Pisa 2022: richer people had greater learning loss – 12/05/2023 – Education

Brazil has alleviated educational inequality in mathematics in the last four years. The gap in performance between rich and poor is due, however, to a worsening in the performance of richer students.

The data are from Pisa 2022, one of the main quality assessments of basic education in the world, which were released this Tuesday (5). The results show that education in Brazil worsened in the three areas evaluated between 2018 and 2022 — a trend also observed on average in rich countries.

These are the first results of an international assessment that allow us to compare the impact of the pandemic and school closures on student learning in different parts of the world. Pisa assessed 690,000 15-year-old students in 81 countries and regions around the world in 2022. The test, which used to be administered every three years, had to be postponed by a year because of the pandemic.

The data shows that the health crisis had an unprecedented negative global impact, with a significant drop in the average score of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) member countries in the three areas assessed.

In Brazil, the sharpest drop was seen in mathematics. The country’s average fell 5 points in the period, going from 384 to 379.

The decrease is driven by the loss of income of the richest students, who lost 13 points, going from 438 to 425 points. Meanwhile, the poorest students remained at the same level, with 348 points.

Thus, the gap in mathematics grades between the richest and poorest students in Brazil decreased from 90 to 77 points between 2018 and 2022. Still, the difference is equivalent to almost 3.5 years of learning.

On average across OECD countries, it was the poorest students who suffered the greatest loss in mathematics. Their score fell by 17 points, from 448 to 431. Among the richest, the loss was 10 points, going from a score of 535 to 525.

In other words, the richest students in Brazil have lower grades than the poorest on the OECD average.

The report divides participating students into four groups, according to socioeconomic and cultural criteria.

“Brazil had such bad results before the pandemic, that it had almost no impact on the grades of the most vulnerable students. This shows how badly our educational system was already doing”, says Mozart Neves Ramos, professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP.

He also highlights the country’s low results even among the most economically advantaged students. “The grades of our richest students are equivalent to those of countries like Kazakhstan. We need to face that our mathematics teaching is very bad in general. We have a crisis in this area”, he says.

Claudia Costin, from Instituto Singularidades, says that, although Brazil’s level is bad and unacceptable, the results brought some surprise. “With schools closed for a period of time, the result could have fallen even further and increased inequality in mathematics performance in a more important way. And that didn’t happen,” she says.

According to Pisa data, 70% of Brazilian students perform in mathematics below what is considered basic for their age. According to the assessment, these young people do not reach an adequate level of proficiency to “fully participate in society”, that is, they are unable to use mathematical concepts to solve everyday problems.

The OECD warned about the increase in educational inequality around the world during the period. Singapore, the country that achieved the best results in mathematics, has one of the biggest disparities between the richest and poorest students — with a difference of 22 points between them.

“Least advantaged students in OECD countries are seven times more likely to not achieve basic proficiency in mathematics than the most advantaged students. The countries and economies analyzed need to develop actions to provide assistance and reduce these effects among the poorest”, says the report.