PISA 2015 Results are Now Available

Prepare yourself for tons of news articles discussing your country's educational system and how well it's doing, or alarmist headlines about how poorly your country is doing, the results from the PISA 2015 test are out!

The PISA test is a test given out to a wide sample of 15-year-old students in countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD). Non-OECD countries can also be included in the program if they wish and Qatar has since 2006. The test is pretty comprehensive and looks at how well the students understand reading, mathematics and science. It's not a rote memorization test, to do well you have to be able to understand the material and apply it.

The results were released today and I guarantee you major newspapers around the world are pouring over the numbers and writing articles about how good/bad students did and thus how their educational system compares to other countries. UK papers absolutely love trashing on the UK because of this test, even though UK students tend to do pretty good, just not as good as some other countries. Singapore was #1 in all three categories.

For all of its wealth Qatar has never done well with the PISA test. In the early years it was scoring around the same level as much poorer countries such as Peru or Kyrgyzstan. Over time the scores have steadily improved, but there’s a long way to go before the scores or even comparable to OCED nations. So let’s see how Qatar did (I included the OECD average as well for comparison):

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/

Reading

OECD average
2006 492
2009 493
2012 496
2015 490

Qatar
2006 312
2009 372
2012 388
2015 402



Mathematics

OECD average
2006 499
2009 496
2012 494
2015 490

Qatar
2006 318
2009 368
2012 376
2015 402


Science

OECD average
2006 500
2009 501
2012 501
2015 493

Qatar
2006 349
2009 379
2012 384
2015 418


Okay, so the scores are up yet again, which is great. Also the average OECD score declined slightly across all three categories, maybe the test was a little bit tougher in which case the increase Qatar has shown is even better. Reading is up +14, Math +26 and Science an impressive +34 from the previous test. Slowly but surely Qatar is climbing up the rankings and its scores are now similar to countries that 6-10 years ago were well ahead. Qatar is now scoring roughly the same as countries such as Thailand, Columbia and Mexico.

It means there is still a long way to go though. Large swaths of the student population are just not able to understand and apply the material. PISA separates a students level of understanding into six categories (with 6 being the highest and 1 the lowest). The main table not only had the scores but also the percentage of students who scored level 5 or 6 in at least one subject, and the percentage of students who scored below level 2 in all three subjects. Qatar did not perform well when compared to Western countries. Below are some select countries for comparison:

Share of top performers in at least one subject (Level 5 or 6):

39.1% Singapore
25.8% Japan
21.4% Finland
22.7% Canada
18.4% Australia
16.9% UK
19.2% Germany
13.3% USA
18.4% France
3.4% Qatar


Share of low achievers in all three subjects (below Level 2)

4.8% Singapore
5.6% Japan
6.3% Finland
5.9% Canada
11.1% Australia
10.1% UK
9.8% Germany
13.6% USA
14.8% France
42.0% Qatar

Yep, 42% of the students scored poorly in all three categories. That's three times higher than the USA. Improvements in education in Qatar do not seem to really be reaching the students who need the most help, or perhaps the system still focuses on rote memorization.

Anyway there is tons more data and analysis available, the main report itself is 494 pages, and many countries have separate country-specific reports on top of that. Some countries even have statistics by region within a country so you can compare the different regions (Canada has some scores by each province, the Canadian news will be jumping on which provinces did better than others). There’s even analysis by gender, socio-economic background, whether the student was an immigrant, and so forth. Take some time to look over the detailed results.

The Spread of English in the Gulf

People who have never been to this region would be surprised to learn just how widespread English is. In Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Bahrain signs are in both English and Arabic, and most shopkeepers speak it. In Qatar you can even deal with Government offices in English, and IDs and drivers’ licenses are in both languages.

While historically dealing with the British and Americans (and their oil companies that set up in the Gulf) certainly helped I think the main reason for the spread of English was all of the expats that came to the Gulf to work in the service sector or construction jobs. Millions of people in the Gulf are from places like India, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, countries where Arabic is not spoken. English, even if it’s only a few dozen words, will be spoken by most people from these areas, which allowed them to speak with each other. A Sri Lankan is unlikely to know Tagalog but if he can speak some English he shouldn’t have much trouble talking to a Filipino here. Over time locals learned English just so that it was easier to communicate with shopkeepers, waiters, servants and so forth.

As the GCC economies grow, and more and more non-Arabic expats move in, there have been growing concerns about Arabs losing their language, and English becoming their primary language. The concerns have been going on for years in Qatar but recently criticism of “cultural erosion” has been growing stronger, and the Government is now drafting laws to ensure Arabic is used in Government offices.

One of my Arab friends is so concerned about it he’s been making sure his children learn only Arabic (including not putting them in English-language schools), allowing them to learn English once they get older and are fluent in Arabic. Naturally they learn some English as they grow up in Qatar, it’s hard not to, but they don’t have formal schooling in it until they are teenagers.

So is that a bit overboard? Is it really such as issue? Well, I just recently got back from a business trip in the UAE and there I met some Emiratis who were at the seminar that I was attending. So I tried speaking to them in Arabic (classical Arabic of course, not the local dialect) when one turned to the other and, laughingly, said,

“Hey, his Arabic is better then yours.”

That confused me. I am by no means fluent, in fact I struggle to have even basic conversations, and if anyone speaks in regional dialects I have no clue what they are saying. But over the course of our conversation I was told by him that, indeed, he was not fluent in Arabic. Now it turns out that his mother was not an Arab so it’s unlikely she would speak to him in Arabic. He mentioned how he went to English-language schools, and in Dubai almost no one uses Arabic for everyday conversation, so he never became fluent in it. I’m sure his friend was joking that my Arabic was better than his, just needling him a bit about his lack of fluency.

Was this a one-in-a-million occurrence? When I mentioned it to my friends they were a bit surprised so I am assuming it is rare for a Gulf Arab to not be fluent in Arabic, but none-the-less it did serve as an example for why citizens of the Gulf are becoming increasingly concerned about losing Arabic. Over the years I’ve heard rumours and tales of other Arabs, raised by foreign nannies and going to English-speaking schools, who essentially had English as their first language. I’m not sure how true it is or how widespread the issue is becoming though.

I would recommend to anyone planning on staying in the Gulf for a while to try to learn some rudimentary Arabic. Arabic speakers really do appreciate it when foreigners have a basic knowledge of the language, not because they expect you’ll be fluent but they like that you at least made an effort to learn some of the language. It’s not an easy language but give it a try, maybe with lessons at Fanar to start.

In Defense of the Word "Selfie"

My friend Kamahl has recently started his own blog (you can find it here) where he discusses journalism as well as words and their use in writing. In his most recent post he notes an article from The Independent newspaper in the UK discussing a project at an American university to bring back old words that have fallen out of use. A noble pursuit I'm sure, but I doubt the English-speaking world really needs “flapdoodle” back.

One needs to have an idea as to why words fall out of use in the first place. Some are really just slang so a product of their time (“groovy”, “daddy-o”, “flapdoodle”), others perhaps because they are long or clumsy to say (c’mon now, “opsimath”? seriously?), and others because there might be a simpler and more efficient word/phrase to say it. I'll go out on a limb and assume that most people would just rather say “walkabout” than “obambulate”. Just because a word is old does not mean it is somehow great and should be brought back.

