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Asian Nations Score Top Grades Worldwide
Students in China, Singapore, Macao, Estonia, Japan, Finland, Korea, Canada and Hong Kong are among those who eclipse U.S. students in reading, math and science, according to an international study of education worldwide.
In a snapshot of the abilities of 15-year-old students in the subjects of reading, math and science, pupils in four provinces in China — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang — outperformed their peers in mathematics and science “by a wide margin,” according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).
Students in the four provinces also topped reading scores, with only those in Singapore coming close.
Asian nations took the top seven slots in math. Following the combined four provinces in China were Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan and Korea. Estonia, the Netherlands and Poland rounded out the top 10. The U.S. ranked 37th, behind such countries as Canada, Sweden, the U.K., Germany, France, Australia, Russia, Italy and Hungary.
In science, the four provinces again excelled, followed by Singapore, Macao, Estonia, Japan, Finland, Korea, Canada, Hong Kong and Taipei to round out the top 10. The U.S. ranked 18th.
“What makes their achievement even more remarkable is that the level of income of these four Chinese regions is well below the average” of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, the report stated, meaning they were not among the wealthiest.
‘Socio-economically advantaged students’
OECD is a 36-member economic organization that works “to shape policies that foster prosperity, equality, opportunity and well-being for all,” and is headquartered in Paris. Most of the members are developed nations in Europe and North America, and include Australia, Chile, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand and Turkey.
The report noted that “socio-economically advantaged students,” or those from wealthy countries, generally perform better than disadvantaged students. The 10% most wealthy students outperformed the 10% most disadvantaged students in reading by 141 score points, the report said.
However, in 2018, more than 10 million students in 79 high- and middle-income OECD countries, according to PISA statistics, were unable to complete even the most basic reading tasks.
The report also found that while spending increased by 15 percent in OECD countries in the past decade, “there has also been no real overall improvement in the learning outcomes of [their] students.”
The highest-scoring students in four Chinese provinces of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang — or about 180 million students — were also among the 10 percent most disadvantaged students. These students showed “better reading skills than those of the average student in OECD countries,” the report found.
Some countries, such as Albania, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Uruguay, increased enrollment rates in secondary education while maintaining or improving reading, mathematics and science performance, the report said, adding, “This shows that the quality of education does not have to be sacrificed when increasing access to schooling.”
PISA said Turkey, while not showing a huge change in student performance between 2003-2018, touted the country’s ability to double the number of 15-year-olds in school during that period, increasing rolls from 36% to 73%.
The PISA report confirmed a “positive relationship between investment in education and average performance,” but found a threshold of $50,000 in cumulative expenditure per student from age 6 to 15.
“After that threshold, there is almost no relationship between the amount invested in education and student performance,” the report said.
It pointed to the $65,000 per year similarly spent by Estonia and neighboring Latvia in primary and lower secondary education: Estonia scores more than 40 points above Latvia in reading. Likewise, Australia, the U.K. and U.S. spend more than $107,000 on average per student per year, but score “no better than” or below Canada, Ireland and New Zealand, which spend between 10% and 30% less.
Quality vs. quantity
Quality of learning proves better than quantity, the report stated.
“In Finland, the country where students spend the least (amount of) time learning, student performance is comparatively high, whereas in the United Arab Emirates, the country with the longest study hours, learning outcomes are comparatively poor,” the report found.
It also noted the importance of “academic resilience” of immigrant students. More than 30 percent of immigrant students in Brunei Darussalam, Jordan, Panama, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates scored in the top quarter of reading performance, it stated.
“These successes do not come about by chance. … Support from parents, a positive school climate and having a growth mindset” were contributing factors, it said.
Wealth, too, no longer guarantees successful scores and students.
“The world is no longer divided between rich and well-educated nations, and poor and badly educated ones,” the report found. “When comparing countries that score similarly in PISA, their income levels vary widely. History shows that countries with the determination to build a first-class education system can achieve this even in adverse economic circumstances, and their schools today will be their economy and society tomorrow.”
The PISA report issued a warning for the rapid expansion of digital information and students’ ability to discern between fact and fiction.
With fewer than 5% of students in the PISA study having access to the internet at home, the report found that “fewer than 1 in 10 students in OECD countries (were) able to distinguish between fact and opinion.”
“When reading online blogs, forums or news sites, readers must constantly assess the quality and reliability of the information, based on implicit or explicit cues related to the content, format or source of the text,” the report found. “Education has won the race with technology throughout history, but there is no guarantee that it will do so in the future.”
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
