Find out what is PISA, how it is done and what are its goals.
Created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), PISA tests the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in mathematics, reading and science. Ninety-one countries and economies took part in the 2025 assessment, which focused on science, and the data were released by the OECD on 8th September 2026.
Additional results on students’ self-regulated learning and English as a foreign language will be released in 2027.
PISA focuses on the assessment of student performance in science, reading and mathematics to measure the extent to which students can use what they learned in and out of schools for their full participation in societies. PISA also collects valuable information on student attitudes and motivations, and assesses skills such as learning in the digital world, collaborative problem solving, global competence and creative thinking. In order to better understand how students are prepared to solve complex problems, think critically and communicate effectively in the 21st century, PISA is constantly exploring new assessment domains, such as "Media and AI literacy".
PISA looks at students’ ability to apply knowledge and skills to examine, interpret and solve problems. PISA does not prescribe or promote any one curriculum nor is it constrained by the need to find a common denominator.
Content: The PISA 2025 survey focused on science, with reading, mathematics and learning in the digital world as minor areas of assessment. PISA 2025 also included an assessment of young people’s English as a foreign language, which was optional for countries and economies.
Students: Students: Over 760 000 students took the assessment in 2025, representing about 36 million 15-year-olds in the schools of the 91 participating countries and economies.
Tests: Computer-based tests were used in most countries, with assessments lasting a total of two hours. In science, reading and mathematics, a multi-stage adaptive approach was applied in computer-based tests whereby students were assigned a block of test items based on their performance in preceding blocks. Students also answered a background questionnaire, which took about 35 minutes to complete. Test items were a mixture of multiple-choice questions and questions requiring students to construct their own responses.
The items were organised into groups based on a scenario, problem or passage of text describing a real-life situation. More than 15 hours of test items for science, reading, mathematics and learning in the digital world were covered, with different students taking different combinations of test items.
The PISA 2025 Learning in the Digital World assessment focused on how well students can make progress towards solving complex problems using computational tools in an autonomous learning process. In each 30-minute test unit, which is structured as a learning module, students worked on a series of increasingly complex tasks in an open-ended, scaffolded and interactive digital environment that provided them with learning resources and feedback. Students’ performance on the test is summarised by a computational problem-solving scale. The computational problem-solving scale describes the extent to which students can make progress towards their learning goals and build functional solutions using computational tools, such as modelling or programming tools, and using computational problem-solving practices, such as conducting experiments, analysing data and building and debugging computational artefacts. Students’ performance on the test is supported by self-regulated learning, which includes how they maintain their motivation and task engagement, monitor their progress and adapt their strategies and evaluate their own performance.
Questionnaires: The questionnaires sought information about the students themselves, their attitudes, dispositions and beliefs, their homes, and their school and learning experiences. School principals completed a questionnaire about school management, organisation and the learning environment.
Some countries/economies also distributed additional questionnaires to elicit more information. These included: in 17 countries/economies, a questionnaire asking science teachers to report about themselves and their teaching practices; and in 18 countries/economies, a questionnaire asking parents to provide information about their perceptions of and involvement in their child’s school and learning. Countries/economies could also choose to distribute an optional questionnaire for students: 44 countries/economies distributed a questionnaire about students’ familiarity with ICT devices/resources.
For the countries/economies taking the optional assessment of English as a foreign language, questionnaire modules that focused on the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language were included in the student and school questionnaires, and were available for English teachers and parents for those countries/economies who chose to distribute the teacher and parent questionnaires.
Further information can be found in the PISA 2025 Results (Volume I).
These associations are partly related to the socio-economic status of a student’s household, including material living conditions and parents’ educational attainment. However, even after accounting for these factors, students who perform better in PISA at age 15 tend to have stronger education and employment outcomes at the age of 25.
In addition, the OECD has conducted analyses combining data from PISA (2000, 2003 and 2006 assessments) and the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) (2012 and 2015 assessments) to examine the growth in numeracy skills between the ages of 15 and young adulthood. Such analyses suggest that students who perform better in mathematics in PISA at age 15 also show greater gains in numeracy skills after leaving compulsory education than their lower-performing peers (Box I.2.2. of PISA 2022 Results, Volume I).
What students say about themselves in PISA questionnaires also appears to matter: their expectations, motivation, confidence and attitudes towards learning are linked to later life prospects.
