PETALING JAYA: Malaysia needs an urgent, detailed plan to improve its performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).
Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) School of Education lecturer Dr Muhammad Noor Abdul Aziz said the most important national target should be reducing the number of students below minimum proficiency.
“The implementation should begin with short diagnostic assessments at the start of the school year to identify specific learning gaps, rather than simply categorising pupils as weak.
“For example, a Year Six pupil may read fluently but struggle with inference, while another may understand mathematical operations but fail when the same mathematics appears in a real-life problem. Those children require different interventions,” he said.
Muhammad Noor concurred with MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong’s call for an immediate national education recovery plan to address the disappointing performance in Pisa 2025.
He said implementation should reflect Malaysia’s diverse school contexts rather than imposing identical interventions nationwide.
He noted that schools serving Orang Asli communities, rural areas in Sabah and Sarawak, dense urban centres and well-resourced metropolitan areas may share the same national learning standards but face very different challenges.
“The destination should be national; the route should be contextual,” he said, adding that Mathematics, for instance, could draw on household budgeting, agriculture or local commerce, while Science could use rivers, plantations, fisheries or urban environmental problems as examples,” he said.
Malaysian Association for Education secretary Hamidi Mookkaiyah Abdullah proposed that the Education Ministry introduce a “National Learning Recovery Dashboard” that would track outcomes in Mathematics, Reading and Science annually, including foundational numeracy, comprehension, critical reading, scientific reasoning, data interpretation and problem-solving.
“The data should be broken down by state, urban and rural location, socioeconomic background, school type, gender and language background where appropriate.
“Pisa tests 15-year-olds, so waiting until Form Three or Form Four is too late; interventions must run from preschool through primary and early secondary education, with particular emphasis on Years One to Six,” he said.
Melaka Action Group for Parents in Education chairman Mak Chee Kin said at the ground level, every school should regularly assess pupils to identify those who are falling behind.
“These pupils should receive targeted remedial and catch-up programmes, with intervention taking place early instead of waiting until learning gaps become more serious.
“Teachers also need better teaching resources, relevant training and less administrative work so they can devote more time to their pupils,” he said.
He also said the priority for Mathematics should be strengthening basic numeracy, problem-solving and the ability to apply mathematical concepts in real-life situations.
“For example, after paying 80sen for an item that costs RM1, some children still do not know that they should receive 20sen in change,” he said, adding that there must be greater emphasis on mental and written calculation, and that calculators should be done away with to ensure pupils develop basic mathematical skills.
