OECD Report: Malaysia's education system remains a concern, says Ong

Malaysia’s education system remains a concern as it has yet to reach a ‘world-class’ level, says Serdang MP Dr Ong Kian Meng.

This was based on a finding released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of Science and Mathematics, which ranked Malaysia in the 52nd spot out of the 76 countries listed.

The study also showed that the top five positions had been secured by Asian countries namely Singapore (1st), Hong Kong (2nd), South Korea (3rd), Japan and Taiwan (both in 4th). Within Southeast Asia, Malaysia was ranked below not just Singapore but also Vietnam (12th) and Thailand (47th).

Malaysia was also ranked below Ukraine (38th), Turkey (41st), UAE (45th) and Kazakhstan (49th).

With this result, concerns were also raised on the quality of learning and teaching of Science and Mathematics in Malaysia.

Ong added that Malaysia should take Sweden as an example, where it had asked OECD to review its education system in 2014 when the country’s education experienced a sharp decline in the year 2000.

“The lesson of Sweden should be a lesson to our Ministers. Sweden used to have one of the better education systems among OECD countries but experienced a sharp decline in its PISA and TIMSS scores from 2000 onwards,” Ong said.

In this latest OECD ranking, Sweden came in at the 35th position, one of the lowest ranked OECD countries.

“In the case of Malaysia, if our policymakers do not acknowledge the weaknesses in our current education system, we may even fall further behind our Asian neighbours and continue to lose out in terms of our economic competitiveness,” he said.

The OECD study was aimed at providing a wider global representation of education standards compared to OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The full details of this study will only be released at next week’s World Education Forum 2015 meeting in Seoul, Korea where the UN, led by UNESCO, will deliberate and decide on the post-2015 education agenda to replace the targets and objectives set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).