Flemish secondary school pupils’ scores feature just below those of the lead group of best-performing countries in computer literacy. Only South Korea and the Czech Republic score significantly higher in digital literacy. For computational thinking, Taiwan joins them. Despite this achievement three quarters of Flemish pupils find it difficult to deal critically with online information.
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Flemish pupils excel in computer skills, but swallow too much online
Colin Clapson
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Almost 133,000 students from 34 countries completed the ICILS or International Computer and Information Literacy Study Test. It’s a computer literacy test that measures, for example, how well you can look up, assess and process information online. Flanders is among the best performing countries and regions.
A second part of the test deals with computational thinking, where pupils have to develop algorithms to solve problems. Here, too, Flemish students finish near the top.
Yet the figures reveal issues that require attention. For instance, three quarters of Flemish pupils have difficulty critically assessing an online text. Across all participating countries combined, the figure is a staggering 84 per cent.
Gender and language gap
Girls score better than boys on computer and information literacy, boys score better on computational thinking. Your mother’s educational attainments and whether you get a school grant or not also plays a role. Young people who speak Dutch at home are also more likely to achieve high scores. Flemish education minister Zuhal Demir (Flemish nationalist N-VA): ‘Dutch is the language in which we reason. A good foundation in Dutch is often also a good digital basis, not the other way around.’
Pupils from classical language and science, technology, engineering and mathematics classes achieve the best scores.
Majority of adolescents multitask online during homework
A questionnaire youngsters had to fill in after their test showed that young people like to multitask while doing homework. For instance, 65 per cent of Flemish youngsters say they often watch online videos during schoolwork, 67 per cent often send texts.