PISA evidence broadens this picture. PISA cannot directly measure which approaches to learning that individuals adopt after age 15, but it can provide insights into whether students are ready to become self-directed lifelong learners. For example, PISA has examined students’ engagement with text, reading habits and capacity to navigate digital information, including how they identify and evaluate sources (PISA 2018 21st-Century readers). These are key foundations for learning beyond school.
Moreover, PISA 2022 Results (Volume V) add further evidence on students’ readiness for lifelong learning by looking at learning strategies, motivation and self-belief. It examines whether students take control of their own learning – for example, by asking questions when they do not understand, monitoring the quality of their schoolwork and homework, connecting new knowledge with what they have learned before, and considering other points of view and questioning their perspective on things by listening to others’ opinions. These attitudes and habits are not only associated with performance at school, but they are also important outcomes of schooling in their own right because they help young people continue learning and adapting throughout adult life.
An updated framework for the science assessment was developed to reflect changes in the subject and in societies in general since PISA 2015, the last edition in which science was the main focus. The assessment now has an increased focus on using scientific information to make informed personal decisions in areas such health and the environment. It also has a strengthened focus on understanding how science works and how to determine what is reliable scientific knowledge. Moreover, the assessment includes a new component focused on environmental science.
Adaptive testing was implemented in the science assessment for PISA 2025. It was implemented in the reading assessment for PISA 2018 and in the reading and mathematics assessments for PISA 2022. Students who performed well on earlier parts of the science assessment were more likely to receive more difficult questions later in the assessment. Conversely, students who performed poorly in earlier parts of the assessment were more likely to receive easier questions later in the assessment.
Learning in the Digital World was tested for the first time in PISA 2025.
Several countries/economies participated in PISA for the first time in 2025: Armenia, Dushanbe (Tajikistan), Ecuador, Kenya, Kurdistan Region (Iraq), Rwanda and Zambia. Ecuador and Zambia had previously participated in PISA for Development.
PISA assesses students between the ages of 15 years and 3 months and 16 years and 2 months, and who are enrolled in an educational institution at grade 7 or higher. The lists from which schools and students are selected for the PISA assessment cover all students who meet these criteria, regardless of the type of educational institution in which they are enrolled and whether they are enrolled in full-time or part-time education.
However, some of the schools and students that are listed may be excluded from PISA samples. PISA standards specify that such exclusions should not represent more than 5% of the target population. Within that limit, students can be excluded for various reasons, including the remoteness and inaccessibility of their school, intellectual or physical disability, a lack of proficiency in the test language (e.g. if the student has received instruction in the test language for less than one year), or a lack of test material in the language of instruction. For countries and economies where the overall level of exclusions exceeds the limit significantly, further information is requested to support the case that no bias in comparisons over time and with other countries would result from exclusions.
Except in very small countries and economies, not all remaining students sit the PISA assessment; rather, a sample of schools, and of students within schools, is drawn, and the students selected are assigned sampling weights to represent the entire PISA-eligible cohort.
The PISA sample represents all students between the age of 15 years and 3 months and 16 years and 2 months, and who are enrolled in an educational institution at grade 7 or higher, minus those that are excluded. PISA reports the proportion of the total 15-year-old population that is represented by the PISA sample (this is known as Coverage Index 3). This proportion ranges from close to 100% in countries with limited exclusions and universal enrolment in educational institutions for 15-16-year-olds, to less than 50% in some low- and middle-income countries. In most participating countries and economies, more than 80% of 15-year-olds are covered.
Further information about the share and number of 15-year-olds covered by PISA can be found in Annex A of PISA 2025 Results (Volume I).
The age of 15 was chosen as it is when young people in most OECD countries are nearing the end of compulsory education. The selection of schools and students is as inclusive as possible, so that the sample of students comes from a broad range of backgrounds and abilities.
PISA benefits from its worldwide scope and its regularity. Over 100 countries and economies have taken part in PISA so far and the surveys, which are usually carried out every three years, allow participating countries and economies to track their progress in meeting key learning goals. PISA is the only international education survey to measure the knowledge, skills and attitudes of 15-year-old students.
PISA is also unique in the way it looks at:
Through its website and publications, the OECD makes available to the public and specialists all the key information on the methods and processes associated with PISA. The following documents are available on the Publications page and the Data page: the assessment frameworks that explain what is to be assessed, why and how; examples of the questionnaire items; the data from the assessment; the survey-implementation tools for administration and language-quality assurance; and a comprehensive technical report for every cycle, which includes detailed technical information on every aspect of design, development, implementation and analysis.
