Pisa

“- The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is

an international assessment measuring student performance in
reading, mathematical and scientific literacy. (ACER,2018)”
 What is Pisa?
- An international standardised test occurring every three years focusing
on 15 year olds.
-It is overseen by OECD with the Australian government and all State and
territory governments contributing funding.
- It assesses students ability to apply understandings in reading
mathematics and science to everyday problems.
What does the test look like?
- Assessment occurs in three domains: reading literacy, mathematical literacy and
scientific literacy.
- PISA assesses the extent to which 15 year old students have acquired some of the
knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in society.
- PISA focuses on how well students are prepared for life-long learning in the areas of
reading, mathematical and scientific literacy.
 What are the outcomes
of the test?
- PISA seeks to answer questions such as ‘Are our schools adequately preparing
young people for the challenges of adult life?’, ‘Are some kinds of teaching and
schools more effective than others?’ and ‘Can schools contribute to improving the
futures of students from immigrant or disadvantaged backgrounds?
- PISA helps governments to further understand and enhance the effectiveness of
our national and state based educational systems and to learn from other countries
practices.
- (ACER, 2018)
CHALLENGES AND OPPURTUNITIES OF PISA
OPPURTUNITIES
PISA 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 is now progressively incorporating also some of the
broader cognitive, social and emotional competencies.
The test focuses on knowledge application rather than
the retrieval of information (Baird et al. 2011)
The results from PISA provide a powerful tool that
countries can use to develop, review and fine-tune their
curricular standards and education policies with the aim
to provide the best education possible for all of their
students.
Provides useful information about changes in
Australia's performance over time (Buckingham,
2013)
CHALLENGES
OECDS narrow focus on standardised testing risks turning
learning into drudgery and killing the joy of learning.
PISA shows that the “difference in performance between
advantaged and disadvantaged students in Australia is the
equivalent of around three years of schooling (ACER
2017)”.
The test is creating a “highly competitive environment
heightened by national and international rankings, and an
economic and instrumentalist approach to education and
education reform” (Gorur, 2016)
”The average performance scores on which the rankings
are based are uninformative and misleading (Gorur & Wu
2014) ”
There is poor pre-testing practice