Estonia was the European country which had the highest combined score in the 2022 PISA survey, which indicates that the small north-eastern European country achieves the best outcomes from its education system, when compared with other European countries. While Estonia performed best in mathematics and science, Ireland performed the best in 2022 in reading. Romania was the European country which performed most poorly across all three indicators.

In the PISA test 2022, Finnish students performed well above the OECD average in reading, mathematics, and science knowledge. Finnish students scored 490 points in reading, 484 points in mathematics, and 511 in science. OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study that evaluates educational systems in selected countries by assessing student performance in reading, mathematics, and science. It was conducted for the first time in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Finnish PISA success Finland has been among the top-ranking countries in all PISA tests since 2000, but in recent years the Nordic country has shown decline in performance. The downward trend of Finland's mean score continued in 2022. While the ranking in science literacy remained at its previous level, reading and mathematical literacy performance declined. Meanwhile, Estonia has surpassed Finland in the PISA ranking as the European leader. Large gender gap in reading skills Finnish students continued to perform well in reading literacy, but the difference in reading skills of girls and boys has been one of the widest in the participating countries. Another worrying trend has been the increasing influence of socio-economic background on learning outcomes. In particular, the number of poor-performing readers in the lowest socioeconomic quarter has been on the rise, while the results of the highest socioeconomic groups have remained the same.

People from many countries have expressed interest in the tests students take for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Learning Mathematics for Life examines the link between the PISA test requirements and student performance. It focuses specifically on the proportions of students who answer questions correctly across a range of difficulty. The questions are classified by content, competencies, context and format, and the connections between these and student performance are then analysed. This analysis has been carried out in an effort to link PISA results to curricular programmes and structures in participating countries and economies. Results from the student assessment reflect differences in country performance in terms of the test questions. These findings are important for curriculum planners, policy makers and in particular teachers – especially mathematics teachers of intermediate and lower secondary school classes.

Based on the survey results of OECD's PISA 2000 programme, this report looks at: the extent to which the schools that students attend make a difference in performance; the relative impact of school climate, school policies and school resources on quality and equity; the relationship between the structure of education systems and educational quality and equity; and the effect of decentralisation and privatisation to school performance. It concludes with a summary of how school factors relate to quality and equity, and the implications for policy. The analysis and data cover almost all OECD countries and 14 additional non-OECD countries.

Estimated average scores and percent distribution of 15-year-old students, science, by proficiency level, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Canada, provinces and participating countries, Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC). This table is included in Section C: Elementary-secondary education: Student achievement of the Pan Canadian Education Indicators Program (PCEIP). PCEIP draws from a wide variety of data sources to provide information on the school-age population, elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, transitions, education finance and labour market outcomes. The program presents indicators for all of Canada, the provinces, the territories, as well as selected international comparisons and comparisons over time. PCEIP is an ongoing initiative of the Canadian Education Statistics Council, a partnership between Statistics Canada and the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada that provides a set of statistical measures on education systems in Canada.

In 2022, Brazil's PISA results were below the OECD average. The mathematics score was 93 points below average, while the reading score was 66 points below average.

Despite the growing importance of digitalization in schools, out of the Latin American and Caribbean OECD partner and member states, only in Chile the majority of students were in schools considered by its principals as having sufficient availability of appropriate software. These figures are among the 2018 results presented as part of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In other countries, such as Panama and Brazil, the same was true for only around one quarter of students tested.

Abstract

“What is important for citizens to know and be able to do?” That is the question that underlies the triennial survey of 15-year-old students around the world known as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired key knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies. The assessment, which focuses on reading, mathematics, science and problem solving, does not just ascertain whether students can reproduce knowledge; it also examines how well students can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply that knowledge in unfamiliar settings, both in and outside of school. This approach reflects the fact that modern economies reward individuals not for what they know, but for what they can do with what they know. All 34 OECD member countries and 31 partner countries and economies participated in PISA 2012, representing more than 80% of the world economy.

With mathematics as its primary focus, the PISA 2012 assessment measured 15-year-olds’ capacity to reason mathematically and use mathematical concepts, procedures, facts and tools to describe, explain and predict phenomena, and to make the wellfounded judgements and decisions needed by constructive, engaged and reflective citizens. Literacy in mathematics defined this way is not an attribute that an individual has or does not have; rather, it is a skill that can be acquired and used, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout a lifetime.

