I Overview
In mid-November 2017, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released data on its “three yearly Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)”. PISA consists of standardised tests in reading, writing and mathematics taken by students from different countries at the age of 15. The data is then used to compare the young people. Data is matched with how young people fared in examinations taken in their home countries.
John Jerrim and Nikki Shure of University College London Institute of Education produced an excellent analysis of how our English pupils performed, some of the key points of which are summarised below.
Altogether, 75 countries participated in PISA 2015, including all members of the OECD and the four countries within the United Kingdom. For the first time, China (previously limited to Shanghai) included four provinces – Beijing, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shanghai. In England, PISA 2015 was conducted in November and December 2015, with a sample of 5,194 pupils in England from across 206 schools. The majority of England’s participating pupils were born between September 1999 and August 2000, meaning they came to the end of primary school during 2010, and were the last cohort to take the GCSE examinations before they were reformed.