Programme for International Student Assessment

Welcome to the National PISA website

PISA is an assessment of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds and looks for answers to several important questions related to education, such as ...

  • How well are young adults prepared to meet the challenges of the future?
  • What skills do young adults have that will help them adapt to change in their lives? Are they able to analyse, reason and communicate their argument and ideas to others?
    For example, are they able to perform currency conversions? read tables and graphs in newspapers? use basic understandings of science to make sense of magazine articles about topics such as genetically modified foods and animal cloning?
  • Are some ways of organising schools and school learning more effective than others?
  • What influence does the quality of school resources have on student outcomes?
  • What educational structures and practices maximise the opportunities of students from disadvantaged backgrounds?
  • To what extent is student performance dependent on their background? How equitable is education provision for students from all backgrounds?

What's new?

The PISA assessment is taking place this year in 68 countries and in Australia with over 350 schools and more than 15,000 students taking part in this important assessment.

For the first time the results from PISA 2009 will provide an opportunity to assess in depth the reading performance of Australian students across nine years.

In addition to assessing reading, mathematics and science, PISA recognises the reading of electronic texts is becoming increasingly necessary and will be assessing the reading literacy of 15-year olds using electronic texts.

Frequently asked questions about PISA

For more information about PISA please go to the Frequently Asked Questions.

Learn more about PISA

In every PISA assessment, a National Report is published.  The National report provides information about the PISA assessment as well as the performance of Australian students from international and national perspectives (including state and territory comparisons, the performance of Indigenous students, students from different geographic locations and different socioeconomic backgrounds).  To learn more about how well Australian students perform in PISA, please go to Reports section.