For each assessment cycle a selection of PISA test materials is also made available to the general public. In order to allow countries to follow their performance over time, many questions are used in more than one PISA survey. These questions cannot be made public as long as they are in use.
In addition to OECD staff and contractors, hundreds of experts, academics and researchers in PISA-participating countries and economies are involved in PISA's development, analysis and reporting; details of these participants are provided in the PISA reports.
PISA is developed and implemented under the responsibility of education ministries through PISA’s decision-making body, the PISA Governing Board (PGB). The Board has representatives from all OECD member countries plus partner countries with Associate status, currently Brazil and Thailand. Countries appoint representatives to the PGB who are knowledgeable about large-scale student assessments and their interface with educational policy and practice. Representatives comprise a mix of high-level government officials and staff of research and academic institutions.
The Board determines the policy priorities for PISA and oversees adherence to these priorities during implementation. This includes setting priorities and standards for data development, analysis and reporting, and determining the scope of work that will then form the basis for the implementation of PISA.
To ensure the technical robustness of PISA, a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) is established by the OECD, comprising independent, world-renowned experts in the fields that underpin the PISA methodology, such as sampling, survey design, scaling and analysis. The TAG is regularly called upon to discuss and provide recommendations on the PISA design and methodologies and adjudicate the data of individual countries and economies to ensure that what is published from PISA is robust and internationally comparable.
The PISA Governing Board: The PGB is composed of representatives from all PISA participating countries and economies. Representatives are appointed by their education ministries, and the PGB Chair is chosen by the PGB itself. Guided by the OECD’s education objectives, the PGB determines the policy priorities for PISA and makes sure that these are respected during the implementation of each PISA survey. OECD Members and PGB associate members participate in the decision-making in the PGB.
*PGB associate members are countries or economies that are not OECD members but have the same decision-making rights and financial commitments to PISA as OECD members.
The OECD Secretariat: The OECD Secretariat is responsible for the day-to-day management of PISA. This means that the PISA team monitors the survey’s implementation, manages administrative matters for the PGB, builds consensus among countries and serves as an intermediary between the PGB and the international contractors for PISA.
PISA National Project Managers: The PISA National Project Managers oversee the implementation of PISA in each participating country/economy, together with the OECD Secretariat, the PGB and the international contractors. The PISA National Project Managers are appointed by their governments. A list of the 2015 National Project Managers is provided here; the 2018 National Project Managers is provided here; the 2022 National Project Managers is provided here and the 2025 National Project Managers is provided here.
International contractors: For each PISA survey, international contractors (usually made up of testing and assessment agencies and companies) are responsible for the design and international implementation of the surveys. The contractors are chosen by the OECD Secretariat through an international call for tender.
Education authorities: PISA would not be possible without the support and guidance of the education ministries in the participating countries and economies.
PISA Technical Advisory Group (TAG): The TAG is regularly called upon to discuss and provide recommendations on the PISA designs and methodologies and adjudicate the data of individual countries/economies to ensure that what is published from PISA is robust and internationally comparable. The group is established and managed by the OECD, comprising independent, world-renowned experts in the fields that underpin the PISA methodology, such as sampling, survey design, scaling and analysis.
PISA Subject Matter Expert Groups: PISA has Subject Matter Expert Groups for its three key areas of testing – mathematics, reading and science – as well as for other subjects when appropriate (for example, Learning in Digital World in PISA 2025). These groups are made up of world experts in each area. They design the theoretical framework for each PISA survey.
PISA Questionnaire Expert Group: The Questionnaire Expert Group provides leadership and guidance in the construction of the PISA context questionnaires.
PISA is financed through direct contributions from the participating countries and economies’ government authorities, typically education ministries.
Although PISA is a quadrennial international survey, it is easiest to consider the costs for participating countries on an annual basis. The costs comprise international costs (participating countries contribute to the cost of the International Contractors and OECD staff and related expenses) and national costs associated with the implementation of the PISA survey in the respective country (establishment of a national centre, cost of sampling, translation etc.).
Participation
Invitations to – and participation of – partner countries/economies in PISA with PGB associate status are approved by the OECD Council following a recommendation of the PGB.
Other partner countries/economies may participate in the PISA survey as PGB participants.
