Analytics, Education and Science, Estonia, EU – Baltic States

Among students of 65 states of the world who were covered by the study, Estonian young people share places 4-7 with Japan, Finland and Korea in sciences in the world. In reading and mathematics, Estonia was on the 11th place in the world and on the 3-6th place in Europe.

Estonian education and science minister Jaak Aaviksoo said that it is hard to overestimate the importance of PISA in pursuing smart education policies. "PISA is like a big mirror that shows the progress of our education on the background of other states and nations," he said, adding that the results point out that Estonian education policies are on the right track.

Aaviksoo said that the fresh study indicates there is room for development still – the functional reading skills of boys are too much behind that of girls and the differences between schools are still too big.

The performance of students of Russian-teaching schools in Estonia has made a remarkable leap in six years – results have improved two times faster than the results of Estonian schools and the differences in levels has decreased.

PISA 2012 is the programme’s 5th survey. It assessed the competencies of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science (with a focus on mathematics) in 65 countries and economies.

Around 510,000 students between the ages of 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months participated in the assessment, representing about 28 million 15-year-olds globally.

In Europe, the best results in the test were scored by young people of Finland and Poland, in the world by young people of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.