The 2022 PISA results of Arabic-speaking students and required steps

The 2022 PISA results of Arabic-speaking students in mathematics are 98 points lower than those of Hebrew-speaking students (according to the OECD, every 20 points reflect a gap of one school year). This gap has slightly reduced from 111 points in the 2018 cycle of the study. Nevertheless, when zooming in on high achieving students (levels 5-6), we see no improvement, and the rate among Arabic-speaking students remains extremely low at 0.5%, compared to 10.5% among Hebrew-speaking students. It should also be noted that since 2018, the number of high achieving female Arabic-speaking students has declined from 0.9% to 0.4%.

These continuous gaps led the foundation to launch a designated effort in Arab middle schools since 2019. An online program (“Top Online”) was developed by the Center for Education Technology (CET), reaching 1,800 students in 66 middle schools. Learning tasks developed by the Technion, Weizmann Institute, and the University of Haifa, were translated into Arabic and operated through 33 professional learning communities in nine Arab municipalities, with the participation of 585 Arab mathematics teachers. Consequently, we were expecting improvement in the 2022 results, and were surprised by the stalemate.

To figure out the reasons for this deadlock, we convened a special meeting of experts, school principals and teachers. The meeting was held as part of a larger gathering of stakeholders that we recently organized to present the PISA 2022 results. Participants hypothesized that the poor results may indicate that our efforts were somehow not reaching the students, that there is a continuous lack of motivation among students to invest effort in a low-stakes test, or that there is a language barrier caused by diglossia and translation.

We feel that this issue deserves deeper exploration. Therefore, we commissioned studies to assess knowledge and simulate testing scenarios among Arabic-speaking students. We also turned to the Institute for Local Government at Tel Aviv University. We asked them to share the data with mayors of Arab municipalities and encourage them to take action. The Institute has been a long-time partner of the foundation in creating the ‘Cities of Excellence’ network, in which 28 Arab local authorities participate. We expect that the close relations the Institute has developed will assist in building the necessary steps.

In response, the Institute is now proposing to engage 30 local authorities in an awareness effort, starting with their mayors and then expanding to the heads of education and school principals. The effort will include meetings and regional workshops. To ignite energy and inspire motivation around the issue, they are suggesting to host the final event of an applied mathematics competition for 500 Arab excellence class students. They also propose to convene an advisory committee of Arab educators and stakeholders from high-tech companies and civil society organizations to monitor the progress. The committee will prepare a report analyzing the reasons for the continuous gap and a set of recommendations for improvement.

We strive for this effort to help around 300 students to reach the top levels (5-6) by 2025, representing an increase from 0.5% to 1%.