Japan's ranking had been falling in the triennial international academic survey of 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Japan fell from eighth place in 2000 to 15th place in 2006 in reading, from first place to 10th place in mathematical literacy and from second place to sixth place in scientific literacy. But in the 2009 PISA, in which 65 countries and regions took part, Japan moved up to eighth place in reading, to ninth in math and to fifth in science. Shanghai, the newcomer to the test, took the top position in all the three fields.
The education ministry boasts that Japanese students' scholastic ability has started to rise. But one cannot be complacent about the results of the test. PISA's main purpose is to judge whether students who have just finished compulsory education have the ability to think and express by using the knowledge and skills they have acquired. Japan should scrutinize the test results from this viewpoint.
In a section of the reading test, which requires students to select important information from text and express what they have thought through composition, 22.5 percent of Japanese students gave no answers — much higher than the OECD average of 14.1 percent.
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