Five things you probably don’t know from PISA….

1. Shanghai did 50 points worse on the computer test in 2012 than in the paper test…..

2. Why does Viet Nam do so well? Country Mean Singapore 556* Estonia 534* Japan 538* Taiwan 532* Country Mean Finland 531* Vietnam 525* Macao 529* Hong Kong 523* Canada 528*   Country Mean China 518 Australia 510 South Korea 516 Germany 509 New Zealand 513 Netherlands Slovenia Switzerland 506 England 512 Ireland 503*

2. Why does Viet Nam do so well 2. Why does Viet Nam do so well? Only 50% of its 15-year-olds are eligible to take part! Figures refer to the 75th percentile in science. ‘Before’ = reported results ‘After’ = including 15-year-olds who are not in school, assuming they would all perform below the national median. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i_9789264266490-en Table

3. Around 1 in 3 American schools declines to participate….. See page 71 of http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PISA%202012%20Technical%20Report_Chapter%204.pdf

4. You can only really compare PISA reading results back to 2009 (not 2000)….. “Changes in design and construct coverage were particularly important in earlier PISA assessments. The change in performance observed between PISA 2000 and later assessments may thus not always reflect genuine changes in what students know and can do……… …..the associated uncertainty associated with comparisons involving PISA 2000, 2003 and 2006 reading results with later results is only imperfectly captured by linking errors. ….some caution is needed when interpreting reading trends before PISA 2009. Footnote 3 page 172 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i/reading-performance-among-15-year-olds_9789264266490-8-en#.WIiw0fmLTIU#page28 Very few link items 3 questions all from 1 unit – which was not technically the best unit……

5. A lot of things changed in PISA 2015 from previous cycles. … 5. A lot of things changed in PISA 2015 from previous cycles...... ….and this had a non-trivial impact upon some of the results “The negative changes between PISA 2012 and PISA 2015 reported for Chinese Taipei (-18 score points) and Viet Nam (-17 score points) are, to a large extent, due to the use of a different scaling approach. Had the PISA 2012 results for mathematics been scaled with the PISA 2015 calibration sample and the PISA 2015 approach to scaling, the differences in results for Chinese Taipei and Viet Nam would have been only -3 points and -4 points, respectively” http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i/changes-in-science-performance-between-2006-and-2015-based-on-originally-scaled-and-on-rescaled-results_9789264266490-graph117-en