BERLIN, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Although the overall performance of school children in Germany decreased slightly in 2018, Germany ranked "above average", according to the latest global student assessment by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) presented also in Berlin on Tuesday.
The OECD's Program for International student Assessment (PISA) 2018 measured around 600,000 15-year-old students in 79 countries and regions on reading, science, and mathematics. The main focus was on reading, with most students doing the assessment on computers.
The performance of German pupils in mathematics and science had already declined in 2015 and was "significantly worse" compared to the results of 2012, according to the OECD education test which is carried out every three years.
One reason for this development in Germany could be "increased demands placed on the education system since the refugee crisis," OECD noted.
Since the last PISA, the share of pupils with a migration background in Germany had "risen significantly and their integration into the education system is a major challenge."
Despite the challenges posed by increased migration, pupils in Germany performed "slightly better" than the OECD average in reading comprehension and mathematics, and "significantly better" in natural sciences.
Nonetheless, pupils in Germany were far behind the highest performing countries. The top OECD countries were Estonia, Canada, Finland and Ireland although the PISA education test found that Chinese provinces and cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang as well as Singapore scored "significantly higher" in pupils' reading abilities.
In Germany, for example, around 20 percent of the surveyed pupils had "difficulty coping with even basic reading comprehension requirements." Among the Asian or European frontrunners, this number was only 10 to 15 percent, the education test found.
More than 5,400 pupils from 226 different schools in Germany took part in the PISA 2018.
In Germany, an increasing number of "people with low basic skills run the risk of being excluded," said OECD Deputy Secretary-General Ludger Schuknecht at the presentation of PISA 2018 in Berlin.
"The PISA results are therefore an urgent call not to leave anyone behind at school, but to give all pupils the skills they need to survive in the information society of the 21st century," Schuknecht added.
