Differences in PISA Performance across Socio-economic Groups

Assoc Prof Kenneth Goh asked the Minister for Education in respect of Ministry of Finance's Occasional Paper on Income Growth, Inequality and Social Mobility which indicated students from lower socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds perform strongly in PISA 2022 relative to OECD peers (a) whether the Ministry monitors differences in PISA performance across socio-economic groups in Singapore; (b) whether the differences are statistically significant; and (c) how the SES-performance gaps evolved over time.

Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, students from higher socio-economic status (SES) homes do better than peers from lower SES homes on average. This is true for all PISA participating systems, including Singapore, in all previous PISA studies. The statistically significant performance gaps in PISA between students from the bottom- and top-25% SES homes have remained largely stable in Singapore from 2012 to 2022.