Case in point, I recall many years ago watching a show and my two housemates asked if it was the finale and I said, “no, it's the penultimate show.” Neither of them knew what the word “penultimate” meant so when I explained it their response was to ask why I didn't just say it was the second-last show. I didn't think that the word penultimate was all that obscure, and I believe in the UK it's still fairly common, but I can see how the word could be falling out of disuse because “second-last” is an easier way to say it.

Which brings me to a word that has come into common use, but which many people malign, selfie.

Actually I think it's a great word. It doesn't really meet any of the conditions I noted above for a word that could become obscure and out of use. It's not really slang as it is describing something that only recently has become a common thing. It's a short word, easy to say, and it's straightforward for anyone to understand what it is referring to since it contains “self” in it. Easy to remember, I'm sure after hearing the word once and knowing what it meant you had no trouble remembering it after that. It's also a simpler replacement for how we would have normally described it, a self-portrait. Say these two phrases to yourself and see which sounds better to you:

“I’m going to take a selfie.”
“I'm going to take a self-portrait.”

Selfie seems to better fit the more immediate and whimsical nature of taking a quick photo with your phone. To me “self-portrait” seems far more serious and involved, something that you would do with professional photography or painting.

I agree that not all new words are necessarily great and most of them are just trendy slang that will appear again in 20 to 30 years in sitcoms and movies depicting our time. “Selfie” though I think is here to stay.

PISA 2012 Results Are Out

The OCED have now released the 2012 PISA results (a test given every three years to 15-year-olds to test their abilities in reading, math and science). You can find the summary report here.

In the past I used to note where Qatar ranked in terms of the number of countries. Unfortunately it's apparent that that was an unfair thing to do -- a number of countries that in 2009 were ranked in the bottom declined to participate in PISA 2012 so Qatar appears near the bottom again since many countries that fared worse aren’t on the list now.

This is Qatar’s 3rd PISA test so let’s see the trends. I have included the OCED average for each test for comparison and as an indication of whether a particular test was more difficult compared to the others.


Reading

OECD average
2006 492
2009 493
2012 496

Qatar
2006 312
2009 372
2012 388


Mathematics

OECD average
2006 499
2009 496
2012 494

Qatar
2006 318
2009 368
2012 376


Science

OECD average
2006 500
2009 501
2012 501

Qatar
2006 349
2009 379
2012 384


So Qatar did improve in all three categories again. The increase in scores was nowhere near as dramatic as between 2006 and 2009 but there were still improvements. In fact Qatar has had the greatest level of improvement over the nine years than any other country. There's still a long way to go though, the scores indicate that kids in Qatar probably lag a good year to a year and a half behind their OECD peers.

In other PISA news the city of Shanghai once again dominated all three categories, East Asian countries consistently ranked amongst the top, and Western educational darling Finland posted a decrease in scores. Even Vietnam, being part of the PISA project for the first time, showed impressive scores given it's not a particularly wealthy country. Canada showed a slight decrease but remained well above the OCED average in all categories.

Start doing a Google News search for “PISA”. You'll see all sorts of articles in the Western press about the test, how their country scored, what's wrong with their educational systems etc.

PISA Test – Gender Differences in Reading, Math and Science

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (also known as PISA) is held every three years and in 2012 tens of thousands of 15-year-olds from 65 countries took part, including Qatar. This was Qatar’s third time participating in PISA and the results from the 2012 test will be available in a few days.

When I discussed the 2009 results I caused a bit of controversy in some East Asian forums by challenging the seemingly incredible results posted by Shanghai (here and here) but surprisingly there wasn't much of an issue with Qatar’s very low scores. Qatar did show some improvement between 2006 and 2009 and I sure hope that progress continues because right now Qatar’s scores are very low given the overall wealth of the country. Qataris I spoke to about the 2009 results were not surprised in the least and were generally cynical about the overall quality of the educational system. Plenty of reforms have been underway, and the Supreme Education Council has been doing the right thing by not trying to hide or downplay the PISA scores, even going so far as to post the PISA scores of individual schools.

While I was checking to see if the 2012 results were out I happened to come across a great analysis by the OCED where they take the 2009 results for each country and analyze them by various factors, including gender. I found the gender results to be the most interesting.

If you would like to see the results yourself, go to the following link and click on Table B1, which will then upload an excel spreadsheet with tons of tables and analysis.

With 66 countries participating in 2009 here’s the results:

Reading (Table I.2.3)

In every single country, girls had better reading scores than boys. The difference was statistically significant in every country whether it was in Europe, North America, East Asia, the Middle East, wherever. I was not expecting the results to be so consistent across the world, and while I have no definitive answer for why this would be the consistency across numerous cultures and peoples would seem to indicate that there is a biological component to it. Is the area of the brain that handles reading better developed in 15-year-old girls than boys? Are hormones playing a role?

Mathematics (Table I. 3.3)

Unlike the reading scores for math boys generally performed better than girls. In all OECD countries boys’ scores were either better or the same as girls – girls did not perform statistically better in any OECD nation. In 23 of 36 OECD nations the difference between boys’ and girls’ scores was statistically significant.

Things get interesting when we look at the non-OECD countries. In a handful of those countries girls performed statistically better.

There might be a cultural component. I analyzed it by geographic region and bizarrely:

1. In Scandinavia girls performed the same as boys (except in Denmark)
2. In former Soviet-bloc countries it was also more even, in 9 of 13 countries there was no statistical significance between girls and boys
3. However in the rest of Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand boys were resoundingly better, being statistically better in 16 of 18 countries. In none of these countries were girls statistically better than boys.
4. In East Asia boys and girls were even in 6 out of 9 countries, with boys better in the remaining three.
5. Qatar was one of the few countries where girls scored statistically better than boys (the others: Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Peru, and Trinidad & Tobago)

Why is there such a discrepancy in places like UK, US, Canada, Germany, France and Australia, when in other parts of the world it appears to be a bit more even? Does it have something to do with that prevalent myth that “girls can't do math?” Does that attitude exist in places like Germany and France? Why are girls so much better in reading but lose ground in math? These are the sorts of things that I hope educational researchers are looking at.

Science (Table I.3.6)

Of the three categories science had the least variation between boys and girls in OCED countries. Of the 35 OECD countries boys were statistically better in 9, girls were statistically better in 5, and in the remaining 21 countries there was no difference.

Things are a little more varied in the non-OECD nations and the differences in terms of absolute results were also larger than in the OCED nations. Surprisingly, of the 31 nations boys were statistically better in only 2, girls were statistically better in 16 (wow!), and in the remaining 13 countries there was no difference.

Where did boys perform better? Pretty much Western Europe, North America and South America. If we count Scandinavia as separate from Western Europe then Denmark is the outlier as the only country not in the above regions where boys were better than girls. In Finland girls were better and there was no statistical difference in the remaining Scandinavian countries.

In every Soviet-bloc country girls either performed the same as boys or better than the boys.