The PISA assessment provides three main types of outcomes: - basic indicators that provide a baseline profile of students’ knowledge and skills; - indicators that show how skills relate to important demographic, social, economic and educational variables; and - indicators on trends that show changes in student performance and in the relationships between student-level and school-level variables and outcomes.

Geographic coverage

PISA 2012 covered 34 OECD countries and 31 partner countries and economies. All countries attempted to maximise the coverage of 15-year-olds enrolled in education in their national samples, including students enrolled in special educational institutions.

Analysis unit

To better compare student performance internationally, PISA targets a specific age of students. PISA students are aged between 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months at the time of the assessment, and have completed at least 6 years of formal schooling. They can be enrolled in any type of institution, participate in full-time or part-time education, in academic or vocational programmes, and attend public or private schools or foreign schools within the country. Using this age across countries and over time allows PISA to compare consistently the knowledge and skills of individuals born in the same year who are still in school at age 15, despite the diversity of their education histories in and outside of school.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The accuracy of any survey results depends on the quality of the information on which national samples are based as well as on the sampling procedures. Quality standards, procedures, instruments and verification mechanisms were developed for PISA that ensured that national samples yielded comparable data and that the results could be compared with confidence.

Most PISA samples were designed as two-stage stratified samples (where countries applied different sampling designs. The first stage consisted of sampling individual schools in which 15-year-old students could be enrolled. Schools were sampled systematically with probabilities proportional to size, the measure of size being a function of the estimated number of eligible (15-year-old) students enrolled. A minimum of 150 schools were selected in each country (where this number existed), although the requirements for national analyses often required a somewhat larger sample. As the schools were sampled, replacement schools were simultaneously identified, in case a sampled school chose not to participate in PISA 2012.

Experts from the PISA Consortium performed the sample selection process for most participating countries and monitored it closely in those countries that selected their own samples. The second stage of the selection process sampled students within sampled schools. Once schools were selected, a list of each sampled school's 15-year-old students was prepared. From this list, 35 students were then selected with equal probability (all 15-year-old students were selected if fewer than 35 were enrolled). The number of students to be sampled per school could deviate from 35, but could not be less than 20.

Around 510 000 students between the ages of 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months completed the assessment in 2012, representing about 28 million 15-year-olds in the schools of the 65 participating countries and economies.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

Paper-based tests were used, with assessments lasting two hours. In a range of countries and economies, an additional 40 minutes were devoted to the computer-based assessment of mathematics, reading and problem solving.

Test items were a mixture of questions requiring students to construct their own responses and multiple-choice items. The items were organised in groups based on a passage setting out a real-life situation. A total of about 390 minutes of test items were covered, with different students taking different combinations of test items.

Students answered a background questionnaire, which took 30 minutes to complete, that sought information about themselves, their homes and their school and learning experiences. School principals were given a questionnaire, to complete in 30 minutes, that covered the school system and the learning environment. In some countries and economies, optional questionnaires were distributed to parents, who were asked to provide information on their perceptions of and involvement in their child’s school, their support for learning in the home, and their child’s career expectations, particularly in mathematics. Countries could choose two other optional questionnaires for students: one asked students about their familiarity with and use of information and communication technologies, and the second sought information about their education to date, including any interruptions in their schooling and whether and how they are preparing for a future career.

Cleaning operations

Software specially designed for PISA facilitated data entry, detected common errors during data entry, and facilitated the process of data cleaning. Training sessions familiarised National Project Managers with these procedures.

Response rate

Data-quality standards in PISA required minimum participation rates for schools as well as for students. These standards were established to minimise the potential for response biases. In the case of countries meeting these standards, it was likely that any bias resulting from non-response would be negligible, i.e. typically smaller than the sampling error.

A minimum response rate of 85% was required for the schools initially selected. Where the initial response rate of schools was between 65% and 85%, however, an acceptable school response rate could still be achieved through the use of replacement schools. This procedure brought with it a risk of increased response bias. Participating countries were, therefore, encouraged to persuade as many of the schools in the original sample as possible to participate. Schools with a student participation rate between 25% and 50% were not regarded as participating schools, but data from these schools were included in the database and contributed to the various estimations. Data from schools with a student participation rate of less than 25% were excluded from the database.

