India Opts Out of International Student Evaluation PISA Test

New Delhi: India has once again declined to participate in PISA or Programme for International Student Assessment conducted by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) every three years.

PISA tests the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in mathematics, reading and science. The last time India took this assessment was in 2009 when it ranked 73rd, second-last to Kazakhstan, out of the 74 participating countries. Over 90 countries will participate in PISA 2025.

Many, including the India government, had rejected the results asserting that students had scored low because of a ‘cultural disconnect’ with the questions. However, the questions asked in the test carry the necessary context required for a student, who may be unfamiliar with the subject, to be able to answer it. 

It was also assumed that the test may have been administered only in English, which many Indian students are not fluent in, and had resulted in the shockingly poor results. However, here too, the test makes accommodations – it is administered in the student’s medium of instruction. 

India declined from subsequent testing.

In 2019, the Modi government agreed to participate in the 2021 round of PISA and entered an agreement with the OECD. However, citing school closures during the pandemic, the Indian government said that a learning gap had been created in children and withdrew from the test.

At the time, the government had said that India will take the assessment in 2025. But that is not the case anymore, the Morning Context has reported.

PISA methodology

The test enables governments around the world to understand which aspects of their education system are working and what needs more attention. The focus of the test is not on how well students can reproduce what they have learned, but how they can apply what they know. 

The methodology from the 2022 study states:

The assessment focuses on the core school subjects of reading, mathematics, and science. Students proficiency in an innovative domain is also assessed; in 2022, this domain was creative thinking. The assessment does not just ascertain whether students can reproduce knowledge; it also examines how well students can extrapolate from what they have learned and can apply that knowledge in unfamiliar settings, both in and outside of school. This approach reflects the fact that modern economies reward individuals not for what they know, but for what they can do with what they know.

PISA is an ongoing programme that monitors trends in the knowledge and skills that students around the world, and in demographic subgroups within each country, have acquired. In each round of PISA, one of the core domains, denominated major domain, is tested in detail, taking up roughly one-half of the total testing time. The major domain in 2022 was mathematics as it was in 2003 and 2012. Reading was the major domain in 2000, 2009 and 2018, and science was the major domain in 2006 and 2015.

In context of the pandemic, countries like England were able to improve their test scores despite the disruption in the education system during COVID-19.

While PISA, like any other test, suffers from limitations, the overall benefits of taking the test outweigh the downsides, if there are any.