2021 is set to mark an end to
the decade-long boycott of the Program of International Student Assessment. Why
is this more than just another exam taken by students and why should we spend
more time and resources preparing ourselves for this?
16,000 students from 400 schools
across Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu appeared for PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in 2009. The results? –
Not encouraging at all. India was placed 72nd out of 74 countries
that participated. China also a first timer, topped the assessment in math and
science with Shanghai schools. The outcome of these results? – India pulled out
of the testing blaming the “out of context” questions. But after 9 years, India
has finally decided to sign up for PISA testing, hoping to score better than
the last time after requesting OECD to conduct PISA like assessment tests
across Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas.
While appearing for this
international student assessment is a welcome move, it is important to take this
more seriously than we did the last time. There have been quite a few
discussions about how the 2009 participation was just a litmus test and how India
would have fared better if Shanghai equivalent of India such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore,
etc had taken part in PISA. But it is also true that the Indian education system
is broken and it’s better late than never to come to terms with that. Complaining
about how the test isn’t tailored keeping India’s culture in mind is just cowardice
pretending to be logic.
If disturbing revelations from
ASER, Educational initiatives year on year about the learning outcomes of
students across the country have not been enough for the government and NCERT
to sit up and take notice, perhaps an international assessment like PISA could
tell us what we already know and bring the changes we are all hoping for a long
long time.
What is PISA? What does it measure?
Programme for International Student Assessment was introduced by Organisation
for Economic Cooperation Development’s Center for Educational Research and Innovation
in 2000. It mainly focuses on 15-year old students’ reading, mathematics and
science literacy every three years. It also includes an optional section for
financial literacy and collaborative problem solving. It is used to assess the
functional skills that students have acquired at the end of compulsory
schooling. It is a good measure to assess to what extent students have attained
skills essential for full participation in the society. PISA’s goal has been to
evaluate performance of systems, how experts can measure the end-goals of education
system and to generate better processes to collect new data across systems.
The results of such international
assessments is vital to India’s growth, undoubtedly. This is why:
We have always believed that
Indian students are good at math. Even President Obama had mentioned how the
American schools were under threat from India. But TN/HP math results of PISA
showed us that the best of the states’ students were 24 points behind average
American 15 year old. The best performers in TN/HP were 100 points the average
child in Singapore and 83 points behind the average Korean student.[1]
Well, I agree TN & HP alone isn’t
a fair sample here, but the story the data tells us here is staggering. The
major takeway from this “litmus test” should have been how we can use this
assessment to our benefit and not shy away from participation in the future –
which India failed to do.
PISA – The gold standard
PISA has been used as the gold
standard for evaluation of the performance of education system. Its high
credibility has led to many important education reforms in the West. PISA
results in addition to the public pressure and the media’s attention to the
results has prompted countries like Germany, Denmark, Japan to open up the
stage to policy reforms in education. Germany after PISA 2000, pushed for intense
debate over the then education scenario which led to significant reform
measures including coming up with national standards and laying down a better support
structure for the disadvantaged students and immigrants. Similarly Japan brought
changes to its national assessment practices and important curriculum changes
to catch up with the growing world.[2]
The flip side – What to look out for, after entering the PISA playfield
Participating in PISA means no
more place to hide. Our education system will be out in the open to be judged
and measured against the other OECD nations that sign up for this. Educational
outcomes are complicated to be tracked over time. The country report card that
PISA produces can put the policy makers under intense pressure to improve the score,
incentivizing them to focus on the optics rather than actual, systemic change.
Thus, PISA outcomes must only be used as a measure than quantifies complex
educational outcomes into simplified metrics that can give us the general sense
of trends and the gaps in learning. Using the PISA scores to reduce the
percentage of students who are below proficiency Level 2(baseline proficiency
level), brainstorming methods to reach 500 PISA points (OECD average) would be the
path to take. It’s important not to get carried away by the rank, like we’re
doing with the World bank’s ease of doing business global ranking.
The perfect window of opportunity
An external shock such as PISA
outcomes can be exactly what India’s struggling educational sector needs now.
With this external shock will come the perfect window of opportunity to gather
enough people to make noise about this and push for the reforms for a better
learning environment and methods. With this, we will have a better system in
place to trade best educational practices with other countries. PISA results
bring hope, since over the years it has shown that poor performance in school
does not automatically follow from a disadvantaged economic background. It also
shows that it is possible to achieve strong educational performance over short
periods of time. Thus, it is critical that India makes a policy shift from
educational inputs to learning outcomes to better prepare the young. PISA would
nudge us in the right direction, break us out of our cocoon and put us in our
place. We might not like what we see, but that’s the only way to learn.
[1] https://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/first-pisa-results-for-india-end-of.html?_sm_au_=iVVs6N21PPfZ7j4Q
[2] http://simonbreakspear.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Breakspear-PISA-Paper.pdf
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