In Canada, according to a new global report, most of the 15-year-old students, met the basic standards for math and the country was among the top 10 performers in the tests, though scores were dropping since 2003.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment’s (PISA) latest study focused on mathematics science and reading skills of 23,073 students in 867 schools from all 10 provinces in Canada.
In the latest PISA study for 2022, it concluded that average scores in mathematics and reading were the lowest of any year going back to 2000, when Canada first participated in the assessments.
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According to the Council of Ministers of Education they said that, Though the country saw a decline over time in math, reading and science scores, the trend is almost the same in most other participating jurisdictions for the study.
In North America Canada was the only country to make the study’s top 10 for mathematic scores.
Mathematics professor Anna Stokke at the University of Winnipeg says, she’s concerned about the math performance of Canadian students based on the study’s results.
We’re seeing more students performing at low levels and less students performing at the top levels.
To help improve math skills, she said that they need to focus mainly in schools.
Math is really cumulative and it’s easy for children to get behind if they don’t get good instruction or if they don’t get a lot of practice, Stokke explained.
Stokke of the University of Winnipeg realized that inquiry-based methods taught by many schools are more suitable for advanced students.
She said that, students need systematic, explicit instruction, a rigorous math curriculum and a lot of practice and teaching math through open-ended problems is what’s gotten us to where we are today. In spite of the warning signs that students have not been performing well when taught through open-ended problems, many school districts doubled down. You can’t fix a problem by doubling down on methods which don’t work.
Policy makers and parents should find out who is being paid to give professional development to teachers in Canada,” Stokke explained. We need to focus on giving students solid math instruction in schools.
Derek J. Allison, a professor emeritus of education at Western University in London says that he believes Canada should recruit and train specialized math teachers.
In most countries, students attending schools whose principal reported shortages of teaching staff scored less in mathematics than students in schools whose principal reported fewer or no shortages of teaching staff, the OECD stated.
Even with a more disadvantaged socio-economic profile than non-immigrant students, PISA said that immigrant students in Canada significantly scored better on average than non-immigrant ones by 12 points in math.
In Canada, students for the PISA study took two hour-long tests, which were a mix of multiple-choice questions and questions which needed a written response. Every three years the assessment is conducted.
