MP SPEAKS The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) report has again revealed dismal results by Malaysians, even though the government has invested billions of ringgit on education.

The Pisa report is a triennial study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) involving 510,000 students aged 15 from 65 participating countries.

In the 2012 edition, Malaysia was placed 52nd, cementing our position in the bottom fifth of the countries surveyed.

To make matters worse, our students performed poorer compared to neighbours such as Singapore (ranked 2nd) and even Thailand (50th), whose students fared better in all three categories - science, mathematics and reading.

Although Malaysian students recorded a slight improvement in mathematics compared to the 2009 study - increasing their score to 421 from 404 - it was still far below the 494 average score for OECD countries.

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Our students’ reading abilities suffered the most, charting an embarrassing 398 (Thailand scored 441) compared to the OECD average of 496. In 2009, we had scored 414.

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It is a similar story for science, which saw Malaysians recording 420 against the OECD average of 501, and again showing a decline from three years ago.

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The latest findings would not sting so badly had these not come on the back of record investments ploughed into the Malaysian education sector in recent times.

In the 2014 federal budget, RM54 billion or 21 per cent of total national expenditure, has been allocated to the Education Ministry (MOE), making it the largest recipient in terms of funds.

In fact, the Education Blueprint 2013-2025 itself acknowledges that the country’s public education expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, is more than double that of the Asean average.

This outspends OECD countries, as well as Asian Tigers such as Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.

Big-ticket items coming up

It is obvious that greater investment in education does not correlate to better results. For example, this year’s UPSR examination results showed a decline in performance for the English Language paper.

azlan This was despite the MOE spending RM270 million in hiring three consultancy firms over the last three years to provide foreign English mentors to improve the quality of English-language teaching in national primary schools.

Therefore, the question is not whether we are spending enough, but whether we are spending on the right things.

In the years to come, the government is set to invest billions of ringgit on big-ticket projects such as 1BestariNet, which entails the installation of high-speed broadband in all 10,000 schools nationwide; setting up a Virtual Learning Environment system to usher students into the age of cyber classrooms; and extending the ‘1 Student 1 Device’ to all school students.

How any of this fancy infrastructure investments will improve our students’ performance remains to be seen.

However, if past results are any indication, then we can be assured that more public funds will go down the drain while the future of our children is sacrificed.

ZAIRIL KHIR JOHARI is the DAP member of parliament for Bukit Bendera.