Cost of participation
a) International costs
Members and Associates: The cost for participation is determined by the PGB. The cost is composed of a floor contribution and a cost component assigned on the basis of the OECD principles and rules for determining the scales of contributions by Members, using as input statistics, national income data and exchange rates used in the calculation of scales for the previous year. As a result, the cost of participation varies between countries.
Partners: International PISA costs for partner countries/economies are determined by the PISA Secretariat at the beginning of each PISA cycle, following signature of the contracts with international contractors. The cost is 195 000 EUR spread over a three-year period (costs for participation in PISA 2029).
b) National costs
National costs for the implementation of PISA vary by country, according to factors such as sample size, the number of languages to be tested in the assessment, national income statistics and living standards. For example, a small country might spend approximately EUR 100 000 per annum while a medium-sized country EUR 350 000 per annum; a large country could spend up to two or three times the latter amount.
PISA uses multiple-choice testing as the primary feature of its assessments because it is reliable, efficient and supports robust and scientific analyses. Multiple-choice questions in PISA have a variety of formats, including highlighting of a word within a text, connecting pieces of information and making multiple selections from drop-down menus. In addition, typically up to one-third of questions in a PISA assessment are open-ended.
A few PISA test items are released after every assessment, while most test items are kept confidential in order to measure trends over time. PISA released items are publicly available on the PISA website.
Students also answer a background questionnaire, providing information about themselves, their homes and their attitudes to learning. In addition, school principals are given a questionnaire about their schools. Countries and economies can also choose to distribute several optional PISA questionnaires: the computer familiarity questionnaire, the parent questionnaire and the teacher questionnaire. The PISA 2025 questionnaires are available for download here. In addition, many countries and economies choose to gather further information through national questionnaires. The information collected helps countries and economies explore connections between how students perform in PISA and factors such as immigrant background, gender and students’ socio-economic status, as well as students’ attitudes towards school and learning.
Participating PISA countries and economies are invited to submit questions that are then added to items developed by the OECD’s experts and contractors. The questions are reviewed by the international contractors and by participating countries and economies, and are carefully checked for cultural bias. Only those questions that pass these checks are used in PISA. Furthermore, before the main test is conducted there is a trial test run in all participating countries and economies. If any test questions prove to be too easy or too difficult in certain countries and economies, for reasons not related to the overall level of proficiency of students (as demonstrated on the remaining questions), they are dropped from the main test in all countries and economies.
The PISA test is designed to provide an assessment of performance at the system (or country) level. It is not designed to produce scores for individual students, so it is not necessary for each student to receive exactly the same set of test items. Thus, PISA adopts an efficient design in which the full set of test material, covering all aspects of the framework, is distributed over a large number of test forms. This procedure enables the OECD to obtain a much greater coverage of the content than if all students had completed the same version of the test.
In Learning in the Digital World, the assignment of students to test forms was entirely random. In science, reading and mathematics, which were assessed through adaptive testing, the initial assignment was random, but the precise form was only determined during the assessment, taking into account students’ performance in the early portions of the assessment. As a result of this multi-stage adaptive design, high-performing students were more likely to be directed to more difficult questions, and low-achieving students to easier questions. This provided greater accuracy in measurement of both test scores and the relationship between test scores and other factors, such as socio-economic status.
In PISA 2025, most students took an hour-long sequence of science questions combined with an hour of either reading, science or creative thinking questions. A small proportion of students took a combination of reading, mathematics or learning in the digital world questions.
Computers and computer technology are part of our everyday lives, and it is appropriate and inevitable that PISA has progressed to a computer-based delivery mode. Over the past decades, digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the ways we read and manage information. Digital technologies are also transforming teaching and learning and how schools assess students. To reflect how students and societies now commonly access, use and communicate information, starting with the 2015 assessment, the PISA test was delivered mainly on computer. Existing tasks were adapted for delivery on screen; new tasks (initially only in science, then, for PISA 2018 also in reading, and for 2022 in mathematics) were developed that made use of the affordances of computer-based testing and that reflected the new situations in which students apply their science, reading and mathematics knowledge and skills in real life. For the comparability of computer and paper-based tests, see the FAQ under “Results”.
