Test Scores Are Dropping Around The World As Families Lose Interest In Their Kids’ Education
According to newly released standardized test results taken by 15-year-olds around the world, test scores are continuing to plunge, while families’ interest in their kids’ education is also decreasing in many high-income countries.
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) was taken by more than 760,000 teenagers in dozens of countries last year. The results were released this week and showed that the average scores in math, reading, and science are at their lowest point in PISA history among the nations with some of the most developed economies.
The US specifically has seen a continuous decline in their reading and math scores. China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea scored the highest marks on the test with Estonia, the UK, and New Zealand also scoring high, according to reports from the Associated Press.
There are a multitude of reasons as to why test scores are falling so much around the world, and thanks to an accompanying survey taken by the students, we have a greater insight into why this is happening.
When compared to the 2022 PISA results, almost every nation saw a decline in family support for their kids’ education, which was measured by questions about how often parents talk to their kids about their schoolwork, classes, projects, and learning in general.
“Parents see themselves more as a client of the school, not as someone who takes personal interest,” said Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs the PISA test.
The results showed that students who claimed a family member asked them at least weekly about what they did in school that day scored around 35 points higher on the PISA science test, compared with students whose family took less interest.
One of the other factors is the distraction of technology. Over 25% of students in high-income countries complained that their classmates got distracted by digital devices in most or every science class. Countries that have strong policies controlling the use of cellphones in schools, distraction rates were found to be lower.
“There’s undoubtedly a strong association between students using digital devices for leisure and lower test scores,” Schleicher said.
When technology is used in the classroom for educational purposes, the results do differ. In Asia, for example, technology is being used in a way to benefit student learning. Fewer than 10% of the students tested in Japan, Korea, and mainland China complained about digital distraction in school.
Asia also had some of the strongest schools in the world. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and the Chinese provinces ranked among the top 10 regions for math, science, and reading.
Close to 100% of children in the Chinese provinces scored at, or above, baseline for both math and reading. For comparison, in the US only 65% scores at the baseline in math and 74% in reading.
“To win a technological race, you need the people with the science and the technology and the reading capabilities,” said Tracey Burns, chief of global strategy and research at the National Center for Education and the Economy.
The US scores for math were equal to the average among the nations that administered the test, with the nation being in the top 15 in the world for science, reading, and their new category computational problem-solving.
US students reading and math scores, however, reached the lowest point since the early 2000s, when the PISA test was first administered. Overall, researchers said that the US’s results should be “taken with a grain of salt” due to the fact that they didn’t meet the standards for having a large enough sample of schools and students to participate in the test.
One of the biggest issues education systems all over the world are also tackling is the use of artificial intelligence, which has been linked to lower test scores. Students who stated that they never used chatbots performed better than students who did, with almost half of the students in developed economies claiming that they use AI chatbots to help them learn at least once a week.
Schleicher said that China, Japan, Singapore, and Estonia as nations that have succeeded in using AI to “support learning without overusing it.”
He said that in Asia specifically teachers are more empowered to take the lead in designing AI systems for the classroom.
“In the United States, teachers largely implement lessons. In Asia, teachers have a very strong role.”
He also recalled a classroom in China where elementary schoolers were practicing calligraphy with ink and brushes, and then teachers would scan their work using AI to analyze how their handwriting could improve.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
