Malaysia Eyes Better Performance In PISA 2015

From Abdul Muin Majid NASSAU, June 25 (Bernama) -- Muhyiddin Yassin has expressed hope that Malaysian students will perform better in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) this year. The Malaysian deputy prime minister said a number of initiatives implemented in recent years such as the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) should be able to help Malaysia improve its rankings. "One of the criteria used in PISA is evaluating the thinking skills of students, meaning that they're not supposed to simply give answers. "We've implemented HOTS over the past two years, so we're hopeful that our students will be able to achieve better PISA results this year," he told the Malaysian media Wednesday as he wrapped up his working visit to The Bahamas. Muhyiddin, who is education minister, represented Malaysia at the 19th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (19CCEM) being held in this Bahamian capital from June 22 to 26. He noted that HOTS had featured in both the SPM and PT3 examinations. Muhyiddin said a presentation on PISA at the Nassau conference indicated that being among the lowest ranked countries did not mean that a country's education standards were low. "There are other factors at play that we'll need to look into," the deputy prime minister said. There have been concerns over Malaysia's performance in PISA, with the country placed in the bottom third, ranking 52 out of 65 countries, in the 2012 survey. PISA is administered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development every three years on 15-year-olds in both member and non-member countries. At Thursday's 19CCEM proceedings, Muhyiddin delivered a speech focusing on education, skills and employment. The deputy prime minister also presented Malaysia's contribution amounting to US$200,000 for initiatives under the Commonwealth of Learning, a Canada-based organisation which encourages the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. Muhyiddin also took the opportunity of the presence of Commonwealth education ministers in Nassau to highlight Malaysia's intention to join the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) for the 2015-2019 term. According to him, a number of countries had stated their support for Malaysia over its UNESCO bid. Muhyiddin left Nassau for home Wednesday night. -- BERNAMA