PISA 2018 Results (Volume III)
What School Life Means for Students’ Lives
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 III, What School Life Means for Students’ Lives, focuses on the physical and emotional health of students, the role of teachers and parents in shaping the school climate, and the social life at school. The volume also examines indicators of student well-being, and how these are related to the school climate.
Preface
Among its many findings, our PISA 2018 assessment shows that 15-year-old students in the four provinces/municipalities of China that participated in the study – Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang – outperformed by a large margin their peers from all of the other 78 participating education systems, in mathematics and science. Moreover, the 10 % most disadvantaged students in these four jurisdictions also showed better reading skills than those of the average student in OECD countries, as well as skills similar to the 10 % most advantaged students in some of these countries. True, these four provinces/municipalities in eastern China are far from representing China as a whole, but the size of each of them compares to that of a typical OECD country, and their combined populations amount to over 180 million. What makes their achievement even more remarkable is that the level of income of these four Chinese regions is well below the OECD average. The quality of their schools today will feed into the strength of their economies tomorrow.