PISA 2012 also required a minimum participation rate of 80% of students within participating schools. This minimum participation rate had to be met at the national level, not necessarily by each participating school. Follow-up sessions were required in schools in which too few students had participated in the original assessment sessions. Student participation rates were calculated over all original schools, and also over all schools, whether original sample or replacement schools, and from the participation of students in both the original assessment and any follow-up sessions. A student who participated in the original or follow-up cognitive sessions was regarded as a participant. Those who attended only the questionnaire session were included in the international database and contributed to the statistics presented in this publication if they provided at least a description of their father’s or mother’s occupation.

Abstract

PISA assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies, with a focus on reading, mathematics and science. PISA focuses on young people’s ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in the goals and objectives of curricula themselves, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school and not merely with whether they have mastered specific curricular content. PISA also aims to examine students' learning strategies, their competencies in areas such as problem solving that involves multiple disciplines and their interests in different topics. This kind of broader assessment started in PISA 2000, which asked students about their motivation and other aspects of their attitudes towards learning, their familiarity with computers and, under the heading "self-regulated learning", about their strategies for managing and monitoring their own education. The assessment of students' motivations and attitudes continued in PISA 2006, with special attention given to students' attitudes towards and interest in science. Returning to reading as the major subject of assessment, PISA 2009 focused on students' engagement in reading activities and their understanding about their own reading and learning strategies.

PISA’s unique features include: - Policy orientation, which connects data on student learning outcomes with data on students’ characteristics and on key factors shaping their learning in and out of school in order to draw attention to differences in performance patterns and to identify the characteristics of students, schools and education systems that have high performance standards. - Innovative concept of “literacy”, which refers to the capacity of students to apply knowledge and skills in key subject areas and to analyse, reason and communicate effectively as they pose, interpret and solve problems in a variety of situations. - Relevance to lifelong learning, which does not limit PISA to assessing students’ competencies in school subjects, but also asks them to report on their own motivation to learn, their beliefs about themselves and their learning strategies. - Regularity, which enables countries to monitor their progress in meeting key learning objectives. - Breadth of geographical coverage and collaborative nature, which, in PISA 2009, encompasses the 34 OECD member countries and 41 partner countries and economies.

Geographic coverage

75 countries and economies, including all 34 OECD countries and 41 partner countries and economies: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Himachal Pradesh-India, Hong Kong-China, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao-China, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Miranda-Venezuela, Montenegro, Netherlands, Netherlands-Antilles, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Shanghai-China, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tamil Nadu-India, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam.

Analysis unit

• Individual (student, parent)
• School

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The specific sample design and size for each country aimed to maximise sampling efficiency for student-level estimates. In OECD countries, sample sizes ranged from 4,410 students in Iceland to 38,250 students in Mexico. Countries with large samples have often implemented PISA both at national and regional/state levels (e.g. Australia, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). The selection of samples was monitored internationally and adhered to rigorous standards for the participation rate, both among schools selected by the international contractor and among students within these schools, to ensure that the PISA results reflect the skills of the 15-year-old students in participating countries. Countries were also required to administer the test to students in identical ways to ensure that students receive the same information prior to and during the assessment.

When a school has been selected to participate in PISA, a school co-ordinator is appointed. The school coordinator compiles a list of all 15-year-olds in the school and sends this list to the PISA National Centre in the country, which randomly selects 35 students to participate. The school co-ordinator then contacts the students who have been selected for the sample and obtains the necessary permissions from parents. The testing session is usually conducted by a test administrator who is trained and employed by the National Centre. The test administrator contacts the school co-ordinator to schedule administration of the assessment. The school coordinator ensures that the students attend the testing sessions. This can sometimes be difficult because students may come from different grades and different classes. The test administrator's primary tasks are to ensure that each test booklet is distributed to the correct student and to introduce the tests to the students. After the test is over, the test administrator collects the test booklets and sends them to the National Centre for coding.

In PISA 2009, 13 different test booklets were used in each country. Each booklet had a different subset of PISA questions, so that students answered overlapping groups of questions, in order to produce a wide range of test items while limiting the test time for each student. With 13 different booklets, in each group of 35 students, no more than 3 students were given the same booklet. Booklets were allocated to individual students according to a random selection process. The test administrator's introduction came from a prescribed text so that all students in different schools and countries received exactly the same instructions. Before starting the test, the students were asked to do a practice question from their booklets. The testing session was divided into two parts: the two-hour-long test to assess their knowledge and skills, and the questionnaire session to collect data on their personal background, their learning habits, their attitudes towards reading, and their engagement and motivation. The length of the questionnaire session varied across countries, depending on the options chosen for inclusion, but generally was about 30 minutes. Students were usually given a short break half-way through the test and again before they did the questionnaire.

