PISA 2018 Results (Volume I)
What Students Know and Can Do

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines what students know in reading, mathematics and science, and what they can do with what they know. It provides the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student learning outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the quality and equity of learning outcomes attained around the world, and allow educators and policy makers to learn from the policies and practices applied in other countries. This is one of six volumes that present the results of the PISA 2018 survey, the seventh round of the triennial assessment. Volume I, What Students Know and Can Do, provides a detailed examination of student performance in reading, mathematics and science, and describes how performance has changed since previous PISA assessments.
How PISA results are reported: What is a PISA score?
This chapter presents information about the methods behind the analysis of PISA data and how to interpret the score values; it does not contain results of the PISA 2018 tests. The chapter summarises the test-development and scaling procedures used to ensure that results are comparable across countries and with the results of previous PISA assessments, and explains how the score values can be interpreted.