Global and Systemic Perspectives on Mathematics and Science Performance of ASEAN Member Countries

Abstract

The study aimed to determine the extent of student–teacher ratio's influence on the science and mathematics performance of students in Southeast Asian countries. It also determines how much national productivity in terms of GNI per capita is needed to support the optimal class sizes of these countries. A descriptive–correlation design, particularly the linear regression analysis, was used during the analysis of data, which were taken from the data banks of the UNESCO and World Data Bank (2017). Results of the study reveal that there was a negative high correlation between the student–teacher ratio and the mathematics and science index of the students among ASEAN countries. Moreover, a positive high correlation between student–teacher ratio and the GNI per capita of a country was observed from the findings. These results describe that ASEAN countries having higher GNI per capita have lower student–teacher ratios. This implies that budget is essential to reduce classroom sizes, which impacts students' performances in mathematics and science. From this, a model was generated to determine how much budget is needed for each of these countries to support the optimal class sizes. The optimal class size was patterned after the leading ASEAN countries, which is 12 students to a teacher.