Prague - Czech students may have tendencies to memorize everything, with no ability to think independently, but as for the knowledge of mathematics, they beat their counterparts from Europe and North America. But only in the 8th grade. 

This is a general view of the Czech primary education unveiled Wednesday December 10 in the International Mathematics Report in the US town of Chestnut Hill. The test measures achievement of students in mathematics and science. Last year saw 1,350 Czech 4th grade students and 1,465 8th grade students involved in the TIMSS tests.

However, there seems to be a deep gap between the 1995 results and 2007 performance of the Czech students in the TIMSS tests.

The 2007 study shows that Czech 4th grade students took 24th place. Slovakia, western European countries and the US did much better than the Czech 4th graders. Compared to 1995 when they finished the 5th, they have experienced a massive decrease ever since.

The 8th grade students did much better than the 4th graders but they did not come close to the 2nd place they took in 1995.

Traditionally, Asian students are among the best performing ones. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan scored the highest in mathematics. Surprisingly, students from much criticized primary schools in the US did well too - they took the 11th place.

Reputation saved

The decrease of Czech 4th grade students' achievement in mathematics in the space of nine years is the largest of all the countries. "The performance of the Czech students correspond to the average that was set in 1995," said Vladislav Tomášek from the Institute for Information on Education. Other countries have been reporting rapid positive changes.

Luckily, students of the 8th grade safeguard the reputation of the Czech education system. They took 12th place in mathematics and 8th place in natural sciences.

How to explain the disproportion between the primary and secondary education levels? Nobody has an exact answer for that, nor even experts on education. Libor Vacek from the Czech School Inspection department believes the level of the primary education is still quite high.

"Our view is that teachers at the primary level are often very flexible and adopt new teaching methodologies very quickly, so we don't really know," says Vacek.

The TIMSS 2007 project is funded by the participating countries with support from the World Bank, the United States Department of Education through the National Center for Education Statistics, and the United Nations Development Programme.