Seyfettin Gürsel and Mine Durmaz
2012 Report of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has been published in December, 2013. Results reveal that there is a large but insufficient improvement in Turkey’s performance. From 2006 to 2012 Turkey increased its average score in all fields (mathematics, science and reading) from 432 to 462 points. However, this large increase has not been enough to change Turkey’s ranking (third to last) among 34 OECD member countries. The gap between Turkey and OECD average has been diminished gradually in each field, yet student performances are still poor compared to OECD averages.
On the other hand, during the period of 2006-2012, Turkey increased the share of top performers and simultaneously reduced the share of low performers. In parallel, the share of medium performers, who constitute the main part of the future labor force, also increased. Turkey’s large performance increase results from the success of village schools and the success of relatively poor students. In this sense, results show that inequality in education has decreased in Turkey but the level of inequality is still quite higher than that of OECD average.
doc. ResearchBrief161
pdf. ResearchBrief161