The role of the OECD in international comparative studies of achievement

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) underpins its extensive policy work with strong databases of comparable statistics and indicators with which it compares countries. In 2000, it extended its education database with its first collection of data on the performances of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science through its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which continues on a three-yearly cycle. In developing PISA, crucial decisions were made about the target student population, sampling requirements, tests development frameworks, translation procedures and pilot testing regimes prior to full data collection. The international comparisons of student performance offer much more than rankings of countries. Analyses of students’ social backgrounds and their performances on the PISA measures, for example, have shown that some countries achieve both high quality and high equity together. While the analyses can point only to possible explanations of how they have managed this, they do at least show what is possible and encourage more detailed examination of strategies for achieving such a quality/equity mix.

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