Programme for International Student Assessment
What does PISA Assess?
PISA assesses how far 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 merely 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 like:
- 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.
- 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 OECD website to try some of the PISA items and see examples of the marking guide.
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.
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 goes one step further and provides profiles of students' performance using proficiency levels. A number of levels are determined (eg. 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.