Interestingly girls performed statistically better than boys in 9 out of 10 countries with a predominantly Muslim population (an argument could be made that Qatar and Dubai do not have a predominantly Muslim population in which case girls performed better in 7 out of 8 Muslim countries). In terms of the difference in absolute scores the greatest differences were in the Muslim countries so not only did girls perform better than boys in Muslim nations, the differences were the greatest.

The PISA website has all sorts of other studies and analysis so I recommend anyone interested in education to look through the papers.

PISA 2012 results are due out in less than a week. Here's hoping Qatar has continued to improve.

Registration for the Qatar National Library

As noted previously I registered online for access to the Qatar National Library’s e-books but it requires you to visit their temporary offices in Education City. If you haven’t registered yet first go to the following link and register:

https://library.qnl.qa/selfreg

So then out I went to find them. I knew they were somewhere near Mathaf Museum and when I got to the end of the area just past the Museum there was a parking lot with a bunch of what looked like temporary buildings. I walked into one just to ask for directions and by sheer luck was in the right building!

The temporary offices of the QNL are located in the QMDI building, and there are signs around pointing you to that building. Look for “QMDI”, I don't think there any signs mentioning the Library.

As for a map QMDI’s website has their location (click on the link that says “map” at the bottom of their page)

http://www.qmdi.com.qa/QMDI/contact-us

When I asked for the Qatar National Library the front desk receptionist immediately contacted the QNL staff. A gentleman came to the lobby and once he knew I was here to register he apologized for people having to come to the office in person. Apparently some of the materials are age-restricted so the QNL has to have people register in person to ensure only adults are registered, otherwise kids could just go online and use their parents ID to register.

I gave him my Qatar ID so he could copy it and he went back to the office to get a PIN code for me. I had my passport with me just in case because the website seemed to indicate that you needed to show your RP but he only needed my Qatar ID. I waited in the lobby maybe five minutes and then I was given a PIN code. That was it, I can now log on to QNL’s e-book and periodicals collection. Your access is timed to the expiry date of your Qatar ID.

Browsing the collection I've discovered that some of the sections can only be accessed by researchers and Education City students but there appeared to be a huge amount of material for general registrants covering sciences, business, social sciences like anthropology, and so forth.

I am looking forward to some interesting reading.

Qatar National Library

[Update: Full details on the location of the Qatar National Library's offices can be found here]


Thanks to Dohanews I learned that Qatar National Library (currently under construction) is currently allowing online and e-book access with registration, including access to science journals and periodicals. I’m all for that!

To register you have to go here: https://library.qnl.qa/selfreg

But then you have to go to their project offices and show proof of ID. I clicked on their map but it's still a bit confusing and as far as I can tell they are somewhere in the outside edge of the Qatar foundation. Compounding the challenge they're only open Sunday-Thursday from 7:30 to 3:30, which means you have to get out there during working hours -- which means dealing with all the traffic.

Well I'm going to try to get out there. I'll let everyone know how it works out and see if I can provide better directions.

Learning Arabic in Qatar

So I've been continuing Arabic lessons and things have been going well. I've also found myself in a situation where I'm now working with a number of Qataris who do not know English very well, this is really forcing me to use Arabic. It's a challenge but I must admit I'm grateful because I think it's making a big difference for remembering the words and how to structure sentences.

Over the years I've taken Arabic lessons from many different sources and if you're interested in learning Arabic there are a number of options:

1) Use a language school

This will probably be the most expensive option as some of these schools can charge upward of QAR 200+ an hour but can be a useful way to tailor the learning to what you want, especially if it's just yourself or a small group.

I've never used one of the language schools so I certainly can't recommend which ones are better than the others. Many of them advertise in books like Marhaba or in classified ads in the newspapers if you're interested in contacting them.

2) University courses

Qatar University offers Arabic for non-native speakers, at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. I took this once (intermediate) and they definitely push you on speaking, writing and pronunciation. It was pretty intensive, I think nine hours a week, and between that and the distance to get to the University I didn't continue on once I completed the course. Decent program though. I think the cost worked out to around QAR 50 an hour but don’t quote me on that.

Stenden University also offers Arabic courses for beginners. I did one of these many years ago as part of a work program and thought it was also decent but I recall it was more about reading and writing as opposed to conversational.

3) Fanar (the Islamic Cultural Centre) offers six different levels of Arabic, ranging from complete beginner to very advanced. It's probably one of the most affordable ways to learn -- a 35-hour course costs something like QAR 300 or 400. I think the cost also makes it very popular, typically they have hundreds of students and class sizes are typically around 20-30. I've taken levels two and three twice each, while level 1 is definitely for people who don't know any Arabic the jump in difficulty from level 1 to level 2 is big, same for going from levels 2 to 3. Even after taking it twice I struggled with level 3. Maybe now it would be different since my Arabic has improved. Ultimately I wasn't all that happy with the structure of the lessons, and I think there could be a lot of improvements in that regard, but for the price Fanar is definitely worth trying.

As it is an Islamic Centre the classes are gender-segregated, with different classes for men and women.

4) Private tutors

You would think since this is an Arabic-speaking region there would be a ton of people posting fliers offering Arabic lessons but in truth it can be a challenge to find people advertising such services. It took a while to set up but a private tutor is what a friend of mine and I are using now. He is not a professional teacher, we met him through a mutual friend and since his English and Arabic are both excellent he agreed to tutor us whenever we can arrange an evening (sorry I can’t give you his contact details as he does not plan to spend lots of spare time tutoring people – he has a day job). So far I’ve enjoyed this as it allows a lot more flexibility in terms of when we meet and what subjects we cover. For you it is unlikely to be the cheapest option but the flexibility makes up for it. If you’re interested in private tutoring maybe ask around and see if anyone knows someone.

If people know of other Arabic-language classes please let me know in the comments. However please note I'm not going to advertise for “for-profit” companies so unless it is a school, university, or Islamic centre it’s unlikely to go into this post.

Qatar Schools – Ministry Report Cards

I was nosing around the website of the Supreme Education Council of Qatar looking at what updates they had and I noticed something. Apparently the SEC do reviews of all the individual schools and publish a summary of each school on their website, a "report card" for each school.

Most of the information appears to be survey-based, asking students and parents about level of homework, satisfaction with the school etc. but if you go down to near the bottom of the report card you will see how the school did on international assessment tests such as TIMMS and PISA. That made for some interesting information. When the PISA results came out in 2009 and 2012 I was always surprised at the low scores that Qatar got in general, and was worried that if international schools on a Western curriculum were scoring above average than local schools must be scoring VERY low. Imagine my surprise when I looked up some of the test scores in the report cards for some of these international schools -- way lower than the average for the country the curriculum came from (at least for PISA). How did that happen??

Want to see how your child's school did? Go here. and click on the school you want to review. Then go to the TIMMS or PISA website and compare the scores.

Further Discussion on the India Pisa Results

Someone has posted a nice detailed comment in response to my recent post on PISA results for India. Because of the length of the comment rather than answer it in the comments section I figured I would reproduce it here:


The Indian results are unsurprising because it corroborates earlier studies all coming to a broadly similar conclusion. That Indian education is mediocre and overall level of human capital in India is very low. Please refer to the TIMMS test administered by Jishnu Das and Tristan Zajonc or the Wipro educational initiative results.

