Saudi Education and Training Evaluation Commission has announced the results of the Kingdom's students who took part, in the TIMSS 2019 test, in the field of mathematics and science for the fourth primary and second intermediate grades, sponsored by the International Association for Achievement Assessment (IEA), in as many as 60 countries, from all over the world. The event was organized by the commission, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, which comprised over 11 thousand male and female students, alike, representing different regions of the Kingdom. These results confirmed that there are noticeable improvements in all indicators of academic achievement in the Year 2019 compared to the Year 2015, as the average scores of intermediate second-grade students, in mathematics increased from 368 points in 2015 to 394 points in 2019, and in science from 396 points in 2015 to 431 points in 2019. They showed also that the average achievement of fourth-grade students in mathematics increased to 398 points in 2019 compared to 2015 (383 points) and their average achievement in science reached 402 points in 2019 compared to 2015 (390 points). The results revealed the positive impact of students' enrollment in kindergarten and early reading and writing activities, at home, as well as their enrollment in schools with high levels of school discipline, as the three variables are associated with improved performance in mathematics and science, at the level of the Kingdom as well as at the international level. TIMSS study revealed the negative impact of bullying and absence, as the performance of students who are frequently bullied compared to their peers who are not bullied, while the difference between the performance of the fourth grade students who attended the school most and the most absent was 52 points in Mathematics and 47 points in science.
