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Why does Vietnam do so well in PISA? An example of why naïve interpretation of international rankings is such a bad idea

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 19 July 2017

John Jerrim
When the PISA 2015 results were released in December last year, Vietnam was one of the countries that stood out as doing remarkably well. In particular, Vietnam was ranked 8th out of all the participating countries in science, with an average score of 525 test points. This was significantly higher than the average score for the United Kingdom (509), which was positioned 15th in the PISA science rankings.
This is not the first time that Vietnam has apparently excelled in PISA, with a strong performance from this country in the last round, conducted in 2012. Indeed, OECD Director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher wrote a whole article for the BBC, discussing a variety of reasons for this developing country’s stunning success.
But does Vietnam’s amazing performance in PISA, given that it is still a low-income (more…)