Your skepticism is unfortunately untempered by rationality. To expect high Indian results based from the selection of the highest scoring school in Qatar is the result of several cognitive biases. Chiefly there is the issue of selection bias, by comparing the most unrepresentative school in the nation with OECD averages. To apply your logic, I can pick the highest scoring school in the US or China in the PISA tests and it will make even the highest scoring Indian (Qatar) students, look like drooling idiots, relatively speaking.

For example Al Khur Interntational school only admits the children of the employees the state LNG monopoly. These aren't just the children of affluent Indians, these are the children of Indians that are, probably, greater than two standard deviations above the socio-economic mean of India. To be that selective in the US, you would have to administer such a test to only the children of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, etc alumni.

In fact, the Qatar results for Indian students, rather than showing the possibility of high Indian achievement actually comes to the opposite conclusion. That even a highly selected group of Indian students are just above the OECD mean (itself dragged down by relatively poor performing OECD nations). What does that say about the rest of India's human capital +/- one standard deviation from their mean? Nothing positive.



Thank you for the comment. I think you may be misinterpreting the background that led me to focus specifically on India and PISA. Throughout my life I've met many people from South Asia, either in Canada or here, and there always seemed to be a heavy focus by the families on education and there seemed to be more pressure on the children to study hard and do well in school than for most other kids. Documentaries on Indian education seemed to be about the competitive nature of the education system, typically focusing on teenagers spending long hours studying for various exams, or entrance tests to IIT, or whatever. Many South Asian schools here in Qatar did very well on the PISA tests compared to peers. The anecdotal evidence all pointed to India being able to post scores on PISA significantly higher than would be expected given its poorer economic situation than the OECD nations (on a per capita basis).

The problem was that the evidence was by and large anecdotal so could not be used to definitively make conclusions and I have never traveled in South Asia to see things for myself. That's why I was posting about how I wished South Asian countries would participate in PISA -- to see if a study on a large representative sample would support the conclusions that the anecdotal evidence indicated. It turns out it did not, but given all I had before was the anecdotal evidence that is why the PISA results for India were “below my expectations”.

I never stated that Al Khur Interntational achieving good results must mean that India has an amazing educational system, more akin to “Al Khur Interntational got good results, I’m curious as to how India would score generally on PISA”.
As it stands, what are the weaknesses in the Indian system: that society is not as education-focused as the anecdotal evidence led me to believe? Severe underfunding by the various levels of government? Too many children overwhelming the current educational resources? Poor pay for teachers compared to other fields? I was just curious as to what people from South Asia think the issues are.

PISA 2009 update -- results from India, UAE, and a few other countries

The OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tested an additional 10 countries/regions on the PISA 2009 test. Known as the “PISA 2009+” test countries, they include:

• Costa Rica
• Georgia
• 2 States in India (Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu)
• Malaysia
• Malta
• Mauritius
• 1 State in Venezuela (Miranda)
• Moldova
• The United Arab Emirates

Strangely enough you can’t find the report on the OCED website, you need to go to an Australian education website for it.

I was excited to see the update because in previous blog posts that discussed the PISA test I was always curious to see how India would do given the emphasis Indians place on education. Would India score high marks despite its relatively low GDP per capita?

It turns out its marks were -- not so good. Here is a table with some select countries for comparison. The first number is the reading score, followed by mathematics and science:

556 600 575 Shanghai (highest results of all participants)
536 541 554 Finland
520 529 539 Japan
524 527 529 Canada
500 487 502 United States
493 496 501 OCED average
494 492 514 UK
464 445 454 Turkey
431 421 438 UAE
425 419 416 Mexico (lowest scoring OECD country)
414 404 422 Malaysia
413 381 402 Columbia
402 371 383 Indonesia
372 368 379 Qatar
370 365 369 Peru (second lowest of all the countries tested in the original PISA 2009)
337 351 348 India (Tamil Nadu)
317 338 325 India (Himachal Pradesh)
314 331 330 Kyrgyzstan (lowest scoring of all the countries tested in the original PISA 2009)

Ummmm, wow. India scored way lower than I expected. Nearly bottom of the table, except for Kyrgyzstan, and Himachal Pradesh scored lower in science than them.

So what happened? I'm not sure yet. I thought at first maybe it would be the social economic correlation (wealthy Indians would test way higher) but the PISA report notes:

In Himachal Pradesh-India and Tamil Nadu-India the relationship between socioeconomic status and reading performance, as measured by PISA, was very weak. This may be because students in these populations perform very poorly in reading and have low socioeconomic status, as measured by PISA, and therefore the relationship between socioeconomic status and reading cannot be adequately detected using the PISA scales.

Translation: “everyone taking the test in India was poor by our standards so we couldn't measure the difference between rich and poor”. Thanks guys.

The India test results were very different than the results Indian schools in Qatar achieved so for now I'm going on the assumption that overall education in India may still be very poor, only those who can afford to send their children to decent private schools are getting a good education. Any Indian readers please feel free to leave a comment to clarify what happened here.

So how's the Arabic lessons going?

It's been a little over two months now of lessons at FANAR and so far it's going pretty good. The words we are being taught are generally useful, my Arabic is improving bit by bit, I'm occasionally meeting with classmates on the weekend to practice, and I'm getting a lot of support from my Arabic speaking friends. Having friends who speak Arabic has been really helpful, especially since the teacher doesn't speak English very well so sometimes when you ask him what a word means he has a tough time explaining it. I usually go to my Qatari friends for clarification. Of course sometimes they struggle a little bit because they have to remember the Classical Arabic word instead of the local Arabic word.

I still struggle with the letter ‘ayn’ and sometimes have trouble differentiating it from the letter ‘a’ (alif). I also don't pronounce it well when speaking. The Arabic word for "yes" contains an ayn but I usually pronounce it with an ‘a’. I used to think that wasn't a big deal because the two letters sound similar but about a week ago I was getting my hair cut at my Turkish barber and was practicing Arabic (he is from southern Turkey near the border with Syria and most Turks from that region speak Arabic in addition to Turkish; the majority of Turks in Doha are from this region). When I said the word for "yes" but using an “a” sound, he actually didn't understand what I said. It was only when I repeated it with an “ayn” that he suddenly realized what I was saying. Guess I have to be more careful.

We don't have to pluralize many nouns yet, which is great because I hate trying to memorize plurals. I still have no sense of the rules for pluralizing a noun. Maybe next level we will start on that.

Otherwise the final exam is in two or three weeks, a square around 90% of my midterm so I'm not too worried. I just need to study my vocabulary more.

I will definitely continue the lessons at FANAR I expect the next set of lessons will not be until after Ramadan (September).

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Arabic Lessons -- The Ups and Downs of Learning Arabic

I have signed up for Arabic lessons at FANAR, the Islamic Cultural Centre, and they start next week. It will be good for me to get back into it and hopefully improve to the point where I can engage in conversation. This set of lessons will be at least three months, and I have to take a test on my first day to figure out what level I'm at so they can place me in one of the five levels of classes.

I have taken Arabic lessons before and while my Arabic is still not particularly good I would definitely consider it above what a tourist might know. I can also read the letters, albeit slowly. I'm particularly good in ordering food at restaurants, I don't recall why but I remember a lot of food names.

