Education in India

India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: The Process

The Indian Government seems to have been reluctant initially to participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. In reply to a question in Parliament on March 10th, 2008 by Rajya Sabha MP, Rahul Bajaj on the reasons for India not participating in the PISA tests, Arjun Singh, the then Minister for HRD, didn't answer the question, but instead responded saying,

The Government of India conducts its own pupil learning achievement surveys under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) through National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) aimed to track changes in learning achievement levels of students and to give a national picture of the status of students learning levels. NCERT conducted such sample surveys for Class V in 2002-03, for Class III and Class VII/VIII in 2003-04 and for Class-V in 2006-07. The NCERT surveys cover a representative sample of students across districts.

Subsequently, the government seems to have changed its mind and decided to participate in the PISA tests on a pilot basis. In NCERT's Annual Report for 2008-09 (p117), there is a mention of Prof. Avtar Singh of NCERT  attending the National Project Managers Meeting of PISA 2009 cycle at Frankfurt in February 2009. To my knowledge, there is no other mention of PISA on any of the government web sites or documents.

By the time India and eight other countries decided to participate in the PISA tests in the 2009 cycle, 65 countries had already completed the testing in the 2009 cycle. So these nine countries participating for the first time conducted the PISA tests in a separate round termed the PISA 2009+ cycle.

A February 2011 report by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) office in India on the preparation for conducting the PISA tests in the two states in India as part of the 2009+ round provides some context and background.

In 2009 PISA cycle, 65 countries (32 member and 33 non member) participated. In India after continuous deliberation among the leading educational policy making institutes like MHRD, NCERT, NUEPA, CBSE and development partners like World Bank, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between OECD and MHRD regarding India’s participation in PISA in 2009 plus cycle. As it was late for any country to participate in PISA, a new timeline was developed to accommodate India and eight other countries (Georgia, Costa Rica, Mauritius, Malaysia, Moldova, Venezuela (Miranda), Malta, UAE (except Dubai). Initially it was suggested, India was to participate in PISA with four states but on further deliberations it was decided that only two Indian states (Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) will participate in this prestigious activity.

World Bank contracted Australian Council for Educational Research (India) to support NCERT in conducting PISA 2009 plus in India in the states of Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu for training of personnel involve in field administration (school coordinator & test administrator), quality monitoring of field administration, training of coders and supervision of coding activities.

In India, PISA is administered in three languages i.e., English, Hindi and Tamil.

There are more details in the ACER India report on how personnel were trained to administer the PISA tests in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, how quality was monitored and the challenges faced in adminstering the PISA tests in India for the first time. Around 16,000 students from 400 schools in these two states were tested as part of the PISA 2009+ cycle of tests.

In an earlier post, I had looked at PISA: What? Why? How? and in the next post, I will look at the results of the PISA 2009+tests in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.

In other posts, I had looked at

• Programme for International Student Assessment: What? Why? How?
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Terminology & Caveats
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Results from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

 

 

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): What? Why? How?

Two states in India, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, have participated for the first time in a pilot in the 2009 PISA round of testing. Here's some background information on PISA, documented for later reference.

For a quick and handy description of PISA, its worth spending the 12 minutes to watch this video. The PISA FAQ has more details.

What is PISA?

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is an international study which began in the year 2000. It aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in participating countries/economies. Since the year 2000 over 70 countries and economies have participated in PISA.

Objective of PISA:

The objective of the study is to provide countries with international comparative data as well as with national trend data on reading, mathematical and scientific literacy and problem solving skills of 15 year old students.

The PISA website describes these skills as follows:

Mathematical Literacy: An individual’s capacity to identify and understand the role that mathematics plays in the world to make well-founded judgments and to use and engage with mathematics in ways that meet the needs of that individual’s life as a constructive, concerned and reflective citizen. More details on PISA's approach to testing mathematical literacy are available here. 

Reading literacy: An individual’s capacity to understand, use and reflect on written texts, in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential and to participate in society. More details on PISA's approach to testing reading literacy are available here. 

Scientific literacy: The capacity to use scientific knowledge, to identify questions and to draw evidence based conclusions in order to understand and help make decisions about the natural world and the changes made to it through human activity. More details on PISA's approach to testing scientific literacy are available here.

