Browse by: "P"

The P-star approach has been developed by the U.S. Federal Reserve as a new indicator of inflationary pressures. This paper assesses its usefulness for 20 OECD Member countries. Regression results are presented and in-sample tracking ability and forecasting performance of the equations are compared to rival inflation models and official OECD projections ...

The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework for the assessment of numeracy developed for the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations in order to monitor how well prepared they are to meet the challenges of the new information world. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework for the assessment of numeracy developed for the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). This builds on the numeracy framework developed for the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). Numeracy is broadly defined and complemented with a definition of ‘numerate behaviour’. Four facets of numerate behaviour are identified and described to guide the development of assessment tasks.

Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations for the purposes of monitoring how well prepared they are for the challenges of the new information world. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework developed for the assessment of problem solving in technology-rich environments for the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). This covers the specific class of problems that people encounter when using information and communication technologies. These include problems where the existence of the problem is a consequence of the availability of new technologies, where the solution requires the use of computer-based applications or where the problem relates to the management or use of information technologies.

Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations in order to examine how well prepared they are to meet the challenges of the modern knowledge-based society. The current paper provides a conceptual framework for the assessment of reading component skills in the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The assessment of component skills is intended to provide a greater level of information about the skills of individuals with low levels of literacy proficiency than has been available from previous international assessments. The ‘component skills ’identified for the assessment are vocabulary knowledge, sentence processing and passage comprehension.

This report focuses on the adult learning data that was collected as part of the OECD Survey of Adult Skills between 2012 and 2016, which has been a core activity of the ongoing OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The objectives are to: present the data on adult learning made available by PIAAC; provide an international and comparative overview of the extent of adult learning of different types along with trends, where possible, for countries and economies that have so far participated in PIAAC; reveal international and comparative patterns on the distribution of adult learning within participating countries and economies, focusing on who is and who is not participating in terms of the types of jobs they work in as well as their socio-demographic profile; assess empirically the relationship between some types of adult learning and economic as well as social outcomes; discuss systemic features of adult learning systems and their relationship with selected economic and social policy instruments; and to draw out implications of the results in relation to the continued measurement of adult learning.

As noted in the OECD's PISA 2000 Technical Report (OECD, 2002), the Austrian sample for the PISA 2000 assessment did not adequately cover students enrolled in combined school and work-based vocational programmes as required by the OECD's technical standards for PISA. The purpose of this working paper is to quantify the comparability problems resulting from the inadequate coverage of the PISA target population in the Austrian PISA 2000 assessment and to establish adjustments that could be used to correct for this and thus to allow reliable comparisons between the 2000 and 2003 data. Using the supplementary data for the number of students in the PISA strata provided by the Austrian Ministry Education, this report presents adjusted student weights for analysing the PISA 2000 Austrian data.

The OECD is planning to enhance existing PISA assessment instruments in reading, mathematics and science so that they will be more suitable to the context of developing countries. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the main technical issues associated with this aim. The paper reports detailed analysis of the existing PISA item pool and its suitability for countries which have students of average limited capacity. The paper cautions that the fit of developing country data to the PISA model is not good and that modifications to address some of the deviations should be explored. The use of learning metrics to describe dimensions of educational progression is at the core of the PISA reporting methodology and requires a consistency across countries in item behaviour that is not apparent for developing countries. The paper recommends that any process to move towards enhancing the instruments must be undertaken with extensive consultation with the countries involved.

Building on the experience of working with middle-income countries in PISA since 2000, and in an effort to respond to the emerging demand for PISA to cater to a wider range of countries, the OECD launched the PISA for Development (PISA-D) initiative in 2014. This one-off pilot project, spanning six years, aims to make the assessment more accessible and relevant to low-to-middle-income countries.

A key component of PISA-D was building capacity in the participating countries for managing large-scale student learning assessments and using the results to support national policy dialogue and evidence-based decision-making.

Around 37 000 students completed the school-based assessment, representing about one million 15-year-old students (in grade 7 or above) in the schools of the seven participating countries: Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Senegal and Zambia. On average across PISA-D countries, only 43% of all 15-year-olds were enrolled in at least grade 7 by age 15 and were eligible to sit the PISA-D test, compared to the OECD average of 89%. The remaining 15-year-olds were either in grades below 7 or were out of school. In Cambodia, Senegal and Zambia, only around 30% of 15-year-olds were eligible to sit the PISA-D test.

PISA for Development (PISA-D) aims to make the assessment more accessible and relevant to low- and middle-income countries. This report summarises findings from the out-of-school assessment results for PISA-D. By combining the out-of-school assessment with the in-school assessment, PISA-D has been able to achieve a unique perspective on the current skills level and on the challenges that the entire population of 14-16 year-olds face. Seven countries participated in the school-based implementation of PISA-D: Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Senegal and Zambia.1 Four of them, namely Guatemala, Paraguay, Honduras and Senegal, also participated in the PISA-D out-of-school assessment. Panama took part in the main PISA assessment in 2018 and the PISA-D out-of-school assessment. This report provides an overview of the main results of the out-of-school assessment for the five participating countries, comparing them, where relevant, with those for the in-school students discussed in PISA in Focus #91.

The success of PISA since its first survey administration in 2000 has attracted an ever increasing number of participating countries. With an increasingly diverse group of countries, the targeting of the original assessment may be less appropriate than when it was first conceived for a smaller more uniform group of countries. The purpose of this paper is to identify the technical issues in respect of Strand C (assessing competencies of those out-of-school) and to discuss and present ways of addressing these issues.

This paper explores the participation of low- and middle-income countries in OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It provides a detailed description of partner countries’ participation across PISA rounds and the challenges faced by low- and middle-income partner countries in effectively implementing and deriving policy value from PISA. Specific challenges are illustrated with examples from Tunisia and Kyrgyzstan.

Many partner countries lag considerably behind OECD countries on various dimensions of social and economic development. Three OECD countries – Chile, Mexico, Turkey – also differ from higher-income OECD countries in regards to educational achievement and other indicators of social and economic development. After grouping countries based on income (GNI per capita), this paper shows that the cognitive performance of students in countries participating in PISA varies considerably not only between different country income groups but also within them. Analysis of PISA performance in relation to national wealth provides strong arguments for grouping countries according to their social and economic development when reflecting on challenges of participation and effective use of PISA. Lack of funding and governments’ fear of bad performance have been stated as potential deterrents to participation. Lack of institutional capacity and less relevant results due to a non-representative sample of 15 year-olds and clustering of students at low proficiency levels are discussed as main challenges for the effective use of PISA. The paper concludes with some considerations on how to improve the effective use of PISA results in these countries that may be particularly relevant in the context of the OECD’s recently launched initiative called PISA for Development.

The United States is at a crossroads in its policies towards the family and gender equality. Currently America provides basic support for children, fathers, and mothers in the form of unpaid parental leave, child-related tax breaks, and limited public childcare. Alternatively, the United States’ OECD peers empower families through paid parental leave and comprehensive investments in infants and children. The potential gains from strengthening these policies are enormous. Paid parental leave and subsidised childcare help get and keep more women in the workforce, contribute to economic growth, offer cognitive and health benefits to children, and extend choice for parents in finding their preferred work-life strategy. Indeed, the United States has been falling behind the rest of the OECD in many social and economic indicators by not adequately investing in children, fathers and mothers.