For those of you trying to learn Arabic, or are interested in learning it, here is what I consider the major challenges:

1) reading the letters

This is obvious to anyone who knows a Latin language as Arabic does not use Latin letters but instead uses a completely different script full of curved lines and dots. It is also read right-to-left, to further confuse most learners. One exception however is that numbers are left-to-right like they are in Latin languages, which adds an extra bit of confusion.

Also letters can look different depending on whether they are at the beginning of a word, middle of the word, or end of the word -- but not always as it depends on the letter. Three letters have four different versions depending on where they are. It takes a lot of time and practice to get used to the letters. I've known the letters for about four years but because I don't read Arabic much my reading is still very slow and I still confuse the odd letter (such as ‘n’ and ‘b’, which differ by whether the dot is above or below the letter. I can now sympathize with English learners who confuse ‘p’, ‘d’, and ‘b’.)

On the positive side though there are no capital letters, so it doesn't matter if it's at the start of a sentence or a personal name you still use the same letter as you don't have to capitalize it.

2) “hidden” vowels

Arabic only has three vowels (a, i, o/u) but there is both a long version and a short version. Unlike English where a long and short vowel has a different sound (e.g. ā vs ă) in Arabic the long and short vowel is more a matter of how long you say it (e.g. ooo vs o). This wouldn't be an issue except for one thing, short vowels are not written down. Only in very formal Arabic are symbols included that would indicate what the short vowel is, in everyday writing you just have to know they are there from experience.

Imagine if you saw the word ‘dg’. Is that dig, dog or dug? You might know from the context of the sentence but for someone just learning the language how are they to know what it is? They may not even be familiar with the words. Unfortunately there is no easy way around it, you just have to recognize the word. This becomes a bit frustrating.

A good example is if you saw ‘mhmd’ is that Mohammed or Mahmoud? Only from experience do you realize that Mohammed is spelt ‘mhmd’ and Mahmoud ‘mhmud’, which interestingly means that while Mohammed is a longer word in English than Mahmoud it is shorter in Arabic. Oh and don't forget we are supposed to read the words right to left so actually they are spelt ‘dmhm’ and ‘dumhm’. AND using Arabic letters which you struggle to read in the first place. Now you may have an idea why Arabic becomes a tough language to learn.

It also makes spelling the word troublesome when someone says it verbally. I still have never figured out the difference between when someone speaks a long vowel or short vowel so when someone says a word and I can hear the vowels I don’t know whether I'm supposed to write the vowel or not. My spelling is thus pretty bad.

3) doubles of letters, letters they don't have in Arabic, and letters we don't have in English

Arabic does not have a ‘g’ or a ‘p’ so English words with ‘g’, like, oh, Glen, have to be spelt with some other letters. In my case, the first letter of my name I have seen spelt with four different letters: ‘j’ (Jlin), ‘k’ (Klin), ‘q’ (Qlin’), and ‘ghr’ (Ghrlin). I can live with that.

They do however have two ‘s’, two ‘t’, two ‘z’, and two ‘h’, with the difference being in the pronunciation. Say the letter wrong and you might be saying a completely different word, or a nonsense word, a problem I've run into occasionally trying to use my Arabic on Arabic speakers.

Finally Arabic has letters that aren't in English at all, the most difficult for me being a letter called ‘ayn’ which is somewhat like a short breath out. I hate this letter, I have a tough time picking it out when someone says it verbally, and it is a consonant so can be followed by vowels such as ‘a’ (try that, a short breath out followed by an ‘aah’, weird isn't it?). When translating Arabic we tend to use ‘a’ for the ayn as it kind of sounds like a short, faint ‘a’, such as ‘Adel’, but in reality a closer way to spell it would be to use an apostrophe ( ‘del).

4) plurals

Arabic has a ton of different ways for pluralizing nouns and again for the beginner it is just a matter of knowing what the plural of a particular word is. There is no easy way to determine how to plural a noun. ‘Car’ is ‘sayyara’ and ‘cars’ is ‘sayyarat’ but the plural of ‘madina’ is ‘mudun’. I have no idea why. It isn't the case where there is a common way to plural a word and there are some "irregular" nouns -- there are simply numerous types of plurals and only through experience do you know which way to plural which noun. I always joke with my Arabic-speaking friends, "just add an ‘s’ dammit”, they just laugh, they realize that in English it is generally easier to plural a noun.

5) different words in different regions

You know how British-English differs a bit from North American English? Well, Arabic has been around a lot longer and covered a vast area before there was quick ways of travel. As a result the local Arabic can vary widely from region to region, to the point where speakers from one country struggle to understand a speaker from another country. Egyptian-Arabic appears to be the common standard that almost all Arabic speakers can understand because Egypt produces most of the Arabic movies and films, but it is well known that speakers from other North African countries such as Morocco or Algeria are nearly incomprehensible if they speak their regional dialect. Many Arabic speakers who aren't from the Gulf also struggle to understand Gulf Arabic.

So what is typically taught to the new Arabic learner? Well, maybe Egyptian Arabic if you are in Egypt, otherwise you will be taught classical Arabic.

Classical Arabic is a formal Arabic that is used in the Qur’an and religious texts. It is an older version of Arabic, analogous to someone speaking Middle English. The upside is that because almost all Arabic speakers are Muslim they will understand this form of Arabic, although it is not generally spoken in day-to-day conversation. The downside is that if you are taught classical Arabic you will never understand the local dialect if someone decides to speak that. Sometimes native Arabic speakers pause and have to "switch" their minds to classical Arabic when someone speaks it. Still, people generally understand what I say even though it is very different from how they might say it. For example:

“What” is “ma/matha” in classical Arabic but "shu/shinu” in Qatari Arabic.
"Why" is “lematha” in classical Arabic but “leysh” in Qatari Arabic.
“Aruz” is "rice" in both classical and Qatari Arabic but I believe in Egyptian Arabic it may also be used to refer to bread. Qataris tend to use “khubz” for bread.

I am going to assume that FANAR will also teach classical Arabic since they also do a lot of courses in Islam and Islamic studies. We'll see how it goes over the next few months and if I like the classes I will try to complete them all the way to the end of level 5.

OECD PISA test -- looking again at the Shanghai controversy

My posts skeptical of Shanghai scores on the PISA test has generated a bit of interest, including some input from Chinese commentators. A couple of hypotheses have been floated: IQ scores, the longer hours Chinese students spend on school work and studying, work ethic, impressive results by China at Mathematics Olympiads etc.. The general assertion is that the Shangahi scores are reasonable and not somehow overinflated as I asserted based on a statistical “Freakonomics” proposal given the large pool of students taking the test.

[update: at least an anonymous someone did post a lengthy comment regarding the Chinese scores, IQ, testing, etc but I can't find the comment now?! For the record I didn't delete it!]

Like any good critical thinker you have to be willing to revisit issues if new information comes up. Unfortunately I'm in Qatar and do not have access to the granular Shanghai PISA data so the best I can do is look around the Internet and see what the media has uncovered. Most of the articles that I looked at just accepted the results at face value without much digging into the underlying reasons for the good scores. There were also some veiled assertions of fixing the scores but without any elaboration, which is also of little value.

