Pearson, a leading learning company, has won a competitive tender by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to develop the frameworks for Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018.

The PISA is widely recognised as the benchmark for evaluating education systems worldwide by assessing the skills and knowledge 15-year-old students will need in their further academic education or for joining the workforce, said a statement.

PISA is administered every three years in around 70 participating economies world-wide, it said.

The representative national samples of 15-year-olds from these countries took the PISA 2012 test totaling about 510,000 students and representing about 28 million 15-year-olds globally. Similar, if not higher, numbers are expected for PISA 2015 and PISA 2018. From 2015 onward most students will take PISA by computer.

The frameworks define what will be measured in PISA 2018, how this will be reported and which approach will be chosen for the development of tests and questionnaires.  

The main tasks will be to redefine reading literacy, taking into account how young people are taught to approach the digital environment including how to recognise credible websites and online documents; review and where necessary adapt the frameworks for mathematics and science; develop the student questionnaire framework for the collection of contextual information and the measurement of other education outcomes which may have connections with performance; and develop a framework for the measurement of global competence which will assess students’ awareness of the interconnected global world we live and work in and their ability to deal effectively with the resulting demands.

John Fallon, chief executive, said: “High quality education is vital to a nation’s economic development and social well-being – and PISA is a key tool by which nations can measure their own educational progress and learn from each other.

“We are developing global benchmarks that, by assessing a wider range of skills, will help more young people to prosper in the global economy.  We are very pleased to be supporting the OECD and academic colleagues in this crucial work.”

Andreas Schleicher, head of the PISA programme at the OECD, said: “PISA 2018 has the potential to be the start of a new phase of our international assessments. We can now make much smarter use of technology in how we test young people, and we need global competence as governments around the world seek to equip young people with the skills they need for life and employment.” - TradeArabia News Service