What is PISA?

The content

The PISA 2022 survey focused on mathematics, with reading, science and creative thinking as minor areas of assessment. In each round of PISA, one subject is tested in detail, taking up nearly half of the total testing time. The main subject in 2022 was mathematics, as it was in 2012 and 2003. Reading was the main subject in 2000, 2009 and 2018, science was the main subject in 2006 and 2015.

With this alternating schedule, a thorough analysis of achievement in each of the three core subjects is presented every nine (or 10) years; and an analysis of trends is offered every three (or four) years. As this cycle was postponed from 2021 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this cycle offers results one year later than previous cycles.

Creative thinking was assessed as an innovative domain for the first time in PISA 2022.

The PISA 2022 Assessment and Analytical Framework (OECD, 2023[1]) presents definitions and more detailed descriptions of the subjects assessed in PISA 2022:

• Mathematics is defined as students’ capacity to reason mathematically and to formulate, employ and interpret mathematics to solve problems in a variety of real-world contexts. It includes concepts, procedures, facts and tools to describe, explain and predict phenomena. It helps individuals make well-founded judgements and decisions, and become constructive, engaged and reflective 21st-century citizens.

• Reading is defined as students’ capacity to understand, use, evaluate, reflect on and engage with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, develop one’s knowledge and potential, and participate in society.

• Science literacy is defined as students’ ability to engage with science-related issues, and with the ideas of science, as a reflective citizen. A scientifically literate person is willing to engage in reasoned discourse about science and technology, which requires the competencies to explain phenomena scientifically, evaluate and design scientific enquiry, and interpret data and evidence scientifically.

• Creative thinking is defined as students’ ability to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of ideas that can result in original and effective solutions, advances in knowledge and impactful expressions of imagination.

PISA 2022 also included an assessment of young people’s financial literacy, which was optional for countries and economies.

The students

Some 690 000 students took the assessment in 2022, representing about 29 million 15-year-olds in the schools of the 81 countries and economies.

PISA students are aged between 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months at the time of the assessment, and they have completed at least 6 years of formal schooling. Using this age across countries and over time allows PISA to consistently compare the knowledge and skills of individuals born in the same year who are still in school at age 15, despite the diversity of their education histories in and outside of school. They can be enrolled in any type of institution, participate in full-time or part-time education, in academic or vocational programmes, and attend public or private schools or foreign schools within the country.

The population of PISA-participating students is defined by the PISA Technical Standards as are the students who are excluded from participating (see Annex A2). The overall exclusion rate within a country is required to be below 5% to ensure that, under reasonable assumptions, any distortions in national mean scores would remain within plus or minus five score points, i.e. typically within the order of magnitude of two standard errors of sampling. Exclusion could take place either through the schools that participated or the students who participated within schools. There are several reasons why a school or a student could be excluded from PISA. Schools might be excluded because they are situated in remote regions and are inaccessible, because they are very small, or because of organisational or operational factors that precluded participation. Students might be excluded because of intellectual disability or limited proficiency in the language of the assessment.

The assessment

As was done in 2015 and 2018, computer-based tests were used in most countries and economies in PISA 2022, with assessments lasting a total of two hours for each student. In mathematics and reading, a multi-stage adaptive approach was applied in computer-based tests whereby students were assigned a block of test items based on their performance in preceding blocks.

Test items were a mixture of multiple-choice questions and questions requiring students to construct their own responses. The items were organised in groups based on a passage setting out a real-life situation. More than 15 hours of test items for reading, mathematics, science and creative thinking were covered, with different students taking different combinations of test items.

There were six different kinds of test forms representing various combinations of two of the four domains (i.e. the three core domains, plus the innovative domain). Typically, within each country/economy, 94% of students received test forms covering 60 minutes of mathematics as the major domain, and another 60 minutes of one of the three minor or innovative domains (reading, science or creative thinking). In addition, 6% of students received test forms composed of two minor domains. Each test form was completed by enough students to allow for estimations of proficiency and psychometric analyses of all items by students in each country/economy and in relevant subgroups within a country/economy, such as boys and girls, or students from different social and economic backgrounds.

In addition, PISA 2022 retained a paper-based version of the assessment that included only trend items that had been used in prior paper-based assessments. This paper-based assessment was implemented in four countries: Cambodia, Guatemala, Paraguay and Viet Nam.

The assessment of financial literacy was offered again in PISA 2022 as an optional computer-based test. It was based on a revised framework based on the PISA 2022 updated framework. The cognitive instruments included trend items and a set of new interactive items that were developed specifically for PISA 2022.

The questionnaires

Students answered a background questionnaire, which took about 35 minutes to complete. The questionnaire sought information about the students’ attitudes, dispositions and beliefs, their homes, and their school and learning experiences. School principals completed a questionnaire that covered school management and organisation, and the learning environment. Both students and schools responded to items in the Global Crises Module in their respective questionnaires. These items aimed to elicit their perspectives on how learning was organised when schools were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some countries/economies also distributed additional questionnaires to elicit more information. These included: a questionnaire for teachers asking about themselves and their teaching practices; and a questionnaire for parents asking them to provide information about their perceptions of and involvement in their child’s school and learning.

Countries/economies could also choose to distribute two other optional questionnaires for students: a questionnaire about students’ familiarity with computers and a questionnaire about students’ well-being. A financial literacy questionnaire was also distributed to the students in the countries/economies that conducted the optional financial literacy assessment.