US students lag Asians in academic abilities, PISA scores show

Scores in math, reading and science posted by 15-year-olds in the US were flat even as their counterparts in other parts of the world - particularly Asian regions - Shanghai, Singapore raced ahead, according to results of a well-regarded international exam released yesterday.

While US teenagers were slightly ahead of average in reading, their scores were average in science and below average in math, as against 64 other countries and economies participating in the 2012 Program for International Student

Assessment, or PISA.

That pattern had largely remained unchanged after PISA was first administered in 2000.

According Jack Buckley, commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics, US scores were stagnant and there was no improvement but US ranking was slipping because a lot of other countries were improving.

The test scores come as fresh evidence for those arguing that the US was losing ground to competitors in the global market and others who claim educational outcomes had not improved despite a decade of school reform.

''While the intentions may have been good, a decade of top-down, test-based schooling created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top - focused on hyper-testing students, sanctioning teachers and closing schools - has failed to improve the quality of American public education,'' president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the UK students too are seen to be trailing global rivals and failed to make it to the top 20 in maths, reading and science.

According to England's education secretary Michael Gove, since the 1990s, test performances had been "at best stagnant, at worst declining".

Shanghai in China came as top education system in the OECD's Pisa tests.

Within the UK, Scotland forged ahead of England at maths and reading, though, Wales was below average across all subjects.

Gove told MPs that his reforms, including changes in the curriculum, school autonomy and directing financial support towards poorer pupils, were aimed at preventing schools in England from "falling further behind".

Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt called on Gove to take some responsibility for the lack of progress adding that the results demonstrated that the collaboration between schools and teachers was more effective than market forces.

According to Graham Stuart, chair of the education select committee, the results were "extremely sobering" and showed that there had been no improvement despite massive investment in schools.