Programme for International Student Assessment

What is PISA?

PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment, sponsored by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

PISA :

  • Is the world's biggest survey.
  • Happens once every three years (2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009).
  • Surveys students aged about 15 years.
  • Assesses students' preparedness for adult life.
  • Focuses on the skills necessary to cultivate life long learning.

PISA results:

  • Indicate how well-prepared Australian students near the end of compulsory education are for full participation in adult life.
  • Allow a comparison of the performance of students across a wide range of countries. (Sixty-eight countries will participate in 2009).
  • Allow identification of trends in student performance across time and areas for improvement.
  • Are being used by Governments, Education systems and schools to improve equity in education for all Australian students.
  • Provide a basis for assessment and monitoring of the effectiveness of education systems.

Who's involved?

  • In 2000, 32 countries carried out the first PISA survey.
  • In 2002, a further 11 countries participated in 'PISA Plus', using the same assessment as PISA 2000.
  • In 2003, 41 countries participated in PISA.
  • In 2006, 57 countries participated in PISA.
  • In 2006, around 400,000 students were randomly selected to participate in PISA, representing about 20 million 15-year-olds.
  • In 2006, 14,170 Australian students from 356 schools participated in PISA.
  • The students assessed are mostly 15 years of age at the time of testing. This age-based sample focusing on students near the end of compulsory schooling is selected over a grade-based sample because of the complexities of defining an internationally comparable sample.

How PISA came about

From Lokan, J., Greenwood , L., Cresswell, J. " 15-up and counting, reading, writing, reasoning... How literate are Australian students? " National Australian report for PISA 2000, (p.1-2)

" PISA is part of an ongoing program of reporting on indicators in education undertaken by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris . The OECD has successfully developed indicators of human monetary resources invested in education and in how education systems and learning systems operate and evolve, and has reported on these for more than ten years through its annual publication Education at a Glance. What has been missing from the indicators is regular and reliable information on educational outcomes across countries, especially measures of skills. Without such measures it is difficult for a country to judge the effectiveness and comparative success of its education system(s).

To remedy this gap, the OECD, together with Statistics Canada, first developed and conducted a survey of adult literacy skills, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). Australia was a participant in that study, which took place between 1994 and 1998. Secondly, the OECD and its member countries developed PISA to extend the measurement of outcomes to school-aged students. PISA has been designed and implemented to date by an international consortium led by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), and the year 2000 assessment marked the beginning of what is planned to be a regular three-yearly assessment of skills for life among students nearing the end of their compulsory schooling."