Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
44
for socioeconomic background, gender of the child and urbanity status shows that language
continues to determine children’s attendance in school in these countries.
Figure 15 Learning achievement, by language spoken at home
A- Learning achievement in reading
(primary)
Percentage of children of primary school
age taking part in PIRLS 2011 and passing
first level of difficulty
B- Learning achievement in math (primary)
Percentage of children of primary school age
taking part in TIMSS 2011 math test and
passing first level of difficulty
Note: Data is obtained from UNESCO’s WIDE Database.
Childrenwho do not speak the country’s dominant language at home before starting school
have a significantly lower achievement level in reading and mathematics in a number of
member countries in the OIC. In the international assessment test for reading PIRLS and the
test for mathematics TIMSS, the information for children on whether they spoke the language of
the test before starting school is collected from parents. While the number of participating
countries from the OIC is not many, results show that for most of the participating countries,
language is not the number one problem creating disadvantaged groups (See Panel A).
Looking at the results of PIRLS 2011, achievement differences between speakers of the test
language at home and non-speakers at home stand out for only one country, Iran where 52.2
percent of the children who do not speak the language at home were able to pass the lowest
benchmark as opposed to 82.5 percent of the children who speak the language at home before
starting school. In contrast, according to the results of the same test, speaking a different language
at home does not put children at a disadvantage in Indonesia which is in fact one of the countries
with the highest linguistic diversity in the world. An estimated number of more than 700
Morocco, PIRLS 2011
Oman, PIRLS 2011
Qatar, PIRLS 2011
Iran, I. R., PIRLS 2011
United Arab Emirates,
PIRLS 2011
Saudi Arabia, PIRLS 2011
Kuwait, PIRLS 2011
Indonesia, PIRLS 2011
Azerbaijan, PIRLS 2011
0 20 40 60 80 100
% of children
Does not speak language at home
Speaks language at home
Yemen, TIMSS 2011
Morocco, TIMSS 2011
Kuwait, TIMSS 2011
Tunisia, TIMSS 2011
Oman, TIMSS 2011
Iran, I. R., TIMSS 2011
Saudi Arabia, TIMSS 2011
Qatar, TIMSS 2011
Turkey, TIMSS 2011
United Arab Emirates,…
Azerbaijan, TIMSS 2011
Bahrain, TIMSS 2011
Kazakhstan, TIMSS 2011
0 20 40 60 80 100
% of children
Does not speak language at home
Speaks language at home