I wonder why the USA is so low too . . .
As for Turkey, I´m not sure why but on my trips to Istanbul I stay with teachers who work in a private school. I did some voluntary work in the school and found the discipline lacking. Class sizes around 25 to 30 and a lack of stimulating resources or ICT .
Whilst I was there, a fortnight ago I spoke with a Turkish teacher who teaches English in a state school. She said the children lacked motivation to learn. I wonder if the children feel there is no point if their social prospects aren´t promising . . . I don´t know. One thing the teacher said was that in her high school, in Istanbul, there are 55 students in a class! No teaching assistants and the possibility of at least 2 children with some kind of disability such as autism. She went on to say that some primary school classes may have as many as 70 children in a class. I guess , if this is the case, teachers as well as students will become demotivated.
I´m surprised that literacy isn´t better. I would have thought that having such a phonetic language, reading and spelling would present less difficulty than, say english. Although, perhaps it´s a struggle to cope with some of the longer words that can occur due to suffixes/
n.b. sorry of there are any typos . . . I left my glasses at work and can´t see a thing!
That is an interesting insight.. I am still surprised though to see such low results in a country with free national education. Turkey is right above Mexico, and from the little I know about Mexico is that they have real deep social issues, and I would not think of Turkey to be anywhere near there..
How phonetic the language is has nothing to do with reading skills, math and science, peacetrain!!! You should know that..
Supposedly one of the reasons why the US ranks so low is because of the inner city schools and the ´no child left behind´ program, which too often makes school boards lower the passing grades instead of increasing quality..
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