12 December 2019
According to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) recent study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), local students from lower-income homes in Singapore not only do better than their peers overseas but also outperform the average international student.
In the 2018 study, it was revealed that Singapore students from the bottom 25 per cent of socio-economic status (SES) performed better than the overall OECD average across all income levels. They scored 495 in reading, versus an overall OECD average of 487, 520 in mathematics (489) and 501 in science (489).
On “international resilience”, which measured their reading scores against others elsewhere, 53 per cent of those from Singapore made the top quarter, compared with 33 per cent of OECD students.
But on “national resilience”, which looked at how they fared against top performers in their own countries, only one in 10 of Singapore’s disadvantaged students met the mark.