DFifteen-year-olds in Germany are doing significantly worse in mathematics, reading and science than in 2018. This emerges from the new PISA study, which was presented in Berlin on Tuesday.
About a third of the students tested had very low skills in at least one of the three areas. The proportion of particularly poorly performing young people is shockingly high: around 30 percent in mathematics, around 26 percent in reading and around 23 percent in natural sciences. This confirms a downward trend that was already visible in the previous PISA studies. In mathematics and reading, students only reach the average level of the OECD countries. Only in the natural sciences do their results continue to be higher.
Every three years, the “Program for International Student Assessment” (PISA) examines how well fifteen-year-olds near the end of their compulsory schooling can solve everyday tasks in mathematics, reading and natural sciences. The study, which is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and led in Germany by the Center for International Comparative Education Studies (ZIB) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), was conducted in spring 2022. In many OECD countries, average math and reading skills among young people have fallen compared to the previous PISA study from 2018. This also applies to a lesser extent to scientific competence.
However, the performance losses in Germany are above average in all three areas. The German study director Doris Lewalter, chairwoman of the Center for International Comparative Education Studies (ZIB) at the Technical University of Munich, cited the unfavorable conditions for digital teaching during the pandemic as one of the reasons. But the pandemic is unlikely to be the only reason.
PISA tests were postponed due to the pandemic
The focus of the current study was on mathematical skills, which were already tested in 2013 and 2004. Overall, the 2022 results in all three areas are the lowest scores ever measured by PISA. The difference between the average results from 2018 and 2022 in mathematics and reading corresponds approximately to the learning progress that 15-year-old German students achieve in an entire school year. In mathematics, the performance of particularly strong and weak students deteriorated equally, so that the gap remained the same compared to previous studies. The PISA tests were supposed to take place in 2021, but were postponed by a year due to the corona pandemic.
The number of students who were high achievers (at level 5 or 6) in at least one skill area is approximately the same as the OECD average. However, Germany only has a small top group of just under nine percent. In six Asian countries and economies, the top group in mathematics was significantly larger. In Singapore, which is at the top overall, 41 percent achieved the highest levels of competence, in Taiwan 32 percent, in Macao 29 percent, in Hong Kong 27 percent, in Japan 23 percent and Korea 23 percent. Competence level 2 at the lower end of the performance scale was achieved by 70 percent of students in Germany, and in the Asian countries mentioned it was more than 85 percent.
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