In four years Israeli students climbed 17 places to seventh place worldwide in the country's ranking in math on an international achievement test. Israel also ranked 13th in science according to the 2011 test results, which were released yesterday.

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS ) exam is administered every four years to 8th grade students around the world. Israel's seventh-place ranking was a significant improvement over the 2007 results when it ranked 24th among 42 countries participating. In science, Israel jumped 12 places from 25th to 13th.

In a separate test of reading skills, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, PIRLS, which is administered to 4th graders every five years, Israel's ranking based on testing last year was 18th of 45 participating countries compared to 31st place in 2006.

Israel's 7th place ranking in math puts it on top among Western countries, ahead of Finland (8th place ), the United States (9th place ), and England (10th place ). Leading the pack worldwide, was South Korea, followed by Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Russia, followed by Israel. In science, the top spot went to Singapore, followed by Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Finland, Slovenia, Russia, Hong Kong, England, the United States, Hungary and Australia.

As a group, Israeli students score above average in all three subjects - math, science and reading. Although the testing sought to gauge the abilities of a representative sample of students in Israel, as in the past, Haredi (ultra-Orthodox ) schools did not participate. Math and science are not emphasized in most Haredi schools, which represented nearly 17 percent of the country's students last year. The exams were also not administered at the country's special education schools. Israel's relatively low participation rate was noted in the international reports summarizing the test results from around the world.

Large disparities between groups persist

A breakdown among various population and socioeconomic groups in Israel shows significant disparities, even though each group improved in test scores. In math, for example, while Hebrew-speaking students would still have ranked 7th internationally, Arab-Israeli students as a group would have been ranked 21st, putting them below average among the entire list of country rankings. Hebrew-speakers as a group would have ranked 9th in science while the Arabic-speaking students from Israel would have ranked 21st in the country listings.

When it comes to reading, Jewish Israeli students would rank 3rd worldwide while Israeli Arab students would rank 34th. Nonetheless, Arab Israeli students also demonstrated an improvement in their test scores when compared to the prior round several years ago. In math, for example, the average score of Arab students jumped by 57 points while among Israeli Jews it climbed by 52 points.

According to Mohammed Heidari, the chairman of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee's subcommittee on education, the disparity in achievement scores between Jewish and Arab students shows that affirmative action is necessary in the Israeli Arab education system when it comes to both infrastructure and the system's resources. "The disparity is not a matter of fate or a genetic phenomenon, but rather a policy of discrimination and neglect for years," he said.

The disparity in test scores in math in Israel was greater than the other countries that scored as well as Israel did. One exception, however, was Taiwan, were the disparity was even greater. Among all the students tested in math in Israel, 12 percent had scores that were considered outstanding; 28 percent were given high evaluations; 19 percent were deemed to have low performance and 13 percent had scores deemed below a low score.

Based on socioeconomic background, there were persistent disparities in test scores here. Within each socioeconomic group, test scores improved, but gaps in performance among the groups remained almost unchanged. Among Jewish students, for example, the disparity between wealthier and poorer students was 72 points on average, while in 2007, the gap was 77 points. And among Arab students, the gap between poor and middle-class students actually grew. (There was no ranking for wealthy students ). The scores of children from poorer Arab families improved by 5 points over the 2007 test results, while among middle class Arab Israeli students the scores were 78 points higher than in 2007.



Open gallery view Students in a school (illustrative). Credit: Ilya Melnikov