PISA results for additional systems coming out soon

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011

By Alexandra Solano

Associate, Report Cards Program

Image source: dropoutnation.net.

In the next few days, OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) will be publishing the results of an additional nine education systems that implemented the 2009 exam, including two LAC education systems – the State of Miranda in Venezuela and Costa Rica. (For an analysis of how the nine Latin American and Caribbean countries participating in the original application of the 2009 exam fared, see PREAL’s Measuring Up?: How Did Latin America and the Caribbean Perform on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessement (PISA)?). 

 

These results will be the first on this exam for Costa Rica, Georgia, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Moldova, the United Arab Emirates (expect Dubai), the states of Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh in India and the state of Miranda in Venezuela. The results from India, often singled out for its competitiveness in the world labor market, its high technological development, and its achievements in math and science, are likely to be of particular interest. This will also be the first comparative student achievement data for Venezuela since 1998. Costa Rica, which participated in UNESCO’s SERCE (Second Regional Student Achievement Test) in 2006, consistently performed above the regional average for all subjects and grades tested on that exam (see PREAL’s 2009 publication, How Much are Latin American Children Learning?: Highlights from the Second Regional Student Achievement Test (SERCE)). 

India’s recent participation in PISA may also give us initial insights into how well its recent efforts to reform its education system are going (or at least the magnitude of the challenge that it faces in improving student learning) and how that might affect potential competitors in LAC. In an event held at the World Bank this past October, Mr. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development in India, noted that he is striving to use education to transform India into a global center for research and development and technological innovation. Although the two Indian states participating in PISA 2009 may not be representative of the country – Tamil Nadu is the most urbanized state of India's 28 states and the fourth largest contributor to the country's GDP, while Himachal has the highest per capita income and ranks second in terms of least corrupt states – knowing their results will certainly shed some light on student learning in a country that is widely seen as a benchmark when it comes to math and science performance. Indeed, a 2008 paper by Lant Pritchett and Martina Viarengo, predicts that while India’s PISA average scores in math may turn out to be lower than Mexico’s, they will likely have many more high performers. It is increasing the amount of high performers, the authors argue, and not the average scores, that will most likely make a country competitive in the knowledge-based global economy.

As in the case of India, results from the state of Miranda in Venezuela, will not be nationally representative – Miranda has the highest Human Development Index out of the 23 states, and is the second most populated with nearly 3 million people who live mostly in urban areas. But the state has been working to improve its education system, and the current governor, who is also a presidential candidate, has made education one of his top priorities. Moreover, given that Venezuela does not apply internal tests to measure the quality of student learning, this will be the first attempt to assess student knowledge in the Venezuelan education system in over a decade and will allow for comparisons with its Latin American peers and the rest of the world. The last time Venezuela participated in an international comparative exam –  UNESCO’s 1998 First Regional Student Achievement Test – results showed Venezuela performing below the regional average for all grades in all levels tested. It will be interesting to see if the PISA results show a similar pattern.

Stay tuned for more on the new results and their implications for Latin America in this blog once the OECD releases them.