Starting point – The question of what is important for citizens to know and be able to do and the need for internationally comparable evidence on student performance.

Objectives

Assess the extent to which 15-year-old students have acquired the key knowledge and skills essential for full participation in a modern society.

• Assessing students near the end of their compulsory education.
• Assessment domains
  • Focus on the core school subjects of mathematics, reading, and science
  • Inclusion of an innovative domain (in 2012, problem-solving)
  • Possible inclusion of optional assessments (for some countries): computer-based mathematics, digital reading, and financial literacy
• Not only to ascertain whether students can reproduce knowledge, but also to examine how well students can extrapolate from what they have learned and whether they can apply that knowledge in unfamiliar settings, both in and out of school.

PISA data

• Offer insights for education policy and practice.
• Help monitor trends in students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills across countries and in different demographic subgroups within each country.
• Reveal what is possible in education by showing what students in the highest-performing and most rapidly improving education systems can do.

PISA findings

• Allow policy makers around the world to gauge the knowledge and skills of students in their own countries in comparison with those in other countries.
• Allow policy targets to be set against measurable goals achieved by other education systems and educators to learn from policies and practices applied elsewhere.

While PISA cannot identify cause-and-effect relationships between policies (or practices) and student outcomes, it can show educators, policy makers, and the interested public how education systems are similar and different – and what that means for students.