Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and APEC

From APEC HRDWG Wiki

Every three years beginning in 2000, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has surveyed 15 year-old students in the principal industrialized countries in order to assess the knowledge and skills acquired by students nearing the end of compulsory education. As an international assessment that is designed to measure and compare content knowledge in reading, science, and mathematics, the PISA is careful not to limit itself to assessing knowledge of school-based curricula – the test is designed to assess students’ applied knowledge and literacy, and their ability to apply this knowledge in real-life situations. Each iteration of the PISA focuses on knowledge in a particular subject, with the 2009 assessment focusing on reading literacy. The PISA is administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and is developed jointly by its participants. More than 70 countries and economies have participated in PISA assessments thus far. PISA is the only international education survey to measure the knowledge and skills of 15 year-olds, this being an age at which students in most countries are nearing the end of their mandatory time in school.

The PISA is a unique assessment because it attempts to answer questions about very different aspect of an economy's educational system, including:

Questions about public policy, e.g., “Do schools adequately prepare students for adult life?”
Questions involving literacy, e.g., “Can students apply their knowledge and skills to analyze, reason, and communicate effectively?” and
Questions about lifelong learning, e.g., “Do students have an awareness of why and how they learn?”

Rather than present a combined average score for each participant, the PISA gives a score for each subject area of reading, science, and mathematics, and countries are ranked by their mean score in each area.

1 APEC Members' Participation in PISA
2 Results of 2009 PISA

APEC Members' Participation in PISA

International benchmarking is an important measuring tool for improving education systems among the member economies of APEC as it provides for a comparison of successful education methods and prepares students for success in the global marketplace. APEC economies participate in the PISA assessment for a variety of reasons. First, it allows APEC to analyze reading, mathematics, and science scores across its member economies. Secondly, the assessment includes all 30 countries and economies that constitute the OECD. These members are some of the most advanced industrialized countries in the world, and represent important trading partners with, and competitors to, APEC economies. Third, because PISA is a literary assessment, it tests not only what students learn in school, but also what they learn from their families, society, and popular culture. PISA does not tell participants how to run their schools, however the data collected by the PISA assessments allows economies to compare best practices and to further develop their own improvements to their school systems.

Seventeen APEC economies participated in the 2009 PISA assessment, including: Australia, Canada, Chile, P.R. China (in Macao and Shanghai), Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, and the United States.

Results of 2009 PISA

The charts below show the scores attained on the 2009 PISA assessment by participating APEC Members, as well as by the international average of all OECD jurisdictions. In addition to the overall scores for mathematics, science, and reading, charts breakdown achievement in each subject by gender. The analyzed data were obtained from the PISA International Data Explorer tool.