WHAT IS THE PISA REPORT?

For the first time, the students have performed the PISA evaluation using computers.

Recently, the media has made known the actual situation of the Spanish education system in comparison with other countries. And they have done it publishing and analysing the results from the 2015 PISA report. In this post we pretend to explain in a simple and direct way what PISA consists on.

PISA is the acronym of the Programme for International Student Assessment. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/  The OECD, the Organism for Economic Co-operation and Development, creates it and the participating countries carry it out. The OECD collects the results obtained and it elaborates the relevant report.

It takes place every three years and countries from the five continents take part on it. In this last edition, students from 72 countries were evaluated; some of them belonged to the OECD and not others. More than a half million students between 15 and 16 have carried out the tests from all kind of schools (publics and private centers).

It is a study based on competences and includes three different areas: reading, mathematics and science. Every three years it is emphasized one of them. For example, in this last edition they have focused in science competence and they have included a test about financial literacy.

The PISA tests are independent of the educational curriculums, in order to homogenize their questions for the different countries that take part on it. Therefore, there is no intention to measure the knowledge obtained, but the acquired capacities by the students to solve problems related with the evaluated competences.

For the first time since these assessments began, students have used computers in order to solve them. Singapore is the country that leads every evaluated competence of the report. The success of its educative system is the result, partly, of using ITC in their classrooms.