ACER Releases United Arab Emirates Results of PISA 2009+ Participant Economies

MELBOURNE, Australia - Friday, December 16th 2011 [ME NewsWire]

-(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) this morning released the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009+ results for ten economies.

PISA is an international comparative survey of 15-year-olds’ knowledge and skills in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy, conducted by ACER. It measures how well young adults have acquired the knowledge and skills that are required to function as successful members of society.

Sixty-four economies originally participated in PISA 2009. Ten additional partner participants, who were unable to participate within the PISA 2009 project timeframe, participated in the PISA 2009 study on a reduced and delayed timeline in 2010. This is known as the PISA 2009+ project.

The PISA 2009+ economies are: Costa Rica, Georgia, India (Himachal Pradesh & Tamil Nadu), Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Venezuela (Miranda), Moldova, United Arab Emirates. PISA 2009+ involved testing just over 46 000 students across these ten economies, representing a total of about 1 377 000 15-year-olds.

ACER CEO, Professor Geoff Masters, said the results found that in the PISA 2009+ economies, girls significantly outperformed boys in reading (reflecting the PISA 2009 results).

“Girls not only tended to attain higher reading scores than boys, they were also more aware of strategies for understanding, remembering and summarising information,” Professor Masters said.

“Students who are highly aware of effective strategies for learning who also regularly read a wide range of material, tend to demonstrate better reading proficiency than those who either have a lower awareness of effective strategies or read a narrower range of materials regularly.”

Professor Masters said that while school level factors account for a considerable proportion of variation in reading performance between schools, much of this is associated with socioeconomic and demographic factors.

“This suggests that policies around governance, accountability, the investment of educational resources and the overall learning environment are influenced by the social and demographic intake of the school,” Professor Masters said.

“Schools containing students with higher socioeconomic backgrounds, tend to be more autonomous in their decision about curriculum, make more of assessments for accountability purposes, have better student-teacher relationships, and utilise more educational resources. Students attending these schools have better educational outcomes.”

The results also showed both girls and boys from the PISA 2009+ nations had results in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy that were lower than the OECD average.

The results reveal the following highlights for The United Arab Emirates:

Dubai participated as a separate economy in PISA 2009. The remaining emirates of the United Arab Emirates participated in PISA 2009+. Dubai’s data were merged with that of the remaining emirates and they are reported as a single entity: the United Arab Emirates.
Students in the United Arab Emirates attained an average score on the PISA reading literacy scale, the same as that observed in one OECD country, Mexico. It is also equivalent to those observed in Bulgaria, Miranda-Venezuela, Romania and Uruguay.
60% of students in the United Arab Emirates are estimated to have a proficiency in reading literacy that is at or above the baseline needed to participate effectively and productively in life. This compares to 81% in the OECD countries, on average.
Students in the United Arab Emirates attained an average score on the PISA mathematical literacy scale that is statistically the same as those observed in the two lowest performing OECD countries, Chile and Mexico. In the United Arab Emirates, 49% of students are proficient in mathematics at least to the baseline level at which they begin to demonstrate the kind of skills that enable them to use mathematics in ways that are considered fundamental for their future development. In the United Arab Emirates, there was a statistically significant gender difference in mathematical literacy, favouring girls.
Students in the United Arab Emirates were estimated to have an average score on the scientific literacy scale that was significantly higher than that estimated for the lowest scoring OECD country, Mexico.
In the United Arab Emirates, 61% of students are proficient in science at least to the baseline level at which they begin to demonstrate the science competencies that will enable them to participate actively in life situations related to science and technology. This compares to 82% in the OECD countries, on average.
In the United Arab Emirates, there was a statistically significant gender difference in scientific literacy, favouring girls. This gender gap was the largest observed in scientific literacy among all PISA 2009 and PISA 2009+ participants, along with those observed in Jordan and Malta.

To download the PISA 2009+ report, go to: https://mypisa.acer.edu.au/

Contacts

Australian Council for Educational Research

Petros Kosmopoulos, +61 3 9277 5582

Mobile: +61 417 754 570

communications@acer.edu.au