Minister flunks test
Education Minister Teerakiat Jareonsettasin has been barking up the wrong tree. In making his recent demands to the organiser of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), the minister seemed more anxious about the rankings of Thai students in the eyes of the world than their actual academic improvement.
More importantly, the demands he made highlight the root causes of our education woes.
On Thursday, Mr Teerakiat said he asked the organiser to allow his ministry to proof-read the translated examination papers in advance. His other demand is excluding the Pisa scores of Thai students from small schools in rural areas when calculating the country’s overall score. Any failure to meet those demands means Thailand would not participate in the testing this August, he threatened.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) organises the Pisa tests every three years to rank about 70 OECD and non-OECD countries on the academic achievements of their 15-year-old students in mathematics, science and reading.
Ranked 54th in 2015, Thailand’s overall performance was far below other Asian countries. Its students’ rankings in the sciences and reading also dropped sharply from 2012.
It is true the Pisa test has its admirers and critics. Those who are critical of this standardised, multiple-choice test have called it “a single, narrow, biased yardstick” that continues to shape participating countries’ education policies.
They criticised its focus on economics without integrating other areas of education such as the humanities or the arts. They also questioned its role in escalating the standardisation and use of quantitative measures in educational tests in schools and colleges.
Mr Teerakiat’s demands do not reflect any of these concerns but merely show his desire to have direct control over the examination papers, reflecting an embedded top-down and centralised approach in our education system in which the final say always rests with the ministry.
In fact, Thailand can reflect on both the quality and applicability of the translated papers and the questions in the tests. Instead of going solo, the minister should offer forums and channels for all stakeholders — private and state education institutions, non-governmental organisations, teacher groups, parents and students — to give their thoughts and suggestions on the tests.
There is no need to demand the papers of the new tests be proof-read — a request which will unlikely be accommodated as that could lead to the exam questions or even answers being leaked. Instead, there are many examination papers from previous tests that could be used for this evaluation.
In addition, the minister seems to have overlooked the inequality between urban and rural schools in Thailand. His request to exclude students in rural schools from the score calculation shows that he cares more about showcasing the achievement of better-performing students to the world and less about fixing the real problem at home.
If Thailand’s rankings have been pushed down by the performance of rural school students, it means the Pisa tests helped to depict the overall shortcomings of our educational system. It should help Thai decision makers fix such issues by, for example, providing better incentives for teachers in rural areas while allocating sufficient resources to rural schools as well as allowing them greater autonomy.
Additionally, the minister should get serious about fixing the main problems of the Thai education system — the rampant rote-learning pedagogy and a top-down approach to both classroom learning and policy-making. He should also have listened to calls to promote the critical-thinking skills of students.
The below-average performance of our students is not only reflected by Pisa but also by our own national testing such as the Ordinary National Educational Test.
The minister should not prioritise improving Thailand’s rankings in this year’s Pisa test, but work on a long-term overhaul of the education system.