Hungary’s students fare below average on PISA problem solving table

(MTI) – Hungary’s 15-year-old students are ranked by the OECD just one notch above the bottom quarter in the PISA table of creative problem solving.

In the 2012 results released on Tuesday, Hungary was in 33 place out 44 countries assessed for “Creative Problem Solving: Students’ Skills in Tackling Real-Life Problems” by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The OECD said in a press release that the students took the “computer-based test, involving real-life scenarios to measure the skills young people will use when faced with everyday problems, such as setting a thermostat or finding the quickest route to a destination.”

The OECD average was a score of 500. Hungary totted up 459 points, putting its students behind Croatia (466 points), Serbia (473), Slovenia (476), Poland (481) and Slovakia (483).

At the top of the list was Singapore, with 562 points, followed by Korea and Japan.

Trailing at the bottom were Uruguay (403), Bulgaria and Columbia.

Altogether, around 85,000 students took part in the assessment.

Fully 35 percent of Hungarian students were among the weakest achievers, while only 5.6 percent were among the strongest. For comparison, 14.3 percent of Finnish students were poor achievers compared with 15 percent in the strong category. The OECD average was 21.4 percent and 11.4 percent respectively.

Photo: kdnp.hu

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters