KUALA LUMPUR, May 14 ― Putrajaya must acknowledge the weaknesses in the current education system and move towards an immediate review, a DAP lawmaker said today after Malaysia's poor ranking in a new study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The study, based on 15-year-old students' test scores in mathematics and science, ranked Malaysia 52nd out of 76 countries, several rungs behind Thailand (47), Kazakhstan (49) and Iran (51).
Singapore was ranked first, followed by Hong Kong and South Korea while Japan and Taiwan were joint-fourth, in an Asian dominance of the top five spots in the study.
Serdang MP Dr Ong Kian Ming said the findings by OECD should send a strong signal to the Education Ministry that Malaysia is far from having a "world-class" education, and that federal ministers should not state otherwise.
"Top 5 in OECD rankings in Science and Math are Asian countries but Malaysia languishes in 52nd position ― Are we still world class?
"In the case of Malaysia, if our policymakers do not acknowledge the weaknesses in our current education system, we may even fall further behind our Asian neighbours and continue to lose out in terms of our economic competitiveness," Ong said in a statement.
The DAP man said that the federal government should use Sweden as an example, where its government had asked the OECD to review its education system in 2014 after it had experienced a sharp decline in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) starting from 2000.
"The lesson of Sweden should be a lesson to our Ministers. Sweden used to have one of the better education systems among OECD countries but experienced a sharp decline in its PISA and TIMSS scores from 2000 onwards.
"In this latest OECD rankings, Sweden came in at the 35th position, one of the lowest ranked OECD countries," Ong added.
The OECD study was aimed at providing a wider global representation of education standards compared to OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and is expected to be formally presented at the World Education Forum in South Korea next week.
In the 2012 edition of the PISA, Malaysia ranked 52nd overall out of 65 countries due to a dip in reading ability and science.
Reading ability fell the most, plunging to an average of 398 in the 2012. Malaysian students in the previous edition had recorded a score of 414, while the current OECD average was 496.
Science scores saw a minor decline versus the older findings, with Malaysians getting an average of 420 marks against the 422 that the batch three years ago managed; students in the 34 OECD countries received an average of 501.
Malaysian students recorded an average score of 421 in mathematics, a slight improvement from the 404 they scored in the PISA 2009+ edition, but still far below the 494 mean score for OECD countries.
Last March, Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin admitted that Malaysia's education system is "not that good", but stressed that it will take at least several years before any improvements will yield results.
His statement was a departure from Putrajaya's repeated declarations that Malaysian universities were among the best in the world despite consistently falling out of global rankings.
