That's how we did in the 2009 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey. That puts us in the company of Thailand but a lot better than Qatar (80th) and Ghana (88th). But kind of far from the UK (28th) and Germany (16th). I think it was the only time we ever participated in this interesting exercise. Germany has used her PISA experience to improve her education system. Surely if its valuable to the exportweltmeister it will be for us too. Besides don't we pride ourselves on being quite good in the Queen of Sciences?
Speaking of mathematics there's also an important competition that we seemed to have missed since it was first organised back in... 1959. The 58th edition of the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) will take place in Rio de Janeiro between July 12 and 23. 109 countries have already confirmed their participation. Including plenty of African nations like Algeria, Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, South Africa and Tanzania. In last year's competition Thailand came out 12th. Even Syria will be in Rio. So should Mauritius. Details are at http://www.imo-official.org/.
Speaking of mathematics there's also an important competition that we seemed to have missed since it was first organised back in... 1959. The 58th edition of the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) will take place in Rio de Janeiro between July 12 and 23. 109 countries have already confirmed their participation. Including plenty of African nations like Algeria, Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, South Africa and Tanzania. In last year's competition Thailand came out 12th. Even Syria will be in Rio. So should Mauritius. Details are at http://www.imo-official.org/.
6 comments:
It's only when Dodoland is first in Africa that it becomes worthwhile. Otherwise, we have the same attitude as England towards the first times the soccer World Cup were held: we know we're good, so we let you others from the rest of the world fight to see who's second best... :-)
Seriously, did you see any effort by our 'supreme' education provider UoM to try and secure major international accreditions or rankings...?
Pourvu qu'ça dure!
True. We're navel-gazers by excellence. Here's another index where we're first in Africa and 40th in the World: the social progress index. A bizarre ranking given the regressive taxation and an economic model which is based on 3-casinos per capita. Warrants a little digging.
Other countries under the radar have been innovating in finding ways to let their potential geniuses shine...
And something tells me we also have beautiful brains wandering aimlessly or simply lost to apathy within the pigeonholes of our decrepit system...
I note that they didn't hammer in the heads of the students that they had a skills mismatch.
No, and it's a wonderful story about allowing yourself to trust the natural tendency of children to make discoveries on their own. And in fact, it shows that somewhere we are just programmed to learn, with MIE (Minimally Invasive Education) helped with a cloud.
But if we don't take concrete action towards a more reasonable approach, we may end up paying a high price like Singapore's education system.
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