mathematics, which really dominate the first performances”explains Eric Charbonnier, education specialist at the OECD.
Main highlight of this 2022 edition: the results “show an unprecedented drop in student performance in the history of Pisa”underlines the OECD.
“In mathematics, the average for OECD countries has fallen by 15 points compared to 2018, while the difference between each cycle had never exceeded four points before. In reading comprehension, the drop is 10 points in the OECD average”and results in science have remained stable, details Irène Hu, OECD analyst.
In particular to explain the “dramatic fall” performance: the Covid crisis, which “of course has an impact on what we observe” and has been “an accelerator of a decline in performance”, indicates Eric Charbonnier.
Strong inequalities in France
But, tempers the expert, “we shouldn’t blame everything on Covid either” because “there was already a downward trend for around ten years” overall, and “we have not seen a direct link between school closures and performance.”
France, as in 2018, is in the average of OECD countries, “at a level comparable to that of Spain, Hungary and Lithuania in all three subjects”notes Irène Hu.
France is ranked 22nd in maths, 24th in reading comprehension and 22nd in science among the 38 OECD countries (statistically “between 15th and 29th place in mathematics and sciences” and “between 11th and 29th” in reading, according to the OECD).
But its results are “among the lowest ever measured”, according to the OECD. In mathematics, between 2018 and 2022 it experiences “a historic drop in the level of students”, underlines Eric Charbonnier.
Characterized by a very strong weight of social origin in student successFrance also remains “one of the OECD countries where the link between the socio-economic status of students and the performance they obtain in Pisa is the strongest”but “without significant worsening” between 2012 and 2022, indicates the OECD.
Other European countries, such as Germany – which had made a spectacular recovery since 2000, known as the “Pisa shock” -, Finland, where inequalities between girls and boys are widening, or Norway, are experiencing greater declines than France in mathematics.
But “this drop in performance is not a global inevitability either, since some countries have managed to limit it”or even “maintain” performance as in Switzerland or Korea or to increase it as in Japan”, analyzes Irène Hu.
In addition to Covid, other factors are put forward by the OECD to explain the drop in results: the crisis in the attractiveness of the teaching profession, which is affecting more and more countries, the lack of support for teachers and students , or even parental involvement, less strong than in 2018.
