Malaysia losing ground in maths and science

The Malaysian Insider, which I write a weekly column for, has just published an op-ed by former Leader of the Opposition Lim Kit Siang, blasting Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein for Malaysia's atrocious performance in the 2007 edition of the quadrennial Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

This is the first I'd heard of this, and Lim is quite right that the mainstream media and the government have been conspicuously silent about our poor showing, despite their trumpeting of our success in the 2003 TIMSS. We have fallen ten spots in the maths rankings, from #10 to #20, and fallen one spot in the science rankings, from #20 to #21.

The most worrying thing about this is that when you look at our performance in absolute terms, we're falling ever further behind. We've gone from 519 points for 8th grade maths in 1999 to 474 in 2007; for science, from 492 in 1999 to 471 in 2007. The average score is supposed to be 500, so we have been consistently underperforming, which is terrible news for a middle- to upper-middle-income country such as ours.

I encourage you to read the whole op-ed by Lim Kit Siang, and maybe write to your MP asking them to debate this in Parliament. We need to have a public dialogue about what is wrong with our school system, and hold our government accountable for its stagnation.