For more information on PISA's technical background, refer to the documents "PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming Social Background - Volume II", Annex A and "PISA 2009 Technical Report" that are provided as external resources.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

• Questionnaire on Educational Career: Different aspects of experience at school
• ICT Familiarity Component for the Student Questionnaire: Availability of ICT, General computer use, Use of ICT at home, Use of ICT at school, Attitude toward computers
• Parent Questionnaire: Basic parent characteristics, Child's past reading engagement, Parent's own reading engagement, Home reading resources and support, Parent's background, Parent's perception of and involvement in school, School choice
• Reading for School: The kind of reading typically done for school
• School Questionnaire: The Structure and organization of the school, The student and teacher body, The school's resources, School curriculum and assessment, School climate, School policies and practices, About respondent
• Student Questionnaire: About respondent, Family and home, Reading activities, Learning time, School, Test language lessons, Libraries, Strategies in reading and understanding texts

Response rate

• School Response Rates: A response rate of 85% was required for initially selected schools. If the initial school response rate fell between 65% and 85%, an acceptable school response rate could still be achieved through the use of replacement schools. To compensate for a sampled school that did not participate, where possible, two potential replacement schools were identified. Furthermore, a school with a student participation rate between 25% and 50% was not considered as a participating school for the purposes of calculating and documenting response rates. However, data from such schools were included in the database and contributed to the estimates included in the initial PISA international report. Data from schools with a student participation rate of less than 25% were not included in the database, and such schools were regarded as non-respondents.

• Student Response Rates: An overall response rate of 80% of selected students in participating schools was required. A student who had participated in the original or follow-up cognitive sessions was considered to be a participant. A minimum student response rate of 50% within each school was required for a school to be regarded as participating: the overall student response rate was computed using only students from schools with at least a 50% student response rate. Again, weighted student response rates were used for assessing this standard. Each student was weighted by the reciprocal of his/her sample selection

This statistic shows the truancy rate as reported by 15 year olds in the United Kingdom and selected OECD countries in 2015. The highest rate was found in Montenegro, at 60 percent. The United Kingdom was above the OECD average, whilst Japan had the lowest reported rate. Rather than being collected from schools, the data here represents the percentage of 15 year olds who personally said in the PISA that they had skipped classes or days of school. The countries shown here are a selection of those tested and do not represent the full survey.

Abstract

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a collaborative effort undertaken by all member countries and a number of non-member partner countries to measure how well students, at age 15, are prepared to meet the challenges they may encounter in future life. Age 15 is chosen because at this age, in most OECD countries, students are approaching the end of compulsory schooling, and so, some measure of the knowledge, skills and attitudes accumulated over approximately ten years of education is gained from an assessment at this time. the PISA assessment takes a broad approach to assessing knowledge, skills and attitudes that reflect current changes in curricula, moving beyond the school based approach towards the use of knowledge in everyday tasks and challenges. the skills acquired reflect the ability of students to continue learning throughout their lives by applying what they learn in school to non-school environments, evaluating their choices and making decisions. the assessment, jointly guided by the participating governments, brings together the policy interests of countries by applying scientific expertise at both national and international levels.

PISA combines the assessment of domain-specific cognitive areas such as science, mathematics and reading with information on students' home background, their approaches to learning, their perceptions of their learning environments and their familiarity with computers. A high priority in PISA 2006 is an innovative assessment of student attitudes towards science - questions about this were contextualised within the cognitive part of the test. Bringing the attitude items closer to the cognitive questions allowed questions to be targeted at specific areas, with the focus on interest in science and students' support for scientific enquiry. Student outcomes are then associated with these background factors.

PISA uses: i) strong quality assurance mechanisms for translation, sampling and test administration; ii) measures to achieve cultural and linguistic breadth in the assessment materials, particularly through countries' participation in the development and revision processes for the production of the items; and iii) state of the art technology and methodology for data handling. the combination of these measures produces high quality instruments and outcomes with superior levels of validity and reliability to improve the understanding of education systems as well as students' knowledge, skills and attitudes.

