Measuring student knowledge and skills

THE DESIGN OF OECD/PISA 2000
Basic features of OECD/PISA
The OECD assessments in 2000 will cover reading literacy, mathematical literacy and scientific liter-
acy. Students will also be responding to a background questionnaire and supporting information will be
gathered from the school authorities. The first OECD assessments will be administered in 2000 and
results will become available from 2001 onwards. Thirty-two countries, including 28 OECD Member coun-
tries, plan to take part in OECD/PISA. Together, these countries represent more than a quarter of the
world population, more than that covered in any international educational assessment to date.
Since the aim of OECD/PISA is to assess the cumulative yield of education systems at an age where
schooling is still largely universal, testing will focus on 15-year-olds enrolled in both school-based and
work-based educational programmes. Between 4 500 and 10 000 students will typically be tested in each
country, providing a good sampling base from which to break down the results according to a range of
student characteristics.
Although the domains of reading literacy, mathematical literacy and scientific literacy correspond to
school subjects, the OECD assessments will not primarily examine how well students have mastered the
specific curriculum content. Rather, they aim at assessing the extent to which young people have
acquired the wider knowledge and skills in these domains that they will need in adult life. The assess-
ment of cross-curricular competencies has, therefore, been made an integral part of OECD/PISA. The most
important reasons for this broadly oriented approach to assessment are as follows:
– First, although specific knowledge acquisition is important in school learning, the application of
that knowledge in adult life depends crucially on the individual’s acquisition of broader concepts
and skills. In reading, the capacity to develop interpretations of written material and to reflect on
the content and qualities of text are central skills. In mathematics, being able to reason quantita-
tively and to represent relationships or dependencies is more important than the ability to answer
familiar textbook questions when it comes to deploying mathematical skills in everyday life. In sci-
ence, having specific knowledge, such as the names of specific plants and animals, is of less value
than an understanding of broad concepts and topics such as energy consumption, biodiversity and
human health in thinking about the issues of science under debate in the adult community.
– Second, a focus on curriculum content would, in an international setting, restrict attention to cur-
riculum elements common to all, or most, countries. This would force many compromises and
result in an assessment that was too narrow to be of value for governments wishing to learn about
the strengths and innovations in the education systems of other countries.
– Third, there are broad, general skills that it is essential for students to develop. These include
communication, adaptability, flexibility, problem solving and the use of information technologies.
These skills are developed across the curriculum and an assessment of them requires a
cross-curricular focus.
Underlying OECD/PISA is a dynamic model of lifelong learning in which new knowledge and skills
necessary for successful adaptation to changing circumstances are continuously acquired over the life
cycle. Students cannot learn in school everything they will need to know in adult life. What they must
acquire is the prerequisites for successful learning in future life. These prerequisites are of both a cogni-
tive and a motivational nature. Students must become able to organise and regulate their own learning,
to learn independently and in groups, and to overcome difficulties in the learning process. This requires

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