Estonia, Finland, Poland students best in EU at Science.

33 comments
  1. Why the gap between Slovakia and Czechia so big? Also it seems that living in nothernmost parts of the EU pays off when it comes to science.

  2. I have expected Romania to fail badly in Western mathematics. As of 2021, Romania is still teaching Soviet mathematics, there is no story-driven concept of mathematics as you see in the PISA problems. Their students are grinding problems for the International Olympiad of Mathematics, again a Soviet thing. They learn abstract math in high school like groups, monoids, etc. while they neglect story-driven financial problems which are prominent in PISA tests. Buy yourself a Russian or a Romanian math textbook at the precalculus or high-school level and see for yourself.

    PISA feeds into an overreliance on standardized tests and an emphasis on learning that can be easily measured and, some experts say, has major flaws with how the tests are administered, how samples of students are determined, and how some of the test questions are constructed.

    Today it is marketed as the *only* way to assess and measure the education of a 15yo and that those measurements will predict what will happen with their generation when they join the workforce. It brilliantly exploits the anxiety of politicians, academics in countries who do not wish for a standardized education and even pupils.

    The problem that I have with it is the Nordic/French-centric view of education that is imposed on the test subject. Look at Russia and United States, their scores are low and barely changed in 30 years. Does that mean that Russia and the US are less likely to have the skills of a modern economy? Last time I’ve checked, those are the countries that supply the International Space Station.

  3. If only this would translate into trust for science and evidence-based claim and rejection of random social media conspiracies and fake news. Oh boy, would that be great.

  4. I saw the word ‘science’, then I saw Romania and a big number, and I got excited.

    Then I read the headline properly.

    And now I’m sad.

  5. In Poland we have only one resource which got any value. Our self. So if you want achieve anything – study.

  6. Lowest number of underachievers does not imply „best in science“. Maybe there are just a lot of mediocre students…

  7. Underachievers by the standard of their own national curriculum though right? This graph is flawed as there is no comparison between the different national curriculums themselves, it’s just the based of the standards of their pupils results rather than their true education level.

  8. One may wonder if these PISA score just produce a “study for the test” mentality, and that the numbers are increasingly disconnected from reality as they become targets.

    At least around here the politicians loves to harp on having more math etc in school, yet the PISA results seems to either not budge or move the opposite direction from what they wanted.

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