UAE students advance 8 points in PISA mathematical skills

 UAE’s Ministry of Education announced that the UAE advanced eight points in mathematics skills, according recent edition of the Program for International Student Assessment, PISA2018, results officially announced for the participating countries at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, in Paris.

The UAE achieved remarkable results, progressing significantly in the results of science, reading and mathematics, UAE News Agency (WAM) reported.

Participation in this international assessment is useful for educational decision makers in estimating the data resulting from the assessment and hence drawing up suitable policies and plans for the subjects referred to and making constant corrections to the relevant educational methodology.

The UAE has been keen on participating in this international assessment since 2009. In 2018, the UAE was among 79 countries participating in the PISA with a sample of male and female students from all public schools and private schools with overwhelming majority of Emirati students. This led the number of participating schools to increase by around 65 percent and participating students by approximately 25 percent compared to the number of schools and students participating in the previous edition in 2015.

As many as 647 schools and 19,277 male and female students participated in the assessment, which covered all the curricula adopted in the UAE. The results showed that the students in both public and private schools across the UAE achieved remarkable progress in mathematics skills, advancing eight points on the scale of assessment over the previous edition. The UAE scored 435 in mathematics skills, 432 in reading skills and 434 in science skills.

Some 49 percent of the schools made progress in reading skills and 47 percent in science skills. The schools achieved a progress of 62 percent in mathematics.

‘PISA’ stands for the Program for International Student Assessment. It is an international assessment implemented by the OECD every three years in collaboration with a group of international partners specialized in the field of tests and statistics. It measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and conducts attached surveys for principals, teachers and students.

The assessment is particularly important because it is included in the National Agenda, which outlines the future of the UAE and the broad lines of its general targets, under which the UAE will be among PISA’s top 20 countries in the world by 2021.