Malaysia ahead of Philippines in IELTS scores

By some strange miracle, Malaysia actually surpassed the Philippines in IELTS scores last year, according to IDP Education. The Manila Mail writes:

"Despite the claim that the Philippines is the third largest country in the world with the most number of people who can speak English, it is only second to Malaysia in the whole of Asia when it comes to proficiency in listening, speaking, writing and conversing in English. Andrew King, country director of IDP Education Pty. Ltd. Philippines, said the average overall score of Filipinos who took the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) last year was a poor 6.69 points where 7.0 was largely the passing score for those who took the test for migration to the usual countries that Filipinos seek to migrate to such as Australia....

According to King, Malaysians had an average overall score of 6.71, leading among countries in Asia in overall English proficiency. Philippines was second to Malaysia with 6.69; third was Indonesia with 5.99; fourth was India with 5.79; and Thailand fifth with 5.71."

Interesting that the article does not mention Singapore, considering that IDP does have an office in the island nation. Hmm.