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Rabat – Morocco’s fourth and eighth-grade students are lagging behind their counterparts in East Asian countries in their understanding of math and science concepts, according to the 2015 results of the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) benchmark educational survey.
The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement published the results of the study, which has been conducted every four years since 1995, on Tuesday.
In the fourth-grade (ages 9-10) math category, Morocco, with a score of 377, beat out South Africa (376) and Kuwait (353), but stood almost 250 points below Singapore (618), which showed the strongest scores. Hong Kong (615), Korea (608), Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) (597) and Japan (593) trailed behind the Asian island nation – a trend that held true in the eighth grade (ages 13-14) results of the same subject.
Morocco’s science scores proved to be as abysmal as its math ones, with the North African nation ranking at the bottom of the 49-country list. At 352, the kingdom won out against Kuwait’s fourth graders (337), but scored lower (393) than the Gulf nation’s eight graders (411).
Despite Morocco’s low scores, a comparison to the country’s 2011 scores shows significant improvement in every subject and age group. Fourth-graders improved, on average, by 65 points, while eighth-graders’ results jumped by 15 points.
Kuwait’s low scores were an exception to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations regionally high scores. In the Middle East and North Africa, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar held the highest scores in both math and science categories for both age groups.
