South Africa has once again participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), being the only African country to take part in the 2019 study which also included top performing countries in Maths and Physical Science such as Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Korea, Chinese Taipei, and Japan.

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has recently received a report on the 2019 TIMMS Study, which assessed the mathematics and science knowledge of South Africa’s Grades 4 and 8 learners in comparison to other countries that participated in the study.

.  Basic Education Minister, Mrs Angie Motshekga, will release the TIMMS results through a live stream from the DBE Conference Centre in Pretoria on 10 December 2020.

In 2015, the TIMMS Study saw more than 59 countries participating globally. According to International Study Centre, more than 600,000 students around the world participated in TIMSS 2015 and TIMSS Advanced 2015, an analysis of secondary school students in STEM programs. TIMSS has been administered every four years since 1995, and is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in Amsterdam. TIMSS Advanced was conducted in 1995, 2008, and 2015.

During the release of the 2015 TIMMS Study, Minister Motshekga highlighted: “Our participation in internationally benchmarked studies provides valuable and credible information that can disentangle post-truth politics and affirm the upward trajectory in the sector evidenced by improving Mathematics and Science skills; better schooling conditions; and decreasing inequality in education communities. Large-scale assessment programmes such as TIMSS, PIRLS and SACMEQ offer a reliable independent measure to monitor the performance of our learners in key subject areas in order to assess the health of the education system. We remain committed towards using data from these studies to progressively increase education outputs.”