Public education roundtable to discuss PISA test results in January

Budapest (MTI) – The public education roundtable is expected to meet in January and it will discuss the recently published results of the 2015 PISA tests, state secretary László Palkovics said on Tuesday.

The wage increase scheme for teachers will continue next year and by 2017 they will have received a combined 50 percent increase, he told a press conference.

In response to a question, he said a report on education is being prepared for the government and proposals will be made for a new national curriculum, teacher training and methodology courses. The education roundtable meeting in January will discuss the results, he added.

He reiterated that the PISA tests were prepared with the assumption that the various subjects were being taught in a coordinated manner. He earlier said that the PISA tests comprised of three different surveys on different groups of students, and while “the results are in correlation at some level”, they are not comparable.

The test published on December 6 showed that Hungarian students scored worse in reading comprehension and in science last year than in a similar test in 2012. Participants in the 2015 test showed similar results in maths as three years earlier. But in all three areas they scored below the average of OECD countries. The PISA system, introduced in 2000, measures students’ performance across OECD countries. The test is conducted every three years.

Source: MTI