Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers

bnew

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Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers

By Leigh Thomas

December 5, 20236:09 AM ESTUpdated 4 hours ago

The first day of the new school year after summer break in France

Schoolchildren work in a classroom on the first day of the new school year after summer break in Savenay, France, September 4, 2023. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/files Acquire Licensing Rights


  • Summary
  • Nearly 700,000 15-year-olds tested in 81 countries
  • 1 out of 4 were low performers in maths, reading and science
  • Singapore's students earned top marks in all subjects

PARIS, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Teenagers' mathematics and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries and COVID school closures are only partly to be blamed, the OECD said on Tuesday in its latest survey of global learning standards.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said it had seen some of the steepest drops in performance since 2000 when it began its usually triennial tests of 15-year-olds reading, maths and science skills.

Nearly 700,000 youths took the two-hour test last year in the OECD's 38 mostly developed country members and 44-non members for the latest study, closely watched by policymakers as the largest international comparison of education performance.

Compared to when the tests were last conducted in 2018, reading performance fell by 10 points on average in OECD countries, and by 15 points in mathematics, a loss equivalent to three-quarters of a year's worth of learning.

Reuters Graphics

Reuters Graphics


While more than half of the 81 countries surveyed saw declines, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland saw particularly sharp drops in mathematics scores, the OECD said.

On average across the OECD, one out of four 15-year-olds tested as a low performer in maths, reading and science, which means they could not use basic algorithms or interpret simple texts, the study found.

"COVID probably played some role but I would not overrate it," OECD director of education Andreas Schleicher told a news conference.

"There are underlying structural factors and they are much more likely to be permanent features of our education systems that policymakers should really take seriously."

Countries that provided extra teacher support during COVID school closures scored better and results were generally better in places where easy teacher access for special help was high.

Poorer results tended to be associated with higher rates of mobile phone use for leisure and where schools reported teacher shortages.

The OECD said the decline was not inevitable, pointing to Singapore, where students scored the highest in maths, reading and science, with results that suggested they were on average three to five years ahead of their OECD peers.

After Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea also outperformed in maths and science, where Estonia and Canada also scored well.

In reading, Ireland, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan earned top marks, and was all the more notable in Ireland and Japan because their spending per student was no higher than the OECD average.

Reporting by Leigh Thomas Editing by Bernadette Baum

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
 

IIVI

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I really blame cutting funding of the arts driving it further downwards.

One of the greatest physicists of all-time (James Clerk Maxwell, from Maxwell's Equations) loved to write and memorize poetry. Many famous scientists were well-rounded individuals.

Barstool Sports "geT teH W" mentality and fart jokes have replaced refined culture.

Throw in social media clout-chasing and it's cooked.
 
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King Poetic

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From California to New York down through the Midwest and South, the numbers are real bad among young black kids.. I don’t give a fukk about other races, we just bad ..

The parents are not shyt and some school administrators like the one i saw in Georgia where teachers was just passing kids just to show their district numbers are good, meanwhile little tank and baby Tawana math is fukked up and they still 4 grades back on reading skills
 

Remote

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Read and learning are not valued. What's the most common thing you hear on the internet "I ain't reading all of that":what:Nobody wants to figure things out.
My generation (and older) are the parents of these stupid kids.

And so we bear a lot of responsibility for not holding these kids accountable. And for allowing these technology companies to target kids to spend more time and have more engagement with these mind wasters.
 

IIVI

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A.I gonna be doing most of the heavy lifting by the time they get in the workforce anyway but this is still terrible news.:francis:


Moravec's paradox is a phenomenon observed by robotics researcher Hans Moravec, in which tasks that are easy for humans to perform (eg, motor or social skills) are difficult for machines to replicate, whereas tasks that are difficult for humans (eg, performing mathematical calculations or large-scale data analysis) are relatively easy for machines to accomplish.

For example, a computer-aided diagnostic system might be able to analyse large volumes of images quickly and accurately but might struggle to recognise clinical context or technical limitations that a human radiologist would easily identify. Similarly, a machine learning algorithm might be able to predict a patient's risk of a specific condition on the basis of their medical history and laboratory results but might not be able to account for the nuances of the patient's individual case or consider the effect of social and environmental factors that a human physician would consider. In surgery, there has been great progress in the field of robotics in health care when robotic elements are controlled by humans, but artificial intelligence-driven robotic technology has been much slower to develop.

Great article by Terence Tao:
 

DaPresident

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Cutting funding to public schools probably doesn't mean much.


Kids learning things on screens and tablets now. Plus, why read when everything now-a-days is in shorthand.

"YKWTFGO" is easier picked up than real words like "philosophical" or "physiological"...but these kids know about "getting to the bag" and LLC startups :yeshrug:
 
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