Problem Solving: In the PISA 2003 cycle, an additional domain of problem solving was introduced to continue the examination of cross-curriculum competencies. More details on PISA's approach to testing problem solving ability are available here.

Method of Assessment:

All students take pencil-and-paper tests, with assessments lasting a total of two hours for each student. For the PISA 2009 assessment, some participating countries/economies have also opted for an assessment of the reading of electronic texts. Test items are a mixture of multiple-choice items and questions requiring students to construct their own responses. The items are organised in groups based on a passage setting out a real-life situation. You can take an interactive version of the tests here.

A total of about seven hours of test items is covered, with different students taking different combinations of test items. Students answer a background questionnaire, which takes 20-30 minutes to complete, providing information about themselves and their homes. School principals are also given a 20-minute questionnaire about their schools.

Periodicity

PISA surveys take place every three years, commencing in 2000. The results of previous surveys have been published by the OECD and are available. The next survey will take place in 2012.

For each survey, one of the three areas (Mathematics, Science and Reading) is chosen as the major assessment domain and it is given greater emphasis.  The remaining two areas, the minor domains, are assessed less thoroughly.  In 2000 the major domain was reading, in 2003 it was mathematics, in 2006 science and 2009 reading.  In 2012 Mathematics will again be the major domain, and a computer-delivered assessment of problem solving will be an innovation.

The design and implementation of PISA for the 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012 data collections has been the responsibility of an international Consortium led by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) with Ray Adams as international project director.

The PISA survey also collects information from students on various aspects of their home, family and school background; and information from schools about various aspects of organisation and educational provision in schools. This information is collected to facilitate a detailed study of factors within and between countries that are associated with varying levels of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy among the 15-year-old students of each country.

Results, Data and  Reports:

The results of the survey are presented in the form of rankings of student performance by country. All the survey data is available for download for any interested researcher. Various reports based on the data look at

• how successful education systems moderate the impact of social background and immigrant status on student and school performance
• 15-year-olds’ motivation, their engagement with reading and their use of effective learning strategies
• how human, financial and material resources, and education policies and practices shape learning outcomes
• the progress countries have made in raising student performance and improving equity in the distribution of learning opportunities
• explores students’ use of information technologies to learn

and many more in-depth reports look at a variety of specific issues like student learning, equity, the high cost of low educational performance, and country-specific in-depth reports.

In the next post, I will look at India's decision to participate in PISA on a pilot basis in the 2009 round and the results from that pilot study.

In other posts, I had looked at

• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: The Process
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Terminlogy & Caveats
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Results from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

Conference Announcement: School Choice National Conference 2011

Catalysing Education for All: Intention, Innovation, and Implementation

2011 SCHOOL CHOICE NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Wednesday, 21 December 2011, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

The Centre for Civil Society and the School Choice Campaign invite you to the third annual School Choice National Conference which will bring together top-level academics, policy makers and education experts to discuss, debate and formulate innovative policy ideas to achieve quality education for all. The conference starts at 9am and closes with cocktails.

CONFERENCE AGENDA

• Implementation of RTE: One year after
• Public Private Partnership: Building sustainable models
• Secondary Education: Renewed objectives
• Disruptive innovation in education: Looking to technology

REGISTER NOW! at www.schoolchoice.in/scnc2011/

Registration fee:

• Rs 1,500 (US$ 30) per person
• Rs 750 (US$ 15) per person for NGO leaders, research scholars and school principals
• Free registration for students
• Registration closes on 12 Dec 2011.
• Registration fee of Rs 5,000 (US$ 100) per person is applicable after December 12th

This is the third annual conference. Check out the proceedings of the 2010 and the 2009 conferences. I attended the earlier conferences and I will be attending this year too. I had written up a post in 2009 on the 2009 conference based on my notes. The past conferences have been highly informative and insightful and based on the speaker list, this year's conference promises to be so too.

Anil Swarup, the Director General, (Labour Welfare) in the Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India, who has been driving the RSBY project and Prof. Sugata Mitra of Hole-in-the-Wall fame are amongst the speakers.

I had earlier looked at the possibility of an RSBY model for school education.