KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's failure to move forward in many areas including in education was partly due the obsession of some quarters who failed to acknowledge existing faults, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said.
The Prime Minister said all quarters must understand the country's state of affairs and avoid from remaining in denial in order for the nation to move forward.
In his speech at the Global Intellectual Discourse "The Next 100 Years: Vision 2100 for Malaysia" here today, Anwar cited Malaysia's performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2022 as example how the failure to acknowledge faults of the education system in the past had affected its position in the global ranking.
"Now, we are not here to deny what we have achieved which is significant.. the (economic) growth, stronger unity and certain level (of improvement in) education (system).
"If we look at the bare facts, some of these are concerning. Let us refer to the latest Pisa report, which is a compelling case (of the country's) level of success.
"Out of 81 countries selected in the analysis, we are number 51 particularly in Science, Mathematics and English language. Even among seven Asean countries,we are the worst of all," he said.
Anwar added the outcome of the Pisa performance was disturbing.
"The standard excuse (given for the drop in Pisa performance) was because of Covid-19. But Covid-19 impacted all countries.
"We must know the state of our affairs, we cannot remain in a state of denial," he said.