OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

What does PISA Assess?

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 society. In all cycles, the domains of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy are covered not only in terms of mastery of the school curriculum, but in terms of important knowledge and skills needed in adult life.

PISA assesses how well students are prepared for life-long learning. PISA does not assess how well students have learned a specific curriculum, but rather, their ability to apply understandings in reading, mathematics and science to everyday problems and situations.

PISA assesses broad general skills such as:

- Analysing texts and tables,
- Understanding and reasoning about what writers are saying,
- Working out solutions to real-world situations,
- Communicating ideas clearly

Within this framework there are four domains of assessment. Every cycle, one domain is chosen as the major domain and assessed in greater detail. In PISA 2009, reading literacy is the major domain as it was in PISA 2000 and as a consequence, comparisons can be made between these two points in time.

- Reading Literacy (PISA 2000 and PISA 2009 major domain)
- Mathematical Literacy (PISA 2003 major domain)
- Scientific Literacy (PISA 2006 major domain)
- Problem solving (included in PISA 2003)

Visit the OECD website to try some of the PISA items and see examples of the marking guide.
PISA recognises electronic texts differ from printed texts in important ways and integrated the reading of electronic texts into the PISA 2009 Reading Framework. The Electronic Reading Assessment (ERA) is an innovative project aiming at assessing the reading literacy of 15-year-olds using electronic texts.

How does PISA assess students' knowledge and skills?

Students who participate in PISA complete an assessment booklet from the major and one or more of the minor domains being tested. Students also answer a short questionnaire, which includes scales to measure their attitudes as well as questions to collect information on their backgrounds. Some students in PISA 2009 will also participate in the electronic assessment (ERA) which is a 20-minute test using existing school IT infrastructure. For more information on the cognitive assessment and the context questionnaires, click here.

In each of the three literacy areas, students' scores are reported on a separate scale. Each scale was devised so that the average score across OECD countries is 500 points with about two-thirds of the students scoring between 400 and 600 points.

As well as providing overall performance means, PISA provides profiles of students' performance using proficiency levels. A number of levels are determined (e.g. 6 for mathematics in 2003) and descriptions are developed to characterise typical student performance at each level. These levels are then used to summarise the performance of students, to compare performances across subgroups of students and to compare average performances among groups of students, in particular among the students from different participating countries.