Korean students ranked top in reading, math

Korean students ranked top in reading, math

By Kang Shin-who South Korean students ranked top in reading and mathematics in a worldwide evaluation of scholastic performances among OECD countries. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said Tuesday Korean students outperformed their international peers in the two sections of the OECD-administered Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009. The PISA, taken by 15-year-olds every three years, was developed by participating OECD economies and is regarded as an internationally standardized assessment. In 2006, Korean students also claimed first place in reading and mathematics. Last year, the program administer tested some 470,000 middle or high school students in reading, mathematics and science from 65 countries including 31 non-OECD nations around the world. In the science section, South Korea ranked third, following Finland and Japan. “The outcome shows that our students are outperforming their peers, though they did not claim the top spot in the science section,” said Kim Kyung-hee, PISA national project manager at KICE. “The OECD picked Korea as an exemplary country as it has steadily shown outstanding performances,” she added. The OECD said Korea’s experience demonstrates that even at the highest performance level further improvements are possible. “Despite the country’s strong performance in PISA 2000, Korean policymakers considered that students’ skills needed further improvement to meet the changing demands of an internationally competitive labor market,” it said. Korea took sample tests from 5,000 students for the evaluation from 157 schools and gained an average score of 539 in the reading section and 546 in mathematics, much higher than average of OECD countries, 493 and 496, respectively. The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE), the nation’s agency managing PISA, said approximately 900 scores could be regarded as perfect, although there are no maximum scores in any of the three sections. In the reading section, Finland came next with a score of 536, followed by Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia among OECD countries. In math, Finland ranked second with a score of 541, followed by Switzerland, Japan and Canada. In 2006, Korea ranked third in science with a score of 538, following Finland with 554 and Japan with 539. The OECD countries averaged 501 in this field. kswho@koreatimes.co.kr

kswho@koreatimes.co.