PISA applies strict technical standards including for the sampling of schools and students within schools. The sampling procedures are quality assured and the achieved samples and corresponding response rates are subject to an adjudication process that verifies that they comply with the standards set. If any country's response rate falls below the specified threshold, it is reported. Further information about response rates in PISA can be found on the OECD's PISA website, and specific information on participation rates for individual countries can be found in Annex 1 of PISA 2025 Results (Volume I). Regarding weighting adjustments to mitigate the impact of school non-response and student non-response on their under-representation in the data, see the PISA 2025 Technical Report.
The Reader's Guide of PISA 2025 (Volume I) lists cases in which the OECD, on the basis of technical advice from the PISA Adjudication Group, removed or annotated national data in the report because of technical anomalies or because the data did not meet the OECD technical standards for PISA. Such cases are listed below for earlier assessments.
In PISA 2022, the major adjudication issues reviewed by the group are listed below. The 13 adjudicated entities listed below did not meet one or more PISA sampling standards. See the Reader’s Guide of PISA 2022 (Volume I) for a detailed account of the sampling issues for each of the 13 entities. The results of these countries/economies are reported with annotations. Two groups can be distinguished among the 13 entities:
In PISA 2018 and before:
The first volume of the PISA 2025 Results is available online. Volume II on Learning in the Digital World’s self-regulated learning and Volume III on English as foreign language will be available in 2027. Results from previous cycles are available on the Publication page. All data from the PISA surveys can be found on the Data page.
PISA scores can be located along specific scales developed for each subject area, designed to show the general competencies tested by PISA. These scales are divided into levels that represent groups of PISA test questions, beginning at Level 1 with questions that require only the most basic skills to complete and increasing in difficulty with each level. (More specifically, the mathematics scale starts at Level 1c, followed by Levels 1b and 1a; the lowest level of the science scale is Level 1b, and is followed by Level 1a; and the lowest level of the reading scale is Level 1c, followed by Levels 1b and 1a.)
Once a student’s responses to the test have been scored, his or her overall score in mathematics, reading and science can be located on the appropriate scale. For example, a student who lacks the skills needed to correctly complete the easiest questions on a PISA test would be classified as below Level 1b or 1c, as per the domain, while a student whose answers show mastery of these skills would be classified at a higher level.
In each test subject, there is theoretically no minimum or maximum score in PISA; rather, the results are scaled to fit approximately normal distributions, with means for OECD countries around 500 score points and standard deviations around 100 score points. About two-thirds of students across OECD countries score between 400 and 600 points. Less than 2% of students, on average across OECD countries, reach scores above 700 points, and at most a handful of students in the PISA sample for any country reach scores above 800 points.
PISA does not give a collective score for all subjects combined; rather it gives a score for each subject area, and the mean score in each subject can be used to rank countries. However, even within a single subject, it is not possible to assign an exact rank to each country or economy based on its mean score. This is because PISA tests only a sample of students from each country or economy, and estimates, based on their results, the distribution of performance in the whole population of 15-year-old students. The statistical uncertainty associated with these estimates means that it is only possible to report the range of positions (upper rank and lower rank) within which a country or economy can be placed. For example, in PISA 2003, Finland and Korea were widely reported as ranking 1st and 2nd in PISA, when in fact we can only say that, among OECD countries, Finland’s rank was between 1st and 3rd and Korea’s was between 1st and 4th.
Computer-based administration (CBA) was the primary mode of delivery for PISA 2025. In PISA 2025, 85 out of 91 countries and economies took the CBA version of the PISA test. The computer-based delivery mode allows PISA to measure new and expanded aspects of the domain constructs.
Six countries and economies used a paper-based version of the assessment (PBA) in PISA 2025: Cambodia, Kurdistan Region (Iraq), Mauritius, Rwanda, Tajikistan (Dushanbe) and Zambia.
Student performance is comparable between the computer-based tests and the pen-and-paper tests used in PISA 2025. At the same time, a large number of items used in the PISA 2025 computer-based tests of mathematics, reading and, to a lesser extent, science, were not delivered on paper. Therefore, caution is advised when drawing conclusions about the meaning of scale scores from paper-based tests, when the evidence that supports these conclusions is based on the full set of items. For example, the proficiency of students who sat the PISA 2025 paper-based test of mathematics should be described in terms of the PISA 2012 proficiency levels, not the PISA 2025 proficiency levels (which were established in the context of PISA 2022). This means, for example, that even though PISA 2022 developed a description of the skills of students who scored below Level 1b in mathematics, it remains unclear whether students who scored within the range of Level 1c on the paper-based tests have acquired these basic mathematics skills. More information on the items used in computer- and paper-based tests can be found in Annex A of the PISA 2025 Technical Report.
