Malaysia likes to emulate Shanghai's success formulae in Pisa, says DPM

SHANGHAI: Malaysia likes to emulate elements practised in the Shanghai education system to produce high-performing students, including for the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), said Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
It is keen to adopt some of the success formulae from Shanghai which gained top spot in Pisa for its student high performances in Mathematics, Science and Reading, he added.
"We want to learn how they succeed. We will look into (their) entire learning and teaching system," he told reporters after a briefing by Pisa Chinese team director Zhang Minxuan at Shanghai Normal University on Wednesday.
Muhyiddin, who is also Education Minister, said the ministry would send its expert team to the university to study the matter.
Their success formulae such as single session schooling, less homework and less tuition should be given due consideration, he added.
While Shanghai is placed in the top spot, Malaysia is positioned among the lowest in the ranking which involves 65 participating countries (although Shanghai participated as a province). The province has 28 million population with 2,000 schools in rural and urban areas.
Pisa examines the performance of 15 year old pupils in Mathematics, Science, Reading and problem solving. Malaysian students scored below average for all the four subjects in the assessment conducted in 2012.
Muhyiddin said Malaysia would continue participating in the Pisa.
However, he cautioned Malaysia was not merely paying attention in the four subjects only as its holistic approach covered promoting national unity, all-round performance students in its education policies.
He said some of Shanghai's success formulae known as 'Shanghai Secrets', including attracting the best brains in education, assisting poor and low performance students, and teachers' professionalism development had been practised by Malaysia.
He hoped Malaysia could be in the top one-third of the Pisa ranking in the next two to four years.
"Malaysians like overnight results but we are working very hard to achieve our target," said Muhyiddin who is on a six-day official visit to China, covering Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, since Sunday. He will be in Chongqing tomorrow. – Bernama