PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia’s 15-year-olds have done well in Science and Reading among the 91 countries that took part in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2025.
Education Minister Datuk Seri Fadhlina Sidek said our scores for the two domains have improved while the rest of the world's have declined.
Compared to Pisa 2022, Malaysia’s students improved by three points in Science to 419, while Reading improved by five points to 393.
However, Mathematics has declined by 11 points to 397 compared to Pisa 2022.
“The decline is not something we can see as a change in just one round, but it should make us look at the problem more seriously, intensively and not defensively,” she said when announcing the Pisa 2025 results at the Education Ministry today (Sept 8).
She also said the country is among the six in the world to exceed Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expectations for computational problem-solving with a score of 484 points.
Computational problem solving, she said, is the ability of children to break down complex problems into smaller parts, find patterns, select important information and then organise steps to solve them.
Worryingly, Fadhlina said 5% of Malaysian students reported that they have encountered cyberbullying.
At the same time, students report less family support when it comes to their education.
“There is a high level of cyberbullying by Malaysian students compared to the OECD average and it is associated with lower learning achievement.
“So today I would like to appeal to parents throughout the community to look at our role as families, especially to ensure that we can continue to improve the support we provide to our children in their learning,” she added.
Pisa is administered by the OECD every three years on 15-year-olds in both OECD and non-OECD countries and offers students questions in the main language of instruction in their respective countries.
Each round focuses on either Reading, Mathematics or Science with the 2025 chapter focusing on Science.
