PISA-2021: Will improve learning levels of children?

                               India signs agreement with OECD for participation in PISA2021.

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an educational outcome measurement system that tests the performance of 15 yrs old schools pupils'scholastic aptitude in Mathematics, Science and Reading. It then rank the participating countries. The two hours computer based test conducted once in three years is to be taken by students who have completed six years of formal school education. It was introduced by OECD in 2000.


Why Is It Important?
India has last participated in the exercise in 2009, where the country achieved a low rank of 72 among 74 participating countries. The MHRD under than UPA government had withdrawn from the test and dubbed the questions in the test as "out of context".

However, the MHRD under javadekar had shown interest in reentering the exam.
"If 80 countries can participate in PISA, including China and Vietna, then there is no reason why children in India can't appear for it. We went through the question papers, we asked a couple of children and they loved it because the questions are competency based and do not require any memorization,"the Secretary (Department of School and Literacy), MHRD had said.

PISA results are known to have an impact on the way education is practiced in several countries. However, several non-OECD members countinue to stay away from the test. All SAARC nations, Greenland. Argentina and the entire African continent except Algeria and Tunisia are  among those who either don't regularly participate or haven't participated at all in PISA.

Participation in PISA allows bench marking performance against a wide range of countries.PISA uses test items aligned with international benchmarks. Test items are adapted to the local context and language, pilot tested and validated before being used for the test.