Policy Driven Measurement for Quality With Equity

• In Event: Quality Educational Assessment for Equity and Fairness

Abstract

Objectives
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has become the world’s premier reference for evaluating the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems, and is now being used by the UN system as a major source of data for monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the international community.
PISA for Development (PISA-D), the latest of the OECD’s PISA assessments, focused on making PISA more accessible and relevant to low-and-middle-income-countries (LMIC).
Perspectives
Building on the experience of middle-income countries in PISA since 2000, the OECD launched the PISA for Development (PISA-D) initiative in 2014. This unique pilot project spanning six years aimed to make the assessment more accessible and relevant to a wider range of countries by: increasing the resolution of the PISA tests at the lower end of the student performance distribution; capturing a wider range of social and economic contexts; incorporating an assessment of out-of-school 14-16-year-olds.
Design/Methodology
PISA-D was implemented with new features and enhancements aimed at making PISA more accessible and relevant to LMIC:
• An equal treatment of the major domains tested
• Targeted test instruments covering a wider range of performance at the lower levels of proficiency
• Modified test instruments and questionnaires with reduced reading burden
• Contextual questionnaires that have core items from PISA to facilitate international comparisons
• An assessment of the out-of-school population of 15-year-olds

Data and Results
Nine PISA-D countries (Bhutan, Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Senegal and Zambia) have partnered with the OECD to develop and test enhanced PISA assessment instruments that are designed to capture a wider range of performance levels and social contexts. With the completion of the PISA-D project in December 2020, this paper will confirm the achievement of the project’s objectives and summarise the results and what they mean for the monitoring and achievement of SDG 4 in all countries.
Significance
The PISA-D project has achieved its objectives and is already contributing to increased participation in PISA by more LMIC; the project has revealed the status of education quality and equity in LMIC and makes sobering reading. It is clear from the PISA-D results that the achievement of SDG 4 in LMIC by 2030 is not feasible if business as usual approaches continue.

Author

• Michael Ward, OECD