PISA scores are reported on the same scale over time. The scale was set in the first year in which each subject was the major focus of the assessment (2000 for reading, 2003 for mathematics and 2006 for science).
To determine whether performance improved, remained stable, or declined, PISA uses both year-to-year comparisons (e.g. between 2022 and 2025, or between 2015 and 2025) and average trends over three or more assessment years (i.e. over a period of 6-7 years or longer).
Year-to-year comparisons are most robust when comparing assessments that share a large number of items and other design features. For example, comparisons between 2022 and 2025 for all subjects, or (to a lesser extent) between 2025 and the previous year in which the domain of interest was a major domain (2022 for mathematics, 2018 for reading and 2015 for science). In some cases, however, year-to-year comparisons can be confounded by particular circumstances affecting the test administration in one of the two years only.
Average trends that combine data from three or more measurements can reduce the uncertainty involved in trend comparisons and limit the possible confounding effect of unique circumstances that may have affected the test administration in a single year. In PISA reports, average trends are the preferred measure of change in mean performance over time spans of ten years or more. Average trends also allow for meaningful comparisons of trends between countries that cannot compare data across all assessment years, although differences in participation must be considered when interpreting these comparisons. For more information about measuring trends and the sources of uncertainty in these measurements, see PISA 2025 Results (Volume I).
Real change, in education, is cumulative and often slow; with good measurement, one should expect gradual improvement or decline. In this situation, year-to-year comparisons may not be significant, taken individually, but the accumulation of short-term changes that point in the same direction represents a significant trend. Fitting a regression line to multiple measurements allows for the extraction of a signal from data that are, at times, noisy, and to detect if there is an underlying pattern of improvement or deterioration.
Changes in test design are introduced only gradually in PISA, and, where possible, include variants which make it possible to isolate a sub-set of students or of test questions that are not affected by the change (or are affected in different directions). For example, the 2025 test design for science was adaptive for the first time and included a large number of newly developed questions. Still, it assigned 25% of students to a “non-adaptive” version, so that it is possible to study the effect of adaptivity on student behaviour and test performance. New science questions were administered alongside “trend” questions, which remained identical to those used in previous years, and could be used to monitor the robustness of the reported trends to changing test contents. For all students, the items included in the first section of the test were determined at random, as in previous years, meaning that performance changes are unlikely to be driven by changes in test design if they can already be observed when considering only the first questions seen by each student. And, as usual, test domains and test positions are rotated across students, at random, so that it is possible to test for potential order effects (for example, to test whether mathematics performance is lower after a test of creative thinking compared to when mathematics is administered first, or after a test of science).
Technical annexes in Volume I (and, in particular, Annex 1) include several analyses to confirm that the conclusions that are drawn from test scores are valid and robust to the evolving methods and design used in PISA.
Confidence in the robustness of PISA is based on the rigour that is applied to all technical aspects of the survey design, implementation and analysis, not just on the nature of the statistical model, which has developed over time and will continue to do so. Specifically regarding test development, the robustness of the assessment lies in the rigour of the procedures used in item development, field trials, analysis, review and selection.
The task for the experts developing the assessment is to ensure that all these aspects are taken into account, and to use their expert judgement to select a set of test items such that there is a sufficient balance across all these aspects. In PISA this is done by assessment specialists who work with advisory groups made up of international experts. Participating countries and economies also play a key role in this item-selection process.
The details of the test-design and test-development processes are available in the PISA 2025 Technical Report. Technical reports for earlier assessments are also available on the PISA website. For example, the PISA 2022 Technical Report, the PISA 2018 Technical Report and PISA 2015 Technical Report.
The value of cross-country comparisons is at the heart of large-scale international surveys such as PISA. PISA follows several standards and procedures concerned with ensuring fair and valid comparisons of PISA results across countries. These include the consistent implementation of PISA and the use of representative samples in each participating country and economy. Much effort also goes into ensuring that the questions used in PISA maintain their measurement properties in each of the many language versions (in PISA 2025, over 100 different language versions were used). The steps to ensure that the resulting measures are equivalent include:
PISA is the world's foremost international, high-quality and high-impact education assessment programme, so it is vitally important that the PISA data are accurