The results of 2022 PISA test for Vietnam was the most disappointed ever since 2012 when Vietnam participated PISA test for the first time, in all 3 subjects of maths, science and reading. One of the most likely reason was that Vietnamese students had to study online for almost the whole school year 2021 – 2022, while PISA test was done in April – May 2022, and not all families could afford to equip their children with laptops, printers and so on, especially in 60% rural population. Hopefully, better results can be seen next year, when 2025 PISA results will be published.
However, from the PISA report, which published on OECD website, with subnational level results for Vietnam and a number of countries, some interesting observations can be made with regards to the difference in education quality of 03 major regions in Vietnam, namely Northern, Southern and Central.
The scores by Northern Vietnamese students are the highest for all 03 subjects, and the Central Vietnamese students score the lowest for all 03 subjects. Scores of Southern Vietnamese students are in the middle.
In mathematics, Vietnamese students score 469. Countries and economies whose mean score is not statistically significantly different from Vietnam are Lithuania, Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Malta, United States*, Slovak Republic, Croatia.
At subnational level, Northern Vietnamese students score 480, between Sweden (482) and New Zealand (479) and not far from Finland (484), while Southern Vietnamese students score 463 (between Slovak (464) and Croatia (463), and Central Vietnamese students score 461, between Croatia and Iceland (459).
Similar observation can be made on science. Vietnamese students score 472 and ranked 35th, a deep fall from 2015 result, when its students was among the top 10 best countries (ranked 8th). In 2022, North Vietnamese students score 478 (between Norway 478 and Italy 477), while South Vietnamese students score 474, between Turkey and Malta. Central Vietnamese students score 463, between Israel and Slovak.
Interesting enough, the No.1 country (Singapore) and the bottom country (Cambodia) both are in South East Asia. Singaporean math results is 575, while Cambodian students score only 336
And I am quite surprised about the quality of Israel education. Their results are almost at the bottom of European countries in 2022, and not much better in previous years. Western media loved to brag about China (the No.1 PISA ranking country in 2018) copied from Israel. What China wanted to copy from such a relatively poorly - educated country (by East Asian and Scandinavian standards). With such PISA results, their engineers cannot be good.