2023-05-16 09:12:00
Children’s reading comprehension is assessed through four processes: finding and extracting explicit information, making simple inferences, interpreting and integrating ideas and information, and evaluating and critiquing content and textual elements. These proofs consist of stories and illustrated documentary texts whose length varies from 600 to 900 words.
An average reading level lower than the average for the reference countries
Test results are not brilliant for average French-speaking students. While the average of the 19 reference countries is 531, France (514), the Flemish Community (511) and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (494) are at the bottom of the ranking. The top of the ranking (Table 2) is occupied by England (558) as well as by the countries where the teaching of reading begins at age 7 and where the pupils tested are therefore aged 11 on average.
Stable results despite the pandemic
Between 2016 and 2021, a majority of countries show a significant, and sometimes large, decrease in average scores. The Flemish Community has indeed lost 14 points since the last measurement, Slovenia has a negative difference of 23 points and the Netherlands a difference of 18 points. Only a few countries are exceptions with statistically insignificant performance differences between 2016 and 2021. This is particularly the case of France but also of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
The ranking of the countries according to the overall test average highlights the relative weakness of the reading performance of 4th year primary pupils in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. It should be remembered, however, that the pupils who took part in the PIRLS survey were affected by the closure of schools for several months when they were in the 3rd year of primary school (from mid-March to May 2020).
“In the followingmath of the Covid-19 crisis, in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, the stabilization of the results appears, in some respects, reassuring. If the data collected does not make it possible to establish a clear statistical link between the duration of the closures of schools and the score in the PIRLS survey, it should nevertheless be noted that the Wallonia-Brussels Federation is one of the education systems where the interruption of schooling during the 2020-2021 school year was the most limited. student results in the PIRLS 2021 survey suggest that in terms of reading comprehension, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis is limited”underlines the summary report carried out by the University of Liège.
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