Programme for International Student Assessment
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a three-yearly world-wide test of 15-year-old schoolchildren's scholastic performance, developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1997.
The aim of the PISA study is to test and compare schoolchildren's performance across the world, with a view to improving and standardising educational methods.
Development and implementation
Developed from 1997, the first PISA assessment was carried out in 2000; the tests are taken every three years. Every period of assessment specialises in one particular subject, but also tests the other main areas studied.
In 2000, 265 000 students from 32 countries took part in PISA; 28 of them were OECD member countries. In 2002 the same tests were taken by 11 more "partner" countries (i.e. non-OECD members). The main focus of the 2000 tests was literacy, with two thirds of the questions on that subject.
Over 275,000 students took part in PISA 2003, which was conducted in 41 countries, including all 30 OECD countries. (England, however, failed to test enough children, meaning that it was not included in the international comparisons.) The focus was mathematics, testing real-life situations in which mathematics is useful. Problem-solving was also tested for the first time.
In 2006 52 countries are expected to participate; the main focus of PISA 2006 is science, and in 2009 reading again.
Method of testing
The students tested by PISA are aged between 15 years and 3 months and 16 years and 2 months at the beginning of the assessment period. The school year pupils are in is not taken into consideration. Only students at school are tested, not home-schoolers.
Each student takes a two-hour handwritten test. Part of the test is multiple-choice and part involves fuller answers. In total there are six and a half hours of assessment material, but each student is not tested on all the parts. Participating students also answer a questionnaire on their background including learning habits, motivation and family. School directors also fill in a questionnaire describing school demographics, funding etc.
Results
The results of each period of assessment normally take at least a year to be evaluated. The first results for PISA 2000 came out in 2001 (OECD, 2001a) and 2003 (OECD, 2003c), and were followed by thematic reports studying particular aspects of the results. The evaluation of PISA 2003 was published in two volumes: Learning for Tomorrow’s World: First Results from PISA 2003 (OECD, 2004) and Problem Solving for Tomorrow’s World – First Measures of Cross-Curricular Competencies from PISA 2003 (OECD, 2004d)
Here is an overview of the six countries with the highest scores in 2003:
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In 2003, in literacy Finland came first overall, followed by Korea, with Canada third. At the bottom of the list came Indonesia. In science, Finland, Japan, Hong Kong-China and Korea had roughly equal scores. In problem-solving, South Korea came first, with Finland second.
Professor Jouni Välijärvi was in charge of the Finnish PISA study: he believed that the high Finnish score was due both to the excellent Finnish teachers and to Finland's 1990s LUMA programme which was developed to improve children's skills in maths and natural sciences. He also drew attention to the Finnish school system which teaches the same curriculum to all pupils. Indeed individual Finnish students' results did not vary a great deal and all schools had similar scores.
An evaluation of the 2003 results showed that the countries which spent more on education did not necessarily do better than those which spent less. Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands spent less but did relatively well, whereas the United States spent much more but was below the OECD average. The Czech Republic, in the top ten, spent only one third as much per student as the United States did, for example, but the USA came 24th out of 29 countries compared.
Compared with 2000, Poland, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Germany all improved their results. In fact, apparently due to the changes to the school system following PISA 2000, Polish students had above average reading skills in PISA 2003; in PISA 2000 they were near the bottom of the list.
Another point made in the evaluation was that students with higher-earning parents are better-educated and tend to achieve higher results. This was true in all the countries tested, although more obvious in certain countries, such as Germany.
Reactions to the results
For many countries, the first PISA results were a rude awakening; in Germany, for example, the comparatively low scores brought on heated debate about how the school system should be changed. Other countries had an agreeable surprise. Some headlines in national newspapers, for example, were:
- "La France, élève moyen de la classe OCDE" (France, the mediocre student of the OECD class) Le Monde, December 5, 2001
- "Miserable Noten für deutsche Schüler" (Abysmal marks for German students) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 4, 2001
- "U.S. Students Fare Badly in International Survey of Math Skills" New York Times December 7, 2004
- "Are we not such dunces after all?" The Times, England, December 6, 2001