PISA is based on a dynamic model of lifelong learning in which new knowledge and skills necessary for successful adaptation to a changing world are continuously acquired throughout life. PISA focuses on things that 15-year-old students will need in the future and seeks to assess what they can do with what they have learned. the assessment is informed, but not constrained, by the common denominator of national curricula. thus, while it does assess students' knowledge, PISA also examines their ability to reflect, and to apply their knowledge and experience to real world issues. For example, in order to understand and evaluate scientific advice on food safety an adult would need not only to know some basic facts about the composition of nutrients, but also to be able to apply that information. the term "literacy" is used to encapsulate this broader concept of knowledge and skills.

PISA is designed to collect information through three-yearly cycles and presents data on the reading, mathematical and scientific literacy of students, schools and countries. It provides insights into the factors that influence the development of skills and attitudes at home and at school, and examines how these factors interact and what the implications are for policy development.

PISA 2006 is the third cycle of a data strategy defined in 1997 by participating countries. the results allow national policy makers to compare the performance of their education systems with those of other countries. Similar to the previous cycles, the 2006 assessment covers the domains of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy, with the major focus on scientific literacy. Students also respond to a background questionnaire, and additional supporting information is gathered from the school authorities. Fifty-six countries and regions, including all 30 OECD member countries, are taking part in the PISA 2006 assessment. together, they comprise almost 90% of the world's economy.

Since the aim of PISA is to assess the cumulative yield of education systems at an age where compulsory schooling is still largely universal, testing focused on 15-year-olds enrolled in both school-based and work-based educational programmes. Between 5 000 and 10 000 students from at least 150 schools will typically be tested in each country, providing a good sampling base from which to break down the results according to a range of student characteristics.

The primary aim of the PISA assessment is to determine the extent to which young people have acquired the wider knowledge and skills in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy that they will need in adult life. the assessment of cross-curricular competencies continues to be an integral part of PISA 2006. the main reasons for this broadly oriented approach are: • Although specific knowledge acquisition is important in school learning, the application of that knowledge in adult life depends crucially on the acquisition of broader concepts and skills. In science, having specific knowledge, such as the names of plants and animals, is of less value than understanding broad topics such as energy consumption, biodiversity and human health in thinking about the issues under debate in the adult community. In reading, the capacity to develop interpretations of written material and to reflect on the content and qualities of text are central skills. In mathematics, being able to reason quantitatively and to represent relationships or dependencies is more apt than the ability to answer familiar textbook questions when it comes to deploying mathematical skills in everyday life. • In an international setting, a focus on curriculum content would restrict attention to curriculum elements common to all or most countries. this would force many compromises and result in an assessment too narrow to be of value for governments wishing to learn about the strengths and innovations in the education systems of other countries. • Certain broad, general skills are essential for students to develop. they include communication, adaptability, flexibility, problem solving and the use of information technologies. these skills are developed across the curriculum and an assessment of them requires a broad cross-curricular focus.

PISA is not a single cross-national assessment of the reading, mathematics and science skills of 15-year-old students. It is an ongoing programme that, over the longer term, will lead to the development of a body of information for monitoring trends in the knowledge and skills of students in various countries as well as in different demographic subgroups of each country. On each occasion, one domain will be tested in detail, taking up nearly two-thirds of the total testing time. the major domain was reading literacy in 2000 and mathematical literacy in 2003, and is scientific literacy in 2006. this will provide a thorough analysis of achievement in each area every nine years and a trend analysis every three. Similar to previous cycles of PISA, the total time spent on the PISA 2006 tests by each student is two hours, but information is obtained on about 390 minutes worth of test items. the total set of questions is packaged into 13 linked testing booklets. each booklet is taken by a sufficient number of students for appropriate estimates to be made of the achievement levels on all items by students in each country and in relevant sub-groups within a country (such as males and females, and students from different social and economic contexts). Students also spend 30 minutes answering questions for the context questionnaire.

The PISA assessment provides three main types of outcomes: • Basic indicators that provide baseline profile of the knowledge and skills of students. • Contextual indicators that show how such skills relate to important demographic, social, economic and educational variables. • Indicators on trends that emerge from the on-going nature of the data collection and that show changes in outcome levels and distributions, and in relationships between student-level and school-level background variables and outcomes.

