Melanie Butler of EL Gazette predicts the effect of the new tests
Pisa (Programme for international student assessment) tests the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. The plan for 2024 is to introduce an optional foreign language assessment. This will increase the pressure on school systems around the world to improve the level of English of their under-16s.
Many governments set huge importance on their countries’ Pisa results. Unofficially it has been said that Poland reduced its emphasis on English to boost classroom time dedicated to the 3-subject currently tested: maths, science and reading. Poland scored well in Pisa 2018 and took number 11 in the ranking.
Now, the OECD condemns of averaging the scores across the subjects, but national governments do it anyway.
The recent article by EL Gazette looks at how the table score could change with the introduction of optional English tests in PISA 2024. EL Gazette used a blend of national average TOEFL scores and, where available, IELTS scores by country and used the marking base and score distribution system to come up with a dummy proxy Pisa-style English score.
These of course, were just potential scores the ranking cannot be precise. Additionally, considering the age difference of students taking the Pisa tests (a representative sample of 15-year-olds in each country) and students for IELTS and TOEFL (mainly bright students with wealthy background 18-24 year-olds) the results can generally speaking be compared and used for this prediction.
It is essential to mention that El gazette also included the English scores for the majority English-speaking countries which are not the highest, mainly because the score is the average of everyone who took the test in that country including international students.
According to the findings, the impact of adding in English could be the following: East Asia and South East Asia has had 7 of the top ten ranking countries in Pisa 2018.
When the English scores were added, Singapore came top though China maintained second place, despite ranking 111 for English! Another two other East Asian countries, Hong Kong and Macau, stayed in the top ten while Taiwan, Japan and Korea dropped.
Northern Europe would go up the ranking, with Eastern and Central Europe close behind. Southern Europe would still not appear in the top as the English test scores for Latin language countries are significantly lower than for the rest of Europe.
Looking at the language learning itself and considering the results from the EU tests conducted in 17 European countries in 2012, the results show that the speakers of Germanic languages, like Dutch and Swedish, had the highest scores, with the Slavic language speakers slightly behind on average and the Latin speakers following on.
Considering above, the language distance hypothesis can be correct saying that it is simpler to learn a closely related language, as Dutch is to English, then a more distantly related one, like Spanish. Hardest of all is learning a completely unrelated language like Dutch compared to Arabic. The conclusion might be that some countries might benefit from the added optional language test to PISA testing, and some might lose their high position in Pisa ranking due to the facts aforementioned.
