PISA 2009 Report

The OECD’s influential triennial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 report, which gathers information on educational systems, schools, families and students through surveys of school leaders, students and parents was launched yesterday.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that focuses on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. PISA also includes measures of general or cross-curricular competencies such as problem solving. PISA emphasizes functional skills that students have acquired as they near the end of compulsory schooling.

PISA is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries. Begun in 2000, PISA is administered every 3 years. Each administration includes assessments of all three subjects, but assesses one of the subjects in depth.

The latest edition, PISA 2009, the fourth since 2000, is a collection of five reports covering 65 countries – including the 33 OECD member states – which comprise almost 90 per cent of the world’s economy, to assess how 15-year-old students are performing in reading, mathematics and science. This report focuses on reading literacy.

The report’s focus on reading with an assessment framework that includes printed texts as well as electronic texts, also measures mathematical and scientific competencies, and presents questions used to gather information from schools, students and parents on students’ home backgrounds and learning environments.

PISA 2009’s focus on trend analysis over the past decade states that some countries’ results have improved; others have regressed, while some have remained the same. Overall, PISA 2009 shows minor developments because most participating countries achieve similar results to the past. Just as in the last report, PISA 2006, variation among the core group of 35 countries is smaller than that between students across all levels in each country separately. It is the difference between students and schools that makes overall achievements inequitable, not differences between education systems. Some countries are out of average range, although there is an observable correlation between levels of socio-economic development and aggregate performance. In general, richer countries with more funding in education demonstrate better results than poorer ones.

In PISA 2009, OECD argues that the biggest improvements of “country performance” (rise in ranking) are achieved by narrowing proportions of students in the lowest levels, rather than increasing top levels.

Only one country, Canada, has so far completed a longitudinal study, tracking students over a number of years. For most countries, PISA remains a snapshot sample of different 15 year-olds in each cycle. PISA reports the performance of different students in different countries (each edition of the report also brings in new countries) at different times, in different social, political and economic circumstances.

Read more on http://www.pisa.oecd.org