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A worrisome trend is the lack of progress in improving education quality in OIC countries in the
last two decades among member countries in international assessments. The performance of OIC
countries as a group in PISA and TIMSS does not suggest long-term improvements in education
quality. If anything, the gap between OIC and participating non-OIC countries has widened over
time. A large proportion of children in OIC countries do not attain the baseline level of
proficiency in mathematics and science.
Only a small group of OIC member states show some signs of progress in terms of performance in
international assessments. These include Indonesia, Malaysia, Jordan, Turkey and Kazakhstan.
However, in most cases, the progress has not been sustained over time. After an impressive
performance in the early rounds of PISA, Jordan has seen a slide in student performance. In case
of Turkey, after a decade-long positive trend in PISA, there has been a decline though it is largely
owing to a fall in the share of top performers; the percentage of students performing below
proficiency levels performance of students has remained reasonably stable since 2006. In case
of Indonesia and Malaysia, there are signs of recovery in the most recent round of PISA. It
remains to be seen whether this trend will be sustained in the coming years. The next section
discusses in details the case of Jordan and Malaysia.
There is also a sizable wealth gap in student performance in OIC countries. In some countries,
urban children from the wealthiest quintile rank behind those from the poorest quintiles in rural
parts of the OECD countries.
At the same time, in higher order competencies, there is also an absence of improvement across
wealth groups. Even when a comparison is made among children in OIC and OECD sample
countries who are similar in terms of observed socio-economics, those from OIC lag behind by
the equivalent of more than one year of schooling. The learning shortfall is greatest in the case
of Qatar.
In addition, the analysis of learning outcomes vis-à-vis the level of economic development (i.e. GDP
per capita) shows that the strength of this association between the two outcomes is weaker in OIC
than elsewhere. Some of the wealthiest OIC countries perform very poorly.
The majority of the member states where children have poor access to education remain outside
the scrutiny as they do not participate in any of the major international assessments. However,
growing country specific evidence for these countries, based on national assessments and
sample surveys of student performance, also confirm low level of learning. The review of the
available evidence from these countries based on country-specific survey data reveals that the
learning crisis in the OIC countries is likely to be more severe.
Learning, instead of enrolment and school completion, should be the primary goal of education in
the OIC countries. Most of the non-participating countries are income poor and have been found
to be challenged by resource-strapped education systems. Schools have unfavorable teacher-
student ratio and classrooms are overcrowded. There is a shortage of trained teachers. At the
same time, among countries that participate in international assessments and allow
independent scrutiny of their education systems, student performance does not show a
systematic correlation with resources.
Improving the performance of government schools is therefore the key challenge. In most OIC
member countries, the quality of education is low across the board –Islamic, private and
government schools. In some instances, evidence shows a learning advantage associated with