Over 378,000 students took the exam for the 2016 academic year, which is used to assess their knowledge in five core subjects.

According to the results released by the National Institute of Educational Testing Service (Niets) on Monday, the lowest average score of 24.88 was in mathematics followed by English (27.76).

The average score for social studies, religion and culture was 35.89, while the average score for general science was 31.62. For Thai it was 52.29.

Niets director Samphan Phanphruek said the average scores for Thai and English were an improvement on the previous year.

That year the average scores were 49.36 (Thai), 39.70 (social studies), 24.98 (English), 26.59 (maths) and 33.40 (general science).

Samphan said the 2016 test results showed that students from schools located in the city areas got higher scores than students in rural schools in all subjects, while students from Bangkok schools scored higher than their peers in other regions in all subjects.

He said Niets had produced the test result reports for individual students, schools, educational area offices and educational regions in a bid to improve the quality of teaching and students’ ability to learn.