GENEVA, September 8 - World Bullying Without Borders Organization
PISA Tests: Australia
8th place.
WHAT ARE THE PISA TESTS?
The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests are an international assessment coordinated by the OECD that seeks to determine how prepared students are to use their knowledge and skills in real-life situations.
Unlike a traditional school examination, PISA does not aim to measure how much content from an educational curriculum students have memorized. Its main objective is to assess whether they can reason, interpret information, solve problems and apply what they have learned.
PISA mainly assesses three areas:
Mathematics: the ability to reason and solve problems using mathematical concepts.
Science: the ability to understand scientific phenomena and use scientific knowledge to analyze situations.
Reading: the ability to understand, interpret and evaluate texts.
The population assessed generally consists of 15-year-old students, regardless of the specific grade they are attending.
HOW ARE THEY CONDUCTED?
PISA uses an international methodology designed so that results can be compared across countries and education systems.
1. A sample is selected
Not all students in a country are tested.
Schools and students are selected through statistical procedures, seeking to ensure that the sample adequately represents the student population.
2. Students take the tests
The assessments present situations and problems that require students to apply knowledge.
For example, rather than simply asking for a mathematical formula, a question may present an everyday situation and ask the student to determine the best solution.
3. Contextual information is also collected
PISA does not only collect students' answers. It also gathers information about aspects related to the educational and social environment through questionnaires.
This makes it possible to study issues such as learning conditions, educational resources, and the characteristics of schools and students.
4. An international scale is established
The results are transformed into scores that allow the performance of education systems to be compared.
But there is one fundamental point: a PISA score is not a school grade.
A student who scores 500 points has not obtained "500 out of 1,000." The points belong to a statistical scale designed to make international comparisons.
WHAT DO THE RESULTS TELL US?
The data presented show a significant difference between the countries at the top of the rankings and those appearing at the bottom of the table.
In the set presented, Japan, Korea and Estonia appear among the systems with the highest scores. At the other end are Argentina, Colombia, Cyprus, Mexico and Bulgaria, among others.
This allows us to observe an important reality: educational outcomes are not homogeneous around the world.
Those with the highest scores
The countries at the top of the table provide an indication that, on average, their students are developing certain competencies assessed by PISA more effectively.
Japan, for example, has, according to the data provided, 525 points in mathematics, 538 in science and 503 in reading.
Korea and Estonia also show high and relatively balanced results across the three areas.
These results deserve to be studied because they can help identify which policies, school practices, teacher training, educational organization and social conditions contribute to learning.
AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AMONG THE LOWEST?
A PISA score reflects the average performance of a student population in specific competencies and under specific conditions.
The results may be related to multiple factors:
quality and continuity of educational policies, social inequality, poverty, school infrastructure, teacher training, available resources, family conditions, access to educational materials and learning opportunities, among others.
Therefore, a country's position should serve as a signal to investigate and improve, not as a label for its students.
The reflection of the International Multidisciplinary Team of Bullying Without Borders:
"International comparison has value precisely because it allows us to ask a deeper question:
Why do some education systems succeed in enabling a greater proportion of their students to develop certain competencies, while others have greater difficulty achieving this?
That should be the true purpose of PISA.
Japan, Korea and Estonia should not be observed merely to say 'they won.' They should be studied to understand what they do well and which elements could be adapted to other contexts.
Likewise, countries that appear at the bottom should not be labeled as 'the worst.' Their results should serve to identify where the difficulties lie and what policies can reverse them.
In the case of Argentina, which appears in last place in the table according to the data provided, the most important figure should not simply be rank 46. What truly matters is asking what is happening behind these results and what can be done to ensure that Argentine students have better learning opportunities."
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