Geographic coverage

OECD countries - Australia - Austria - Belgium - Canada - Czech Republic - Denmark - Finland - France - Germany - Greece - Hungary - Iceland - Ireland - Italy - Japan - Korea - Luxembourg - Mexico - Netherlands - New Zealand - Norway - Poland - Portugal - Slovak Republic - Spain - Sweden - Switzerland - Turkey - United Kingdom - United States

Partner countries/economies - Argentina - Azerbaijan - Brazil - Bulgaria - Chile - Colombia - Croatia - Estonia - Hong Kong-China - Indonesia - Israel - Jordan - Kyrgyzstan - Latvia - Liechtenstein - Lithuania - Macao-China - Montenegro - Qatar - Romania - Russian Federation - Serbia - Slovenia - Chinese Taipei - Thailand - Tunisia - Uruguay

Analysis unit

• Individuals
• Schools

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaires seek information about: • Students and their family backgrounds, including their economic, social and cultural capital • Aspects of students' lives, such as their attitudes towards learning, their habits and life inside school, and their family environment • Aspects of schools, such

IntroductionEarlier research has suggested that that the international large-scale assessment, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), may be looked upon as a form of school test that is mostly explained by participating students’ socioeconomic status, non-cognitive factors, and various school factors, whereas another strand of research focuses on the similarities between PISA and cognitive ability assessments such as IQ tests. The latter position does also highlight the strong relationships between PISA scores and IQ test scores, typically aggregated to the country level. The current article adds to this scholarly debate by examining the latest PISA survey from 2018.MethodsCorrelation, regression, moderator, and mediation analyses were run for aggregated country-level data (N = 77) from PISA 2018.ResultsThe results indicate that PISA scores indeed are strongly associated with both cognitive ability test scores and socioeconomic status indicators such as average annual national income.DiscussionA more nuanced position suggests that PISA should be labelled a test that measures cognitive school skills rather than a proxy of national IQ, as the link between country-level abilities and school age abilities is neither causal, nor theoretically and empirically palpable, yet partly robust.

The positions of Russia in the PISA global ranking of countries by literacy of 15-year-old students decreased in 2018 for all three categories under consideration compared to 2015. While in 2015, the country ranked 23rd by mathematical skills among 70 participating countries, in 2018, it received the 30th place among 79 countries. The number of score points received for each subject also decreased between 2015 and 2018.

description: The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was created by the OECD member countries in 1997 to produce direct assessments of student performance, on a regular basis in an efficient, timely and cost-effective manner; and to provide more relevant and powerful indicators of human capital. PISA produces assessments of reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy and a growing range of cross-curricular competencies among 15-year-olds in school. The dataset contains the anonymized records from the over 450,000 students in 65 countries who were sampled and took the PISA assessments. The records include background information about the students as well as their motivations and learning styles. Background information on the schools attended by the students including school level policies and practices is included in the dataset.; abstract: The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was created by the OECD member countries in 1997 to produce direct assessments of student performance, on a regular basis in an efficient, timely and cost-effective manner; and to provide more relevant and powerful indicators of human capital. PISA produces assessments of reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy and a growing range of cross-curricular competencies among 15-year-olds in school. The dataset contains the anonymized records from the over 450,000 students in 65 countries who were sampled and took the PISA assessments. The records include background information about the students as well as their motivations and learning styles. Background information on the schools attended by the students including school level policies and practices is included in the dataset.

Abstract

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a collaborative effort among OECD member countries to measure how well 15-year-old young adults approaching the end of compulsory schooling are prepared to meet the challenges of today’s knowledge societies. The assessment is forward-looking: rather than focusing on the extent to which these students have mastered a specific school curriculum, it looks at their ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in curricular goals and objectives, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school.

In addition to the assessments, PISA 2003 included Student and School Questionnaires to collect data that could be used in constructing indicators pointing to social, cultural, economic and educational factors that are associated with student performance. Using the data taken from these two questionnaires, analyses linking context information with student achievement could address: - Differences between countries in the relationships between student-level factors (such as gender and social background) and achievement; - Differences in the relationships between school-level factors and achievement across countries; - Differences in the proportion of variation in achievement between (rather than within) schools, and differences in this value across countries; - Differences between countries in the extent to which schools moderate or increase the effects of individual-level student factors and student achievement; - Differences in education systems and national contexts that are related to differences in student achievement across countries; and - Through links to PISA 2000, changes in any or all of these relationships over time.

Through the collection of such information at the student and school level on a cross-nationally comparable basis, PISA adds significantly to the knowledge base that was previously available from national official statistics, such as aggregate national statistics on the educational programs completed and the qualifications obtained by individuals.