So here's some of the items I could find:

Let's start with support for my assertion. A blog post by a writer working for The Atlantic quotes a scientist who pretty much came up with the same rationales that I did, statistical anomalies etc. and suggested that Shanghai officials were “gaming the exam”:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/12/on-those-stunning-shanghai-test-scores/67654/

Downside: this scientist is not named so I cannot figure out the source for the (rather lengthy) analysis. I tried looking on the Internet but could not find anything other than another article that was referencing The Atlantic article. The article seems comprehensive though so I gain some comfort that it is for real. However, the article is actually critical of almost any type of standardized testing to compare groups and points out that there are other significant differences between countries that seem unexplained so questions the overall validity.

Overall opinion I get from the article -- Shanghai scores are probably overinflated, despite that Shanghai students are still probably way better than (almost?) everyone at these things due do their educational system focusing on standardized testing, and everyone is overanalyzing the PISA results and needs to chill out.


Solidly against my assertion: the New York Times. They had a few articles about the PISA test but unlike many other newspapers did some level of work looking at what Shanghai did:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?ref=europe

Much of their work focused on interviews with education professionals who are familiar with Chinese system. Such as . . .

“Mark Schneider, a commissioner of the Department of Education’s research arm in the George W. Bush administration, who returned from an educational research visit to China on Friday, said he had been skeptical about some PISA results in the past. But Mr. Schneider said he considered the accuracy of these results to be unassailable.
“The technical side of this was well regulated, the sampling was O.K., and there was no evidence of cheating,” he said.

How about . . .

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview on Monday.
“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable, and we have to see them as a challenge to get better,” he added.
(though I'm not clear whether he was referring to the Shanghai scores or the US scores)

Also NYT asserts . . .

“The testing in Shanghai was carried out by an international contractor, working with Chinese authorities, and overseen by the Australian Council for Educational Research, a nonprofit testing group, said Andreas Schleicher, who directs the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s international educational testing program. “


So it appears that there was some independence in administering the test, so controls may have been tighter than I had assumed.


The Christian Science Monitor also took a look at Shanghai and spoke to two American professors with some experience with the Chinese educational system. Both provided rationales for how the results could have happened, and discussed issues regarding the possible strengths with the current Chinese educational system, including attention spans, focus on education, and recent changes to education in Shanghai. Neither of them dismissed the results or alluded that they may have been overinflated:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/1209/Shanghai-test-scores-have-everyone-asking-How-did-students-do-it

The Telegraph had an article that did not challenge the results but instead looked at some of the factors as to why Shanghai students would do so well. Long hours of class and studying with a focus on specific subjects that are tested appears to be their conclusion. They even quote a Chinese critic of the educational system that states that the singular focus on test preparation is actually a problem as it goes too far:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8187967/Shanghai-students-ranked-best-in-the-world-at-maths-and-science.html


So far the evidence is definitely stronger for the “Shanghai did not inflate the results” camp. I'll keep monitoring to see if anything else comes up in the media but it would need to be pretty strong to offset what has been reported in some of the articles. I would be interested in finding some articles from other East Asian countries to see what they have to say given that those countries also have very strong focuses on education.

OCED PISA test - back to Qatar

The release of the PISA results tied in well with the 2010 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), which was being held in Doha at the same time.

I was wondering if the results were going to be discussed at the summit because in the first couple of days the local English-media were silent about Qatar’s test results. One newspaper had mentioned the results of the test were out and that Shanghai had done so well but didn't mention how Qatar had scored, which led me to wonder if there is a bit of reluctance to discuss the issue. My fears were unfounded -- there was a special session at WISE to discuss the results and after the session one of the three English-language papers noted Qatar’s score and had a brief interview with one of the delegates about the results.

I was also encouraged to hear the following...

In Qatar, the Supreme Education Council decided to join PISA 2012 where the major domain will be mathematics. In PISA 2012, the field trial of which will be administered in March 2011, 1300 students enrolled in Private Arabic, Independent, Community and International schools will be assessed

It is good to see that Qatar is clearly not shying away from the PISA tests and are willing to have their students undergo such scrutiny even though the results may reflect poorly on the country's educational system. This in my mind shows that the Supreme Education Council is more concerned with reform than hiding problems.

As I've noted before reforms in education will take a long time to bear fruit and it is important that those reforms include the earliest school years as that will impact the education of students in the later years. But what are the issues in Qatar's educational system? If you search my blog for PISA you'll find a few posts from last year that discuss the issue, one of which noting in detail some of the things I heard from both teachers and Qataris about how schooling works in the public sector, and it is definitely an eye-opener. That can't be the full story though. It was not only Qataris that were tested, students in the various private schools were also tested and Qatar has a large number of private schools: Indian curriculum, British curriculum, Pakistani curriculum American curriculum, French curriculum, even a Canadian school. I also don't think Qataris make up the majority of students in the country anymore given that Qataris only make up about 15% of the population, I speculate they are around 30% of the students due to the high birthrates amongst Qataris as well is the fact that many of the ex-pat workers do not have their families here. PISA likely tested students from all backgrounds.

Yet Qatar scored far lower than all of the OECD countries, and scored lower than other Arab nations such as Jordan and Tunisia. But if many of these kids went to private schools on Western curriculums one would have thought that at least a portion of the students would've scored around the levels of their home countries (unfortunately India, Pakistan, and major Arab countries like Egypt didn't participate in the PISA study so we have no idea how well those curriculums would do). This would imply that the public school students would've on average scored even lower than the Qatar average would suggest. While I have no data to back it up I can't believe that would be true -- Qatar public schools would have to be some of the worst on the planet for that to be right! The schools may have a number of issues based on what I've been told but I have met many Qataris and their education is certainly not that bad.

So what are the possible issues? I don't have the data, hopefully the Supreme Education Council has data on individual schools or additional supplementary statistics they can use to get to the heart of the matter. I will speculate on some possible problems:


1. Learning multiple languages at once

Qataris generally know both Arabic and English. Much of the ex-pat population are from non-Arabic speaking countries so it can be difficult sometimes to get by without English. Most Qataris, including children, know English to some degree. Same would be true with many of the other curriculums. If the educational system is geared to teaching two languages then kids are definitely going to suffer on the PISA reading scores went up to countries who focus on one language.

2. Cultural focus on education

Do parents involve themselves in a child's education to the extent they do in places like East Asia? Are parents monitoring that homework is being done, and studying is taking place? Is getting good grades important to parents? Do parents put pressure on the school to not fail their child even though they're not performing well? I really don't know the answer to these questions, this is a cultural issue that I have not explored.

3. Wealth

Qatar has been blessed with wealth but sometimes wealth is a double-edged sword, in poorer countries students can be very motivated to do well in their studies because education is seen as a ticket out of poverty. But what if your family is already financially well-off? Are students really motivated to do well if they think that Daddy will get them a job when they get out of high school anyway?

4. Cultural focus on reading

The Qataris I have spoken to are not avid readers and the PISA results show that children who enjoy reading and read recreationally for even a half hour a day score way better than their peers on the reading test. Is reading encouraged in Arab society? Is it a common pastime? I'm assuming it is encouraged to some extent if only for religious reasons -- reading the Qur'an and related religious writings, but perhaps for whatever reason recreational reading is not a big thing in local culture. Again, I don't know if this is true or not.

