KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 6): Malaysia was not spared from the decline in educational performance, due to learning disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2022.

In the report released on Wednesday, the OECD said Malaysia recorded drops in all three of Pisa’s main metrics, namely mathematics, reading literacy, and science.

The country logged a hefty 31-point decline in mean mathematics performance to 409 from 440 in Pisa 2018, 27 points in reading literacy to 388 from 415, and 22 points in science to 416 from 438.

However, the OECD average for mathematics also saw a decline of 15 points to 472, compared to the previous 2018 iteration, while reading literacy had a decrease of 10 points to 476.

Meanwhile, the OECD average performance in science remained stable at 485.

The report labelled this steep decline in performance as “unprecedented”, as changes in OECD averages over prior Pisa assessments up to 2018 never exceeded a four-point decline in mathematics and five points in reading literacy. 

While it noted that the learning disruption caused by the pandemic was a contributing factor, it also added that performance was already on the decline well before.

“The deterioration in mathematics performance between 2018 and 2022 followed a decade-and-a-half of stable performance,” it said.

“Trajectories in reading and science performance, however, had already turned negative before 2018, after reaching their highest levels between Pisa 2009 and 2012, well before the Covid-19 disruptions,” it added, suggesting that there were other structural reasons for the decline.

In response, the report recommended providing all students with opportunities to fulfil their potential regardless of their backgrounds, and tailor policies to an education system’s particular contexts.

“In Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), performance-targeted policies aimed at improving the scores of the lowest performers, regardless of their socio-economic status, could be implemented initially at the school level. Conversely, Australia, Canada, [South] Korea, New Zealand and Sweden could implement such policies by focusing first on individual students.

“If the aim is to reduce inequalities in education by providing additional resources, support or assistance to disadvantaged students and schools, targeting disadvantaged schools is likely to have a greater impact in Bulgaria, Colombia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Panama, Peru and Uruguay,” it said as an example.