Expanding PISA’s circle of influence

By Barbara Ischinger Director for Education and Skills and Alejandro Gomez Palma, Analyst, PISA for Development. The enormous worldwide interest in the PISA 2012 results, which were released last December, showed that PISA is now widely accepted as the best measure of student performance we have – and one of the best sources of data that can be used to inform policy decisions about how to improve education systems. Sixty-five countries and economies participated in PISA 2012, but that leaves well over 100 others that either chose not to or believe that participation is out of their reach. We hope that that’s going to change soon.
We’ve just returned from Ecuador where the government agreed – with a sense of pride that was palpable – to participate in our pilot PISA for Development initiative. Eight Latin American countries participated in the latest round of PISA 2012 and we’re keen to add to that number. We’ve briefly mentioned the PISA for Development project in earlier blogs, but now that countries are signing on, we want to describe in more detail what it is and what it means, both for the OECD and for the countries involved. Read more...