5. School curriculums not testing on a comprehensive basis

If what I've heard about public schools is true it appears that in many courses tests only cover the most recent chapter of the textbook and then you are never tested on that material again -- there is no comprehensive final at the end of the course. This means that long-term retention of concepts is of less importance than it would be in a comprehensive test curriculum. It also encourages cramming for the test which is also never a good thing for long-term retention of the material.

Qatar might want to consider some form of nation-wide standardized testing to at least ensure that minimum standards are being met.

6. Too much emphasis on "participation"

Again if what one of the Qataris has told me about the public school system is true then in some classes up to 50% of your mark is based on attendance. So technically you can pass the class by simply showing up. Even if the 50% is not true I don't care if it's 25% that is still way too much just for attendance or participation, especially if it is something like math or science. The Supreme Council deathly needs to take a look at this to make sure that schools are putting too much weight on participation.


Hopefully there will be some announcements over the next few months from the Council of Education about the reforms that have been undertaken and what further steps will be initiated to help solve some of the issues in schools.

OECD PISA test – Skeptical about Shanghai

A newcomer to the PISA tests went on to take top spot in all three categories – Shanghai. Not only did they take top spot but they did it by a huge margin. Let's take a look at the top 8 scores in each category, and the 32nd place country (i.e. in the middle of the 65 countries/regions whose scores were released):

Reading
556 Shanghai
539 Korea
536 Finland
533 Hong Kong
526 Singapore
524 Canada (yay!!)
521 New Zealand
520 Japan
. . . .
483 Greece (32nd)


Mathematics
600 Shanghai
562 Singapore
555 Hong Kong
546 Korea
543 Taiwan
541 Finland
536 Liechtenstein
534 Switzerland
. . . .
487 United States/Ireland/Portugal (tied for 32nd)

Science
575 Shanghai
554 Finland
549 Hong Kong
542 Singapore
539 Japan
538 Korea
532 New Zealand
. . . .
489 Italy (32nd)

Shanghai beat the second-place entrant by 17-38 points, yet the difference between 2nd to 3rd, 3rd to 4th etc, was a mere 1-9 points, with an average of 4.1, and a change of 56-73 points is enough to take you from 2nd all the way down to 32nd. No country was consistently 2nd or 3rd etc in all three categories. That is just to give you an idea of how wide a margin Shanghai did on the PISA test. It's a fantastic result, an incredible result.



It's too good of a result. Waaaaaaaay too good. Something doesn't quite add up here.



The sample size for these tests is huge. According to the PISA website, countries are required to test at least 5,000 students, or an entire cohort if the country is small and does not have that many students in the age category. What are the odds that a group of 5,000 students (or more) would be so dramatically better on average than other groups of a similar size? I'd say near-impossible odds. (quick, someone call the author of Freakonomics!). One cannot have such a large data pool of random students and yet have such a dramatic variance at the top end.

Now before I continue I just want to make one thing clear -- it is not unreasonable for Shanghai to have taken the top spot. East Asian countries have performed incredibly well on the PISA test every time it has been given, and countries like Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore are regularly in the top five in all categories. Education is highly valued in these countries, expectations are high, and there is a lot of parental involvement and monitoring. Children in these countries are expected to study hard and do well in school and PISA results have consistently reflected that. And Shanghai is China's biggest and wealthiest city so I have no doubt that they have some of the best schools in China. There is no reason why Shanghai couldn't be leading the pack.

But no way by that much.

So what happened? Well, I'm not entirely sure. I'm not involved with PISA and I do not know what all of their processes are in administering the test. But let me speculate . . .

Perhaps the educational ministers or officials in Shanghai were under a lot of pressure to see good results.

Countries tend to see the PISA test as a way to see how their students are performing and try to see if there are weaknesses in the educational system for which a government can introduce initiatives to try to fix, or to identify good performing countries so that other countries can look to see what exactly those countries do and perhaps emulate it. It is a great learning tool for governments. If you take that approach to the PISA test then it is highly unlikely you are going to try to manipulate the results in order to look better than other countries. You need real, honest data about how your country is doing. Because of this I'm not sure if PISA’s controls are particularly strict to ensure countries don't manipulate the results. What would be the point of taking the test if you are not interested in honest results, right? Well, if you were worried that your career was at stake maybe you'd be more inclined to provide the results you think your boss wants.

So it is possible that officials in Shanghai were very worried about repercussions from the Central Government if results were less than stellar, which would give them an incentive to improve the results. This is not uncommon with one-party centralized governments, officials who fear repercussions give the story that their superiors want to hear. Since this is an outside test perhaps some officials, worried that the students would show poor results compared to countries in their region, tweaked things a little somehow, and tweaked things a bit too much.

How? Here are some possible ways:

1) Have students older than the required age take the test.

2) Select only specialized schools or top-end schools

3) Review the test before handing them in and correct a few mistakes (I believe Freakonomics had a tale on this regarding standardized testing in the US)

4) Review the test beforehand and inform students of some of the answers, or make sure that material is covered in classes before the exam is given.

5) Pretest the students on a similar exam (perhaps PISA 2003 or PISA 2006) and only have the higher-performing students take the 2009 exam.

6) Some or all of the above

Now maybe PISA has some strong controls or prevent many of these, but they would not be able to prevent all of them (number 1 or 5 for example). Anyway, if a country or an education Ministry really wanted to manipulate the results they could.

I would love if someone could get a good statistician and run the odds that Shanghai would pull so far ahead in all three categories given the size of the student pool. If anyone does this let me know. Until such time I will always be skeptical about the results posted for Shanghai.

Qatar education results -- OECD's PISA test

I've mentioned other times in this blog about the PISA test, a test conducted by the OECD every three years which tests 15-year-old students in various countries on reading, science, and math, with a special focus on one of the three categories each time the test is run. It has done this since 2000 and the results always create a lot of media frenzy in the West when countries figure out that their students scored worse than other countries. I expect a lot of education ministers to be fielding tough questions this week.

A lot of non-OECD countries also signed up for the test and Qatar signed up for the 2006 test, where they placed second last out of 57 countries in all three categories (beating out Kyrgyzstan in all three categories). The test continues to grow membership and for the 2009 test there were 65 countries or regions who signed up, including Qatar.

Well the results for the 2009 test were released today, this time focusing on reading but of course testing all three categories. How did Qatar do?

Reading: 61st (higher then Peru, Panama, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan)
Science: 61st (beating the same countries listed above)
Mathematics: 62nd (Azerbaijan pulled ahead in this category)


Now I was not expecting significant improvement from the 2006 test because educational reform takes a long time to see results. The kids who wrote this test would've been 12 years old back in 2006 so would already have been well through the educational system. But is Qatar making significant changes to its educational system? This is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet its students are clearly underperforming. Poorer Arab-speaking nations such as Jordan or Tunisia outperformed Qatar, and four South American countries also did better.

