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Cover Story

PISA assessment & ranking methodology
sions with evidence — but it has also raised the political
ome apologists of the BJP government at the Cen- cost of inaction by exposing shortcomings in policy and
tre cite alleged western bias of the triennial transna- practice. This aids the development of education systems
Stional PISA as the reason for India having opted out to deliver high-quality instruction and equitable learning,”
of PISA 2022 at the last minute. However, the Directorate says a PISA statement.
of Education and Skills, OECD takes great pains to ensure Subject-matter experts, practitioners and policy makers
that the PISA test offers a level competitive platform to from participating countries work together to build consen-
students from all countries. sus on which subjects learning outcomes are assessed and
Students are selected after a two-stage sampling pro- how to best measure them across countries and cultures,
cess. First, a representative sample of at least 150 schools and to find ways to compare the results meaningfully and
is chosen from urban and rural areas. Next 42 fifteen-year- reliably. OECD’s Directorate of Education & Skills co-ordi-
old students are randomly selected from each school to nates this multinational effort and works with countries to
write the assessment test. Most countries assess between interpret results and compile the reports. “PISA 2022 was
4,000-8,000 15-year-olds. This strict sampling criteria en- the eighth round of the assessment since it was launched
sures that the teens who write the test are representative of in 2000. Every PISA test assesses students’ knowledge and
the national population of 15-year-olds in every participant skills in mathematics, science and reading, and focuses on
country. “By providing an opportunity for countries to learn one of these subjects and provides a summary assessment
from each other, PISA has developed into an influential of the other two. In 2022, the focus was on mathematics,”
force for education reform. PISA has helped policy makers says Andreas Schleicher, Director (Education & Skills) of
lower the cost of political action by backing difficult deci- OECD.

81 countries writing PISA 2022. On Andreas Schleiser, a physics and
the contrary, their governments were math alum of Hamburg and Deakin
keen to ascertain the degree of learn- (Australia) universities, former direc-
ing loss suffered by children during tor of the Amsterdam-based Interna-
the pandemic shutdown of education tional Association for the Evaluation
institutions to recover lost ground of Educational Achievement (IEA)
through remedial education pro- and currently Director of Education
grammes. And surprisingly despite and Skills, OECD.
shorter education lockdowns and The BJP government’s excuse of
superior learning-from-home digital crying off PISA 2022 citing the pro-
technologies, 15-year-olds from the longed shutdown of schools coun-
OECD founder countries (Western trywide because of the pandemic is
Europe and the US) fared worse than untenable because the lockdown of
their counterparts in South-east Asian India’s schools for an average of 82
countries. weeks was an egregious error of its
“It’s a pity that India didn’t par- own making. Most other countries
ticipate in PISA 2022 which attracted Schleiser: 15-year-olds from 81 countries imposed school closures of a much
participation of high school students shorter duration after it was well-es-
from 81 countries. Because of the Co- ers shift from looking inward at each tablished that children were not espe-
vid pandemic which shuttered schools other within the same education sys- cially vulnerable to the Covid-19 virus.
worldwide for varying periods, we de- tem to looking outward: to teachers, After lockdown of the economy in-
layed this test scheduled for 2021 by schools and policy makers across the cluding all education institutions on
one year. And India had confirmed world. Unlike traditional assessments, March 25, 2020, EducationWorld was
that a sample of 15-year-olds from PISA assesses not just students’ ability the first media publication to draw
Kendriya Vidyalayas and Chandigarh to reproduce learned material but also attention to the utter lack of digital
would write PISA 2022. Participa- their capacity to apply knowledge cre- learning opportunities for the vast
tion in PISA is important because it atively in novel scenarios, think criti- majority of the world’s largest popu-
enables every participant country to cally across disciplines, and demon- lation of children, and recommend
learn where its high schoolers stand in strate effective learning strategies. By phased re-opening of education insti-
an increasingly globalising world. The emphasising these skills, PISA aims tutions countrywide as early as pos-
goal of PISA when it was introduced to equip students with the ability to sible. In July 2021, after all education
was to help schools and policy mak- navigate an ever-evolving world,” says institutions had been shut down for 56

52 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2024