Jakarta – Indonesian youths scored poorly compared to their peers around the world in a reading test conducted by the Organization for Economic, Cooperation, and Development (OECD), whose results were announced Tuesday.

The OECD held a test, called the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), for more than 500,000 students aged 15-years-old, representing 74 education systems from countries that together make up 86 percent of the world's economy.

The results showed that the average performance of Indonesian teens was far below most OECD countries.

"Indonesia is in the red area," Ian Whitman, head of the OECD Program for Cooperation with Non-member Economies Directorate for Education, told House Commission X legislators on Tuesday, during a presentation of the study conducted in 2009.

He added that seven other countries performed below Indonesia. Countries with high reading performance included the Netherlands and Singapore. "Shanghai in China is number one," he added.