OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

Reading Literacy in PISA 2003

How to interpret graphs?

As in PISA 2000, only one country achieved significantly better results than Australia in reading literacy (Finland).

Compare PISA 2000 reading results

Proficiency levels in Reading

International Proficiency levels for reading
While it is useful for countries to be able to examine mean performance, PISA is also able to provide a profile of students' performance using proficiency levels. The figure to the right shows overall reading proficiency levels for all countries in PISA 2003.

Gender difference in reading

As shown in the figure below, girls outperformed boys in all aspects of reading in Australia, as in all other countries in the survey.

gender differences in reading literacy for PISA 2003

In Australia, there were significantly more girls performing at high proficiency levels and more boys performing at level one proficiency level or below.