It does go to show that money does not necessarily buy a good educational system, many high-performing countries spent less per capita on education than high-spending countries such as Qatar or the United States. Thankfully the OECD also does a lot more analysis than just a simple score. Here are some highlights from the executive summary:

• students in urban schools perform better than students in rural schools, even if you factor in their social economic background
• children from single-parent households will score slightly lower on average than children from two-parent households (we are talking about 1% less)
• looks like your Mom was right, children who primarily read comic books do little better than children who don't do a lot of recreational reading at all. However, kids who do a lot of online research and reading do score better. Recreational reading from a wide variety of materials seems to be the best way to have a high reading score.
• Girls like to read more than boys and not surprisingly girls scored better than boys in all OECD countries -- and the gender gap is widening.
• Students tended to perform better on the test in schools that had greater autonomy over their curriculum and how students are tested
• higher teacher salaries, but not smaller class sizes, correlates with better performance on the test
• students tend to perform better in schools with a better disciplinary climate

Cool stuff. Keep an eye out for discussions on this test, and how well or poorly your country did, in your local papers.

(By the way, for some reason South Asian countries like India and Pakistan have not signed up for the test. I wish they would, if you're living in one of those countries, see if you can ask your education Minister why they are not signing up for the OECD test)

Qatar updates

Okay, it has been a busy week.

First, I would just like to mention this local news article on a recent Science Camp for children.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=387635&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16

I sometimes get concerned that with Western media focus on places like Iraq and Afghanistan, or showing pictures of whatever fundamentalists are burning a flag this week, that people don't realize that much of the Islamic world is not like that and are generally supportive of science and scientific advancement. Qatar has spent a lot of money on universities, education, and even has a Qatar Scientific Club, who hosted the camp.

Don't get me wrong, Qatar has a long way to go. Per the 2006 PISA test Qatar was 56th out of 57 countries in science and math. Hopefully they will improve on the 2009 test. At a recent skeptics meet-up I was talking to a teacher and he told me that he did find the educational standards worrisome. Apparently some Qataris are graduating from high school not even being able to multiply single digits. Again, I hope there'll be some improvement on the 2009 PISA test results though I do not expect a dramatic improvement -- reforms in an educational system take many years to manifest in improvements in Students.

Speaking of PISA, did anyone watch President Obama’s recent discussions on education in America?

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/39378576/site/todayshow/ns/today-parenting

here's a key excerpt:
“My administration is announcing that we are going to specifically focus on training 10,000 new math and science teachers," he said. "We have to boost performance in that area. We used to rank at the top; we are now 21st in science, 25th in math. That is a sign of long-term decline that has to be reversed.”
So where did the 21st and 25th came from? I thought it came from the PISA 2006 test results but that would mean Obama is only counting the OECD countries -- the US results are even worse when you throw in non-OECD countries in the mix:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/13/39725224.pdf


Secondly, lectures have started up again at the Museum of Islamic Art, the next one is this Wednesday at 6:30 PM. Anyone who is interested should contact the Museum for details. I enjoyed the lectures they put on last year.


Thirdly, the Qatar Natural History Group is back for another season of lectures and field trips. The first lecture is on Wednesday, October 6, see their website for more details http://www.qnhg.org/


Lastly, I received a great gift from a Qatari friend this week, but I'll talk more about that next post.

Book Fair

Check out this recent article in the newspaper about an upcoming book fair. Figured I would mention it since I had recently posted about why it is difficult to find a detailed history of Qatar.

Qatar and Education

This week Qatar is hosting the World Innovation Summit for Education conference. I wish I could have gone but I'm recuperating and it is held on working days so even if I was not recovering I'd have to go to work instead.

Despite the fact that I do not work in an educational field, nor do I have any children, I've always had an interest in educational theory and standards. Maybe because I just love learning and in my school days I certainly learned how an aspiring teacher or a decent programme can make all the difference in someone's education. Unfortunately I have also learnt how a bad teacher can turn people off learning and even discourage people from following a field of study that they liked. And thanks to authors like Jonathan Kozol I've also learnt how poorly funded or overcrowded schools can turn promising young students apathetic and bitter, destroying their potential.

Getting back to the conference is a good thing that Qatar is hosting it -- because they need a lot of innovation right now if they are going make significant improvements to their educational system.

I mentioned in a previous blog post about the OECD's PISA test, which tests 15-year-old students all over the world in reading, mathematics, and science. Despite having one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, I think only second to Luxembourg, Qatar's students scored very poorly on the 2006 PISA test:

Reading -- 55th out of 56 countries
Mathematics -- 56th out of 57 countries
Science -- 56th out of 57 countries

(Krygryzstan was last in all categories)

Well there is also another educational test that numerous countries participate in. It is called the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) test, which tests grade 4 and grade 8 students. And in this test Qatar performed poorly as well, countries such as Ghana and Botswana scored higher. In fact in math Qatar was second-last for Grade 4 and last for Grade 8, in science Qatar was second-last at both ages. How can a country with so much wealth not have an educational system better than many impoverished nations?

I spoke to some Qataris about it. First of all, much like when I mentioned the PISA test a while back, they were not surprised by the results at all. They weren't sure whether things have changed since when they were younger (but they are in their mid-20s so if things are different it wasn't changed that long ago) but when they were in school:

-- A large amount of your grade was attendance, so much of it in fact that if you just showed up you could pretty much pass regardless of your test results.
-- Exams were not comprehensive. If you covered a chapter of a math text you're usually given a small quiz on it and that was that, you did not have to study the material again. This would deftly discourage long-term retention of anything.
-- Apparently schools are run almost as profit centres. Schools are given a certain amount of money from the government without the lot of oversight into how it is spent. So a lot of schools cut corners, resulting in low-paid teachers and overcrowded classrooms. [ I'm not so sure about this one, I'm pretty sure the Ministry of Education would do some oversight on spending. Perhaps because rents are so high a lot of money has to go to rent for the school building and housing for teachers, making it more problematic for schools to spend money on other things]
-- a lot of time spent on religious studies which takes away from science, maths etc. I can't blame a sharia society are putting emphasis on religious study and I doubt that is the main reason why the test scores are so poor (one would think it would improve reading scores). I don't think Qatar would be willing to be number one in these tests if it meant getting rid of religious study. Perhaps the Education Ministry would aim for improvements to keep the country's students at least on par with the industrialised world, balancing it with the religious study.
-- not a lot of homework given out. I remember talking to one person who used to teach in Bahrain and they told me that teachers were generally discouraged from giving out homework since a lot of the kids would just get someone else to do it for them at home, or pay someone. Not too hard to imagine since many South Asian labourers make as little as $120 a month, I'm sure they'd gladly do a kid's homework for $10.
-- And of course it might be the usual culprits that are always bantered about in North America when discussing education -- TV/video games and parental involvement in education.

Qatar has made some changes, I know it developed an Academic Bridge programme through Qatar Foundation to give recent graduates extra assistance in getting them prepared for University but that may be too little too late. Changes are definitely needed in the elementary and middle school programmes if Qatar is going to make significant improvements in education.

The results of the 2009 PISA test are due out around March or April next year. I'm hopeful there will be a slight improvement but nothing significant, comprehensive educational reform will take many years. Any changes that were implemented by the Ministry since the 2006 test will take time to show up in the scoring.