India and PISA

In the last week of February, the Ministry of Human Resource Development decided to re-enter the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

About PISA

Programme for International School Assessment (PISA) is a study by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) performed on 15-year-old students in its member and non-member countries and access their skill and performance in Science, Mathematics and Reading. It was started in 2000 and it is held every three years. PISA measures the education’s capability to address real life problems and its application in lifelong learning. PISA is not a contest but a research programme in which data is generated that is comparable between nations with a view that the nations will be able to improve their education policies and results. With having such a large data, the consequences of various policies used by different nation are available.

In some countries, the national education policy is influenced by the results of PISA. In Portugal, for assessment of teachers, PISA data is used to justify new arrangements and helped in addressing the issue students repeating a year. In Finland, PISA data is used to form new policies for gifted students.

Findings of PISA:

• Private schools students performed well than the public school students. Therefore, the governments need to focus the education imparted in public schools.
• The grade repetition and early vocational courses do not make schooling systems equitable.
• There is no evidence that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have a positive impact on learning.
• Teacher’s qualification and development have a great influence on students.
• The autonomy of schools in admissions and curriculum has a positive impact on the performance of students.
• Students’ performance in science improves when high-quality teaching is imparted in school rather than after school classes. It points directly to the capability of the teacher in school.

India and PISA

India participated in 2009 and after disastrous performance, India declined to participate in 2012 and 2015. India opted out because the ministry of education in 2012 said that there is socio-cultural disconnect between the questions and the Indian students as they find the questions out of context. India demanded to consider its socio-cultural milieu in framing the questions.

India lost out by not participating in 2012 and 2015 while other South Asian countries like China, Singapore and South Korea excelled. If these countries has a better education system, India can learn and develop a similar system. But, the HRD ministry tried to change the benchmark on which more than 70 countries are assessed rather than trying to change India’s education system to fit in the benchmark.

Comment

By the findings of PISA and emulating the education system employed by the countries excelling in PISA will help India in creation an education system keeping in mind the socio-cultural milieu and attain the benchmark that is used in PISA. As PISA is a reliable indicator of country’s future intellectual potential. It will make India focus on the primary and secondary education by improving the education policy along with ramification in teaching methods. India’s participation in PISA again is a welcome move and the development of the education system by using PISA data is a must.