Brazil lags behind Uzbekistan and Kosovo in a reading assessment for elementary school students
Data from the global assessment PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) released on Tuesday, 16, show Brazil ahead only of Iran, Jordan, Egypt, and South Africa in a ranking that evaluated the ability of 4th-grade students in 57 countries to read and understand texts.
Eight nations/cities, called “benchmarking” by the organizers, also participated in the exam.
The tests were taken in 2021 and show the effect of the pandemic on education.
Brazil performs poorly in international education assessment that measures reading and comprehension levels
Experts considered the result bad because it puts Brazil far behind developed countries.
The exam is conducted by large-scale sampling in public and private schools, covering the entire national territory.
It was the first time that Brazil participated in the evaluation.
The Pirls is an exam explicitly focused on reading and has been held every five years since 2001.
The IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement), an international cooperative of research institutions, academics, and analysts, organizes the test.
Data compiled by Iede (Interdisciplinarity and Evidence in Educational Debate) show that Brazil is, on average, behind Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Oman, and Kosovo.
The country obtained an average of 419 points, just above the lowest score on the scale.
According to Pirls’ evaluation, students in the 400-point range, like the Brazilians, can locate, retrieve and reproduce explicitly stated information, actions, or ideas when reading predominantly easy literary texts.
They can also make simple and direct inferences about the characters’ actions.
As for informational texts, they can locate, retrieve and reproduce explicit information and make simple and direct inferences to provide a reason for a result.
75% of Brazilian students are behind the Israeli average, for example.
The Pirls is recognized as an international benchmark exam to assess reading in the 4th grade of elementary school, considered an important transition point in students’ academic development as readers.
Among the countries that participated in the exam are Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, New Zealand, Norway, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.
In a statement released Tuesday, the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep) detailed that more than 4,900 Brazilian 4th-grade students were evaluated in 187 public and private schools.
“The Pirls assesses the reading skills of 4th-grade elementary school students, a moment when, normally, the student has already learned to read and is putting reading into practice as a learning tool.”
“Therefore, the assessment seeks to collect data precisely on this point in the school’s trajectory,” said the Brazilian agency.
The Pirls results allow each country to evaluate its students’ knowledge and reading skills in relation to the other participating countries, says Inep.
“The exchange of experiences, based on the results obtained, can contribute to the permanent improvement of the quality of education and the equity of learning results,” it adds.
The average score of Brazilian students (419) is located in the Low Level of the pedagogical proficiency scale of the exam, details Inep.
The scale indicates the advanced level for scores above 625, high for values above 550, intermediate for scores above 475, and low, starting at 400, the range in which Brazil finds itself.
With information from EStadão
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