Are Chinese students smarter or is testing system rigged in their favour?

Gary Sands points out that while Shanghai 15-year-olds topped global exams in reading, science and maths, their results are not representative of China and should not be meaningfully compared with those of other countries. Dan Steinbock argues, however, that the overall test scores still show students in the US and Europe are falling behind those in emerging economies

The results of the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) again reveal Shanghai's 15-year-old students as the smartest in the world in reading, maths and science, coming out ahead of Hong Kong and Singapore.

The results of the assessment, run by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, seem to confirm the widely held notion that Asian students excel in maths and sciences due to the region's commitment to education and the number of hours spent studying, given that students in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Macau and Japan all placed in the top 10.

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