Ranking of coutries based on 15 year old high school students from various countries in math, science and reading. Turkey, consistently low on the list! Although this particular list is from 2003, the latest one has similar results (I could not find it on the web though). What is the problem with the Turkish education system???

Mean Performance on Mathematics Scale

(results for Britain were not available)

Were they too embarassed?

I see that ´WE´  are doing quite well....

 That´s because ´you´ have the best teachers

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!

I am a member of this site:

http://projecteuler.net

where there is a statistics section about the countries.

There is only 153 registered members from Turkey and only 10 or some of them are currently active.

Check the number of registered members for some countries:

Greece -- 154

Scotland -- 196

Sweden -- 1324

Holland -- 785

USA -- 7841

Norway -- 468

Humgary -- 191

Finland -- 408

etc.

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..

I still believe that 2=1  

 QED!!

Yeah, I do think the same as you.

I always invite people to this site to increase the numbers of Turkish members. I only convinced one person till now and he lost his interest in it after solving something like 10 problems.

What is the relevance of you saying this in this thread... unless you are drunk, which would explain it!

Trudy and her latin quotes/sayings.. Now I see how Netherlands is so high on that list!!!!

They´ve got really great learning conditions, the governemnt´s financial aid, good learning programmes and curricula. The school I worked for had a students exchange with The Netherlands and we were really impressed. Small classes, sensible approach and really useful teaching aids. Thumbs up, Cloggies!

If it wasn´t for those floods..  I´d move there tomorrow!!

 Floods?   We haven´t had one since 1953. Oh sorry, that´s history not maths....

I really meant the "danger of floods"!!!

do you believe newspapers etc?

do you know who did research etc?

there is truth and there is statistics

 We have more floods than the cloggies!  so you are much safer in the Netherlands (unless you try and cross the road in Amsterdam and don´t know which way the cyclists are coming )

 Simple: don´t act British! Look to the left first....

 Yea.. but why let the truth get in the way of a good story. 

I wasn´t talking about maths and science, but basic literacy skills, decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling).  Obviously  development of reading fluency and comprehension uses a variety of other skills too.

it think i should say smth funny and witty...

though there are only boring and dreary arguments...

will keep silence to keep reputation

 That´s just it!  They came from all directions ............