Have you seen the latest results from the Performance for International Students Assessment (Pisa)?

What is Pisa?

You have teenage children in your house and you don’t know Pisa?

Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?

You must be joking that you don’t know about the global benchmarking test.

Please leave me alone, there are many global benchmarking tests.

Are you sure?

What are some of those things they tell you in some of our own equivalents of Ivy-league schools? Don’t they tell parents that they prepare children for some of the top exams in the world? I imagine your Pisa must be one of those tests.

Then your 15-year old must have told you about the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development triennial exercise.

She did not. Where are we going with this?

I found it a thing of big concern that no African nation had a significant placement on the list after 15-year olds from 75 education systems around the world were assessed in Science, Maths and Reading.

Old story

What do you mean? You think I’m talking about an old test? I’m talking about something that came out last week?

And what are we going to do about it? Break the heads of our own 15year olds or what? We have our own smart 15year olds. I’m not moved at all. By the way, do the guys at your Pisa know about the phenomenal Miss Shashe Ojuba?

Who is she?

See what I mean? My own charity begins from home

Don’t kid yourself.

I knew you’d say that. Miss Ojuba scored 100 percent in all her subjects at the American College Testing (ACT), used for admitting students into American Universities. She’s a student at Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja.

Thank God for Miss Ojuba and hearty congratulations to her. But don’t lose sight of my point. She’s a drop in the bucket, if you get what I mean. We need a critical mass of the likes of Miss Ojuba for our

tomorrow. That’s the whole point. Besides, don’t you want to know those who will lead your 15year olds tomorrow?

Don’t be silly. You’ve started your presumptive postulations again. You forget that anything can happen any time.

I’m not talking philosophy. I’m talking facts, my friend. Scientific, measurable facts. That’s what Pisa is about. Science, Maths and Reading. Mainland China took the lead, for your information, scoring 590, 591 and 555 respectively. The mean scores of all students who took part in the test were: 489, 489 and 487.

You don’t think our teenagers are under enough pressure already?

This pressure is good pressure, my friend. We are talking of Science, Maths and Reading here. Take a chill pill and relax, my friend. The next edition comes up in 2021. And the organizers will be considering ‘creative thinking’ as one of the measures for the test. Perhaps those our 15year olds with immense creative prowess will make a significant showing on the list when the time comes.