KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 15 — Only 1.3 per cent of Malaysian students are absorbing knowledge as shown in global benchmark test scores over the past decade and Putrajaya must hasten a revision of the education system if it hopes to reverse this slide, the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang said today.

The opposition leader pointed to the recent deteriorating test scores in math and science in two key education assessments for 15-year-olds worldwide, and noted that a larger number of Malaysian students have been performing worse over the years than when the country first joined in the benchmarks.

“What is most disturbing from the 2012 PISA results is that more than half of Malaysian students (51.8 per cent) do not reach basic proficiency levels in Mathematics, i.e. ‘low performers below Level 2’ in 2012 PISA and only 1.3 per cent of the students are ‘top performers’ (at Level 5 or 6 in 2012 PISA),” he said in a statement, referring to the Programme for International Student Assessment.

“These 2012 PISA figures do not tally with the local data as according to the 2012 Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR), the failure rate for maths is only 6.3 per cent as compared to the 51.8 per cent in 2012 PISA,” he added, contrasting the global benchmark against the domestic nationwide assessment for 15-year-olds.

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Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and his ministry officials must explain the discrepancy, Lim said, and urged for “genuine educational transformation to ensure that the objective of our education system is ‘educational excellence for all students’ and not just for 1.3 per cent of the student population with over 51 per cent failures”.

In contrast, the countries that topped the assessment tests have seen significant growth to their number of top-performing students, he said.

He named Shanghai, China where 55.4 per cent of its student population has aced the math test as an example, followed by Singapore at 40 per cent, Taiwan (37.2 per cent), Hong Kong (33.7 per cent) and South Korea (30.9 per cent).

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Lim noted that the increase was not limited to the Far East countries as between 15 and 25 per cent of students in Western nations like Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland also grew their base of top-performers.

The 2012 PISA assessed 510,000 students between the ages of 15 years, three months and 16 years, two months in 65 participating countries.

This is the second time Malaysia has been included in the survey that first began tracking students worldwide on the three subjects in 2000. 

Malaysia has also participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which has also recorded dismal scores for its students over the years, except for twice.

In the 1999 TIMSS, Malaysia’s scores on both Mathematics and Science (519 and 492 respectively) were above in the international average, which placed it 16th out of 38 countries in Mathematics and 22 in Science.

In the 2003 TIMSS, Malaysia scored a similar result, in which both the national average for math and science was above the international average, earning the country an improved ranking of 10 out of 45 nations for that year.