Are students well prepared to meet the challenges of the future? Are they able to analyse, reason andcommunicate their ideas effectively? Do they have the capacity to continue learning throughout life? Theseare questions that parents, students, the public and those who run education systems continually ask.

Knowledge and Skills for Life provides some answers. It assesses how far students near the end ofcompulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that are essential for fullparticipation in society. It presents evidence on student performance in reading, mathematical andscientific literacy, reveals factors that influence the development of these skills at home and at school, and examines what the implications are for policy development.

The report shows considerable variation in levels of knowledge and skills between students, schools andcountries. The extent to which the socio-economic background of students and schools affects studentperformance varies. Some countries have managed to mitigate the influence of social background andsome have done that while achieving a high overall mean performance. This is a noteworthy achievement.Will other countries take up the challenge?

The data underlying this report are available at www.pisa.oecd.org.

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a collaborative processamong the 30 Member countries of the OECD and some non-OECD countries, bringing togetherscientific expertise from the participating countries and steered jointly by their governments on thebasis of shared, policy-driven interests. PISA is an unprecedented attempt to measure studentachievement across all OECD countries and some non-OECD countries, as is evident from some ofits features: – The literacy approach: PISA aims to define each domain (reading, mathematics and science) not

merely in terms of mastery of the school curriculum, but in terms of the knowledge and skillsneeded for full participation in society.

– A long-term commitment: Over the decade to come, it will enable countries regularly andpredictably to monitor their progress in meeting key learning objectives.

– The age-group covered: By assessing 15-year-olds, i.e. young people near the end of theircompulsory education, PISA provides a significant indication of the overall performance of schoolsystems.

– The relevance to lifelong learning: PISA does not limit itself to assessing students’ knowledge andskills but also asks them to report on their own, self-regulated learning, their motivation to learnand their preferences for different types of learning situation.

Knowledge and Skills for Life FIRST RESULTS FROM PISA 2000

EDUCATION AND SKILLS

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Knowledge and Skills for LifeFIRST RESULTS FROM PISA 2000

EDUCATION AND SKILLS

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ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Pursuant to Article 1 of the Convention signed in Paris on 14th December 1960, and which came intoforce on 30th September 1961, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)shall promote policies designed:

– to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard ofliving in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to thedevelopment of the world economy;

– to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non-member countries in theprocess of economic development; and

– to contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis inaccordance with international obligations.

The original Member countries of the OECD are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France,Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain,Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The following countriesbecame Members subsequently through accession at the dates indicated hereafter: Japan(28th April 1964), Finland (28th January 1969), Australia (7th June 1971), New Zealand (29th May 1973),Mexico (18th May 1994), the Czech Republic (21st December 1995), Hungary (7th May 1996), Poland(22nd November 1996), Korea (12th December 1996) and the Slovak Republic (14th December 2000). TheCommission of the European Communities takes part in the work of the OECD (Article 13 of the OECDConvention).

Publié en français sous le titre :

CONNAISSSANCES ET COMPÉTENCES : DES ATOUTS POUR LA VIE

PREMIERS RÉSULTATS DE PISA 2000

© OECD 2001Permission to reproduce a portion of this work for non-commercial purposes or classroom use should be obtainedthrough the Centre français d’exploitation du droit de copie (CFC), 20, rue des Grands-Augustins, 75006 Paris,France, tel. (33-1) 44 07 47 70, fax (33-1) 46 34 67 19, for every country except the United States. In the United Statespermission should be obtained through the Copyright Clearance Center, Customer Service, (508)750-8400,222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA, or CCC Online: www.copyright.com . All other applications forpermission to reproduce or translate all or part of this book should be made to OECD Publications, 2, rue André-Pascal,75775 Paris Cedex 16, France.

CHAPTER 3 What PISA shows that 15-year-olds can do: a profile of student performance in mathematical and scientific literacy

96

Estimates for n(i) are based on the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) (OECD, 1997).

12. The correlation for the overall relationship is 0.42. Taken separately, the correlation is 0.44 for the combined reading lit-eracy scale, 0.47 for the mathematical literacy scale and 0.29 for the scientific literacy scale.

CE = ∑ n(i)* E(i)2

i=0

11. Cumulative expenditure for a given country is approximated as follows: let n(0), n(1) and n(2) be the typical number of years spent by a student from the beginning of primary education up to the age of 15 years in primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education. Let E(0), E(1) and E(2) be the annual expenditure per student in U.S dollars converted using purchasing power parities in primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education, respectively. The cumulative expenditure is then calculated by multiplying current annual expenditure E by the typical duration of study n for each level of education i using the following formula:

6

Chapter

FAMILY BACKGROUND ANDSTUDENT PERFORMANCE

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Chapter

WHAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE TO PISA RESULTS:

SOME INDICATIONS FOR POLICY

A

ANNEX

Annex A1: Construction of indices and other derived measures from the student and school con-text questionnaires

Annex A2: Explained variation in student performance

Annex A3: The PISA target population and the PISA samples

Annex A4: Standard errors, significance tests and mul-tiple comparisons

Annex A5: Quality assurance

Annex A6: Development of the PISA assessment instruments

Annex A7: Reliability of the marking of open-ended items

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND

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