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If you read or listen to news reports about education you've probably noticed periodical surge of interest in wich country students do best in

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readings or mathematics or science and where your country fits into the grand scheme of things

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you have probably also heard, or read the word PISA, in connection with some of these reports. What

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is PISA? PISA is an achronym that stands for the Programme for International Student Assessment. It's

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the brain child of the OECD, and what's the OECD? It's another achronym that stands for the Organization

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for the economic cooperation and development. The OECD brings toghether 34 countries, with the aim of developing

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better policies for better lives. In the late 1990's countries that are members of the OECD came up with

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the idea to measure whether fifteen years olds around the world are well prepared to participate in society.

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We choose fifteen years olds rather than twelve or seventeen year olds because most fifteen years old are about

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to complete their compulsory education. Experts in the fields of education from around the world worked

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toghether to create a two hour test, that focuses on core subjects like reading mathematics and science.

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Participating countries deciced to administer this test every three years and to rotate the main focus

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of the test among the core subjects. All very well, but testing students is nothing new, so what's so

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special about PISA? PISA surveys are design to find out whethet students can use what they have learned

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in school, and apply that knowledge to real live situations and problems. PISA is less interested in

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knowing whether students can repeat like parrots what they have been thaught in class. Rather the survey

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is designed to find out whether, for example, students can use their reading skills they have learned

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in schools, to make sense of the information they find in a book, a newspaper, on a government form,

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or in an instruction manual, but the point of PISA is not to tell each individual student how well he

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or she has mastered the set of skills. Instead, PISA results are extrapolated and analysed to the national

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level. Picture one student sitting at a desk, in a classroom somewhere, taking the PISa test, now zoom

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out as though you are on a space shuttle, and you can see the entire country in wich that student is

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sitting. That's what PISA does with its test results, PISA shows countries where they stand, in relation

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to other countries, and just by themself, in how effectively they educate their children. What PISA doesn't

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say: this education policy or practice causes that effect, it shows what's possible, and show similarities

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and differences between education systems around the world. That helps governments rethink their own

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policies and design new ones to improve their student performance in school. It also helps government

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educators, and parents track their country's progress towards a more succesful education system. In fact

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many countries now set national goals, and benchmarks based on PISA international results. Pisa considers

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and education system succesful not only if its students achieve high scores on the PISA surveys, but

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also if all students, from all backgrounds perform well on the test. Not just those who come from

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wealthier, or more intellectual, or more culturally sophisticated families. For example a relatively

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large percentage of disadvantaged students in places like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea, and Finland achieve

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some of the highest scores in PISA. Analysts there look at the PISA test results along with responses

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to questionnaires that are given to students and school principals, and try to determine the main characteristics

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of these succesful education systems. Are teachers in the system paid more? Are classes generally larger

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or smaller? Do individual schools get to decide what their teachers teach? Or is their curriculum determined

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by a central government authority? Once a profile of a of a succesful system emerges, it can be used

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as a model for others. So what's the test like? Here are a couple of problems that students have to solve.

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The first one was part of the reading assessment. Students were shown a graph and an accompanying text.

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that read: figure one shows changing levels of Lake Chad, in Saharan Nord Africa. Lake Chad disappeared completely in about 20000 B.C. during the last ice age. In about 11000 B.C. it

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reappeared. Today its level is about the same as it was in A.D. 1000. Students whare asked why has the

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author chosen to start the graph at this point. This was considered a rather difficult question. In fact,

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across OECD countries, only 37% of students answered it correctly. Those students showed ana ability

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not only to read, but to think about what they read, and draw some conclusion from it. They figured out,

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that the reason the graph starts at around 11000 B.C. is because that's when Lake Chad reappeard after

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having disappeared completely, during the ice age. The second problem was part of the mathematics assessment,

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it sets the scene. In a pizza restaurant you can get a basic pizza, with two toppings: cheese and tomato.

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You can also make up your own pizza with extra toppings, you can choose from four different extra toppings.

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Olives, ham ,mushrooms and salami. Ross wants to order a pizza with two different extra toppings. Students

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where then asked: how many different combination can Ross choose from? Now this is a problem we can all

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relate to. To answer the question students had to show their ability to make connections. In this case

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juggling several food stuff and realize that the choices are not, in fact, infinite, much as the students

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might like them to be. This was also a relatively tought problem for students to solve. Just 49% of students

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could calculate that only six different variation where possible. So when we take individuals score in

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PISA and the responses to those questionnaires that we circulate with the test and then zoom out to see

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a whole country, what kinds of things do we learn. Well, one thing we've learned is girls do better in reading

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than boys in every country that participates in PISA, and among the countries that are members of the OECD

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girls do so much better than boys in reading, it's as if they have gone through an additional year of

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school. We also find out that boys generally do better than girls in mathematics, and that there is no

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real difference between boys and girls in how they do in science. We also found out that some school

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policies may not be very good for students. For example, early tracking of students, wich means deciding that

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some students should go through an academic program, while others should go through a vocational program

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is not associated with better overall performance, tracking is also related to greater inequalities

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between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Students are often tracked in the mistaken believe that

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not everyone can learn the same things, that only some children are gifted and reach for the stars, but

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PISA results show that if given the opportunity and support to excel, all children have the potential

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to do so. Having students repeat grades is also not associated with high scores in PISA. School system

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that invest in helping strudents learn their subjects the first time around do much better than those

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where teachers know that they can ,if necessary drill the same material, year after year, after year

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into the heads of the same struggling students. As we mentioned before the most successful schools according to

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PISA are the ones whose students do well regardless of where they come from. Still results from PISA

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show that home background has a major influence on student success in school. In many ways this finding

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is all too obvious. We know for example that by the time they are three, children in advantaged families

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are exposed to many more word than their less advantaged peers. In fact, a recent study in USA put their

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number at around thirty million more words, and in general if there are no books at home, or if their

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children don't see their parents reading they'll be less inclined to read themself. Pisa results alo

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show that regardless of their own background, student who attend schools that have a largely disadvantaged

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population tend to do worse than students who attend schools with relatively advantaged peers. Why would

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this be so? Well, there are many possible reasons, for example PISA found that in most OECD countries

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disadvantaged students have access to the same number of teachers and to sometimes even more teachers than their more advantaged peers.

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The problem though is that more isn't necessarily better. In fact, the best teachers are often found in

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schools attended by advantaged students who generally do well on their subjects anyway, but not in disadvataged

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schools where high quality teachers are most desperately needed. Governments around the world can be inspired

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by two significant finding from PISA. The first is that a country doesn't have to be wealthy to provide

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high quality education to its students. Shanghai and Poland , for example, score well above the OECD average inreading,

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but rank below OECD average in measures of national wealth, and the countries PISA ranking is not carved in

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stone. Trends in PISA have revealed a great capacity for all countries to improve. Countries as diverse

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as Chile, Germany, Poland and Portugal among others, showed improvements in student reading performance

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between 2000 and 2009, although it seems obvious, it's still worth reminding ourselves. Successful education

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systems make education a priority, they share the belief that skills can be learned and that all students

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can achieve at high levels. They show that they value the teacheing profession by investing in it, so

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that they can attract highly qualified candidates, train them well and retain the best teachers among

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them. Just as every student has the potential to achieve, every country has the potential to raise the

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standards of their education, so PISA is about a lot more than test scores. Sure countries that participate

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in the PISA survey are keen to know where their students rank compared to students in other countries.

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but PISA's ultimate aim is not to create a competition for its own sake, its aim it's to encourage

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all participating countries to use the survey findings to improve their own teaching and student performance.

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To give their students the best opportunities to achieve the best possible results.