The study surveyed 125,000 15-year olds in 51 countries in 2015 Sven Becker (archives)

The study surveyed 125,000 15-year olds in 51 countries in 2015 Sven Becker (archives)

A study released on Tuesday by the OECD shows that Luxembourg school students are not that great at teamwork. The Pisa study into collaborative problem solving stems from a survey conducted in 2015 of 125,000 15-year olds in 51 countries.

Luxembourg scored a mean of 491 points, nine below the OECD average of 500. Of its neighbours, Germany scored 525, Belgium 501 and France just 494. The league was topped by Singapore, with a mean score of 561, while the best performing EU students were found in Estonia with 535 points. But Luxembourg did outperform several other EU countries including Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece and Cyprus. Tunisia placed last of the participating countries with a mean score of 382 points.

The study concluded that girls perform significantly better than boys in collaborative problem solving in every country and economy that participated in the assessment. In Luxembourg, girls scored 504 points compared to the 478 score when only the results of boys were taken into account. The gap of 26 points is close to the average across OECD countries, where girls score 29 points higher than boys.

However, the study also showed that students have generally positive attitudes towards collaboration. Over 85% of students, on average agreed with the statements “I am a good listener”, “I enjoy seeing my classmates be successful”, “I take into account what others are interested in”, “I enjoy considering different perspectives”, and “I enjoy co-operating with peers”.