Geographic coverage

The second PISA survey was conducted in 41 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, Hong Kong-China, Indonesia, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Macao-China, Russian Federation, Serbia and Montenegro, Thailand, Tunisia, Uruguay.

Analysis unit

The international target population is defined as all students aged from 15 years and 3 (completed) months to 16 years and 2 (completed) months at the beginning of the assessment period. The students had to be attending educational institutions located within the country, in grades 7 and higher. This meant that countries were to include 15-year-olds enrolled full-time in educational institutions, 15-year-olds enrolled in educational institutions who attended on only a part-time basis, students in vocational training types of programmes, or any other related type of educational programmes, and students attending foreign schools within the country (as well as students from other countries attending any of the programmes in the first three categories). It was recognised that no testing of persons schooled in the home, workplace or out of the country would occur and therefore these students were not included in the international target population.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

More than a quarter of a million students, representing almost 30 million 15-year-olds enrolled in the schools of the 41 participating countries, were assessed in 2003.

The sampling design used for the PISA assessment was a two-stage stratified sample in most countries. The first-stage sampling units consisted of individual schools having 15-year-old students. In all but a few countries, schools were sampled systematically from a comprehensive national list of all eligible schools with probabilities that were proportional to a measure of size. This is referred to as probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling. The measure of size was a function of the estimated number of eligible 15-year-old students enrolled. Prior to sampling, schools in the sampling frame were assigned to strata formed either explicitly or implicitly.

The second-stage sampling units in countries using the two-stage design were students within sampled schools. Once schools were selected to be in the sample, a list of each sampled school's 15-year-old students was prepared. From each list that contained more than 35 students, 35 students were selected with equal probability, and for lists of fewer than 35, all students on the list were selected. It was possible for countries to sample a number of students within schools other than 35, provided that the number sampled within each school was at least as large as 20.

In two countries, a three-stage design was used. In such cases, geographical areas were sampled first (called first-stage units) using probability proportional to size sampling, and then schools (called second-stage units) were selected within sampled areas. Students were the third-stage sampling units in three-stage designs.

For additional information on sample design, refer to chapter 4 in the document "PISA 2003 Technical Report" provided as an external resource.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

PISA 2003 was a paper-and-pencil test. The test items were multiple choice, short answer, and extended response. Multiple choice items were either standard multiple choice with a limited number (usually four) of responses from which students were required to select the best answer, or complex multiple choice presenting several statements for each of which students were required to choose one of several possible responses (true/false, correct/incorrect, etc.). Short answer items included both closed-constructed response items that generally required students to construct a response within very limited constraints, such as mathematics items requiring a numeric answer, and items requiring a word or short phrase, etc. Short-response items were similar to closed-constructed response items, but for these a wider range of responses was possible. Open-constructed response items required more extensive writing, or showing a calculation, and frequently included some explanation or justification. Pencils, erasers, rulers, and in some cases calculators, were provided. The consortium recommended that calculators be provided in countries where they were routinely used in the classroom. National centres decided whether calculators should be provided for their students on the basis of standard national practice.

Two core questionnaires were used: - Student Questionnaire: In the main study the student questionnaire was administered after the assessment and it took students about 35 minutes to complete. - School Questionnaire: The main study school questionnaire was administered to the school principal and took about 20 minutes to complete.

As in PISA 2000, additional questionnaire material was developed and offered as international options to participating countries. In PISA 2003, two international options were available: the ICT Familiarity questionnaire and Educational Career Questionnaire.

• Educational Career Questionnaire: The inclusion of an optional Educational Career questionnaire was due to the fact that not all of the participating countries expressed interest in this particular research area. National centres were allowed to select any of the items included in this questionnaire for inclusion without having to administer all of the questions.
• Information Communication Technology Questionnaire: The Information Communication Technology (ICT) questionnaire consisted of questions regarding the students’ use of, familiarity with, and attitudes towards ICT. ICT was defined as the use of any equipment or software for processing or transmitting digital information that performs diverse general functions, whose options can be specified or programmed by its user.

National centres could decide to add national items to the international student or school questionnaire. Insertion of national items into the student questionnaire had to be agreed upon with the international study centre during the review of adaptations, due to context relatedness. Adding more than five national items was considered as a national option. National student questionnaire options, which took less than ten minutes to be completed, could be administered after the international student questionnaire and international options. If the length of the national options exceeded ten minutes, national centres were requested to administer their national questionnaire material in follow-up sessions.

