The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2015) aims to
promote economic and social well-being for all people around the world. OECD is
funded by different Governments around the world. OECD has created The Program
for International Student Assessment (PISA) which is comprised of a 2 hour test
that assesses the skills and knowledge of 15-year old students, from 65
different economies (2013). OECD argue that PISA is different to other
assessments as it not only tests on curriculum material but prepare the
students for full participation within society.
Based
on the results from 2012, OECD (2015) concluded that in most economies, too
many students are not engaged within the classroom and therefore do not make
the most out of learning opportunities.
The
Australian Council for Education published a report in 2014 called 'Australian
teens persist at thinking it through: PISA' (ACE, 2014). The report states that
Australian students were less likely to 'give up' on problem-solving questions,
having a higher level of persistence. In 2013, a media release from Christopher
Pine stated that the results from PISA show that Australian academic results
are slipping.
According
to Dries Debeer, Janine Buchholz, Johannes Hartig and Rianne Janssen (2009),
educational policy makers attach great importance to the results from
international assessments such as PISA (p.502). Debeer et al. (2009) identify
limitations involved with PISA, they argue that because there is no individual
consequence for the test taker, the individual taking the test may expend low
effort therefore impacting on results.
I
believe that is beneficial for the education of Australia to have these tests
in place, it does not say within any of the references for PISA how each 'test
group' is selected. It would be interesting to see how these groups were chosen
and just how diverse they are.
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