Wrong to keep us out of PISA 2012

PISA is an indispensable international audit of our Malta's education system and not just of student performance. It helps us understand where we rank internationally with the countries that compete with us for investment.

Our success as a society and as an economy depends also on the skills and formation that students acquire in our education system.

PISA has been carried out every three years since 2000, and Malta has participated in its  2009 edition. However, the government has decided not to participate in PISA 2012, which was held between April and June 2012.

PISA does not just assess student performance, but also audits policies, resource allocation and the leadership and management of the education system - effectively, it puts governments under the lens and scrutinises what they are doing to improve the education system.

Government has tried to justify the decision not to participate in PISA 2012 by saying that it has taken part in PISA 2009 with the results that emerged having been published in 2011, and so didn't deem it necessary to be reassessed so soon.

Countries like Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates also took part in 2009 but they still went ahead and took part in 2012.

PISA 2012 focused on mathematics literacy and assessed reading and science literacy as well. PISA 2012 also included computer-based assessments in mathematics literacy, reading literacy, and general problem solving assessments, and for the first time held an assessment of students' financial literacy.

Malta should have taken part in PISA 2012 as it had a new element compared to all previous assessments carried out since 2000: the Computer Based Assessment of Literacies. CBAL assessed reading, mathematics and problem solving. The interactive nature of the test allowed for student assessment in novel contexts that would not be possible using the traditional paper-and-pencil format.

Government is afraid of PISA as it cannot manipulate the results the same way it tries to manipulate the SEC results every year, boasting that many students are passing their SEC results when in fact an unacceptably high segment of them still does not. While government boasts that over 90% pass in mathematics and science, the PISA 2009 showed that over a third of our 15-year-olds lack the linguistic, mathematical and scientific literacy skills needed to function productively in today's world.

I was the first in Malta (on 8 August, 2012) to criticise the government for keeping us out of PISA 2012. I was the first one to say that Malta is not among the 68 countries taking part in PISA 2012. Yet last Thursday, the Ministry of Education - arrogant as ever -accused me of simply trotting out what others had said. They said that I repeated what professor Carmel Borg said on 12 August, when I had already broken the news of Malta's non-participation on 8 August.

The PISA 2009 showed that a third of our 15 year olds lack the linguistic, scientific and mathematical literacy to participate productively in today's world. The Ministry of Education did not publicise the results of PISA 2009 . Other countries held seminars and discussions nationwide to discuss the results and assess what needs to be done to improve their educational systems.

But we are burdened with a very superficial government obsessed with propaganda and publicity to put itself in a good light at the expense of those thousands of children and young people who are still falling behind in education and who do not figure among the priorities of the present government.

The author is shadow minister for education.