Cleaning operations

National project managers (NPMs) were required to submit their national data in KeyQuest, the generic data entry package developed by consortium staff. The data were verified at several points starting at the time of data entry. Validation rules (or range checks) were specified for each variable defined in KeyQuest, and a datum was only accepted if it satisfied that validation rule. To prevent duplicate records, a set of variables assigned to an instrument were identified as primary keys. For the student test booklets, the stratum, school and student identifications were the primary keys. After the data entry

The Student Pisa 2009 was a survey designed for students to determine their general education in German-speaking countries and to query information about their studies. For the study, questions on knowledge in the areas of politics, history, economics, culture and natural sciences were developed, tested and validated by interviewing experts. SPIEGEL editors from the various specialist resort were used as experts for the respective knowledge areas. The online survey was preceded by a pretest with 3,725 students for quality testing. The validity of the knowledge questions was also tested in a laboratory study. The test questions were checked for difficulty, discriminatory power and reliability under laboratory conditions and taking into account the standardized Bochumer Wissenstest in order to optimize the questionnaire for the main online study. The survey conducted by SPIEGEL in cooperation with studiVZ counted almost 700,000 participants and showed that students of political science and history have the best general knowledge. Business studies, art and biology are in the middle, while students of computer science or sports science bring up the rear. Students who earned their high school diploma in the states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt obviously begin their studies with an educational advantage; they perform better in knowledge tests than students from Bremen or Hamburg. Certain universities also prove to be breeding grounds for general education. There are very large differences between universities, but these cannot always be attributed solely to research reputation and the number of supervising professors, but also to whether a university charges student fees and whether students consider the university town attractive.

At a time when OECD and partner countries are trying to figure out how to reduce burgeoning debt and make the most of shrinking public budgets, spending on education is an obvious target for scrutiny. Education officials, teachers, policy makers, parents and students struggle to determine the merits of shorter or longer school days or school years, how much time should be allotted to various subjects, and the usefulness of after-school lessons and independent study. This report focuses on how students use learning time, both in and out of school. What are the ideal conditions to ensure that students use their learning time efficiently? What can schools do to maximise the learning that occurs during the limited amount of time students spend in class? In what kinds of lessons does learning time reap the most benefits? And how can this be determined? The report draws on data from the 2006 cycle of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) to describe differences across and within countries in how much time students spend studying different subjects, how much time they spend in different types of learning activities, how they allocate their learning time and how they perform academically.

In 2022, Spain's PISA results were on par with the OECD average in all assessment categories. The largest difference was in reading, where Spain scored two points below the average. In mathematics, however, Spain scored one point higher than the OECD average.

The average score of Polish students in terms of reading comprehension was 489 points in 2022. In maths, Polish 15-year-olds scored 489 points, 17 points higher than the OECD average. In the natural sciences, Polish students achieved an average score of 499 points, which places them in sixth place among the European Union countries.

Examinations in primary school

Primary school students take an exam at the end of the eighth grade. The eighth-grade exam is a mandatory exam, which means that every student must take it to graduate from school. There is no specified minimum score that a student should obtain, so the eighth-grade exam cannot be failed.

The eighth-grade examination is carried out in written form. Students take the exam in three compulsory subjects, i.e., Polish language, mathematics, and a foreign language of their choice. A student may choose only the language that is taught at school as part of compulsory education classes. In 2023, primary school students in Poland had the best results in exams in the French language.

High school graduation exam (Matura)

The Matura exam is taken at the end of general secondary and technical secondary school and its result is a prerequisite for further education.

In 2023, over 214 thousand graduates of secondary schools passed the Matura exams. The most popular foreign language was English, passed by 98 percent of students. English and mathematics were the most popular subjects at an extended level. The exam pass rate amounted to 91 percent, which was 13 percentage points higher than in the previous school year.

The OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) analyzes the skills of 15-year-olds' students in reading, mathematics, and science in over 80 countries. The studies also consider social and gender equalities in the education system of the different countries. In 2022, Italian students scored 471 PISA points in mathematics, just below the OECD average of 472. However, the result was 16 points below the 2018 score and 19 below the 2015 inquiry. Similarly, the performance in science gradually decreased, from 494 points in 2012 to 477 points in the latest 2022 inquiry. In the same time frame, reading abilities declined by eight points. However, in 2022, Italian pupils performed the best in this category compared to mathematics and science.