Family socioeconomic background ‘big influence’ on Pisa, says PAGE

PAGE chairman Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim was a guest on the Keluar Sekejap podcast, hosted by Khairy Jamaluddin, discussing Malaysia's 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results. The results revealed a significant link between a student's socioeconomic background and their academic performance. PAGE highlighted an 82-point gap in science scores between students from the top 25% and the bottom 25% of socioeconomic backgrounds - a difference equivalent to nearly three years of schooling.

Noor Azimah emphasized that this illustrates the enduring influence of family background on a student's achievement. She stressed that schools should address the gap a child brings from home, rather than becoming a place that amplifies it, advocating for targeted interventions for the schools and students who require the most support.

Khairy Jamaluddin agreed, noting that the 82-point gap in science scores between urban and rural schools was concerning. Both suggested that factors within the classroom, such as teacher workload, administrative burdens, and teacher-student engagement, likely drive the uneven outcomes more than the curriculum content itself. The 2025 Pisa results showed an improvement in Malaysian students' performance in science, rising to 419 points (up from 416 in 2022), while reading scores increased to 393 points and mathematics scores fell to 397 points.

Only 35% of Malaysian students met the baseline proficiency level in mathematics, indicating that nearly two-thirds could not reliably apply basic mathematical reasoning to real-world problems. Despite the decline in mathematics scores, Malaysian students outperformed expectations in computational problem-solving, with 82.6% exceeding the expected performance level, placing them among the top six countries.

Noor Azimah suggested that despite this strength, the ability to adapt and solve problems when learning contexts differ does not translate into basic maths mastery, implying a need to reevaluate teaching methods.