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Stark inequality causes France to fall again in global education rankings

A new education ranking has shown how France's gaping inequality between its privileged and disadvantaged pupils is dragging down the country's education system.

Published: 6 December 2016 13:33 CET
Stark inequality causes France to fall again in global education rankings
Photo: AFP
France has dropped two places to finish 27th out of 72 in the new Pisa education rankings, which were released on Tuesday. 
 
France's pupils scored an average of 495 points, compared with the average among OECD countries of 493.
 
The results from the study, which measured skills among high school students, landed France in the same block as the US, Austria, Sweden, and Spain. 
 
And while France scored the exact same score as it did for the last report in 2013, it has sunk a total of five spots since the report six years ago. 
 
What really set France apart were the results based on the social origins of the teenage pupils, with the study noting a general trend in all countries when comparing results for pupils with and without “disadvantaged backgrounds”.
 
“The difference between these two groups is particularly noticeable in France, where the relationship between performance and socio-economic background of the students is one of the strongest among the countries that participated,” the study said. 
 
“In other words, the more they come from disadvantaged areas, the less likely they will succeed in the Pisa evaluation.”
 
The study noted that France saw a 20 percent variation in science performance due to students' socio-economic status, compared to a 12.9 percent average across the OECD. Only two other countries in Europe had a higher variation. 
 
Children with immigrant parents scored on average 87 points lower in sciences than their peers, compared to a 53-point difference in other OECD countries, reported L'Express newspaper. 
 
 
Immigrant pupils of the second generation scored 50 points lower than their peers, compared to a 31 point gap in the OECD. 

 
In general, the results of the French pupils across the different subjects didn't change much, with the 15-year-olds recording a 2-point increase in reading scores and a four-point drop for maths over three years.
 
Overall, France had 18.4 percent of students ranked as “top performers” in at least one subject, and 14.8 percent of students deemed “low achievers” in maths, reading, and science. 
 
The study found Singapore came top of the table for its teaching of science, reading and mathematics. Its students scored an average of 556 points, far above the 493 average for OECD pupils. 
 
Researchers noted that Singapore had taken the torch over from Finland, which had long topped education studies. 
   
“Everyone used to go to Finland. Now you have to go to Singapore to see what they are doing,” OECD Chief of Staff Gabriela Ramos told reporters ahead of the report's launch.
  
The five top-performing countries in the PISA tests were Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taiwan and Finland.
 
France's education system has suffered from some poor report cards in the last few weeks.
 
Timss research group found French 10-year-old pupils to be at the bottom of the class in Europe when it comes to maths, and second last to Cyprus in science. 
 
A separate study last month found the French to be the worst English speakers in the EU.  
 

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EDUCATION

Why Spain is failing in maths and science teaching

The latest PISA results reveal Spain's education system to have a gaping north south divide.

Published: 3 December 2019 16:10 CET
Why Spain is failing in maths and science teaching
Photo: spaces/Depositphotos

Spain earned its worst ever result for science in the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of 15-year-old students across the world.

According to the report published on Tuesday, Spanish students scored an average of 483 points in the science tests, plummeting 13 points since the last study in 2015 to score the lowest results since the PISA test began in 2000.

They didn’t fare much better in maths, dropping five points to score 481 and falling below the OECD average of 489 which puts the nation on  a par with Hungary and Lithuania.

The breakdown of scores reveals the huge north-south divide when it comes to educational standards across Spain. Students in the northern half of the peninsula scored much higher in mathematics and science, in the extreme cases showing students who studied in the north had proficiency of more than one school year above their peers in the south.

The OECD suggests a 30 point difference represents a year’s study but students in Navarra held a 43 point lead over those in the Canary Islands for Mathematics while in sciences top scoring Galicia held a 40 point lead over the Canary Islands.

The lead stretched to over three times when comparing top of the league Galicia and Navarra to lowest scoring communities of Ceuta and Melia which fell behind 92 points in maths and 95 points in Science – effectively indicating that students in the north are three school years ahead of their peers in Spain’s North African enclaves.

“Socio-economic status is a strong predictor of results in mathematics and science in all countries, and explains 12 percent of the variation in results in mathematics and 10 percent in science in Spain,” explained a spokesman from the Ministry of Education during the presentation of the 2018 PISA Report.

The results revealed that while boys in Spain performed better than girls in maths, they achieved the same results in science. 

Spain was not included at all on the reading literacy results after the OECD detected “anomalies” in the data collection. Madrid’s education board also requested that the science and maths results be omitted after concluding anomalies also appeared in the collection of those results.

Madrid dropped 29 points in science and 17 in maths compared to three years ago, while Catalonia saw a loss of 15 points in science and 10 in maths.   

Spanish newspaper 20 Minutos produced a map to compare all the regions across Spain.

El Pais explained the poor showing as the result of austerity cuts in education brought in under the conservative PP government of Mariano Rajoy.

While the head of PISA, Andreas Schleicher, recommended that Spain change its teaching methodology focusing less on rote learning and memorizing and more on critical thinking and analysis.

On a positive note, Spanish students expressed high than average satisfaction with their lives. Some 96 percent of students in Spain reported sometimes or always feeling happy and only about 4 percent of students reported always feeling sad.

Overall, Spain ranks among the top 13 in the list of 79 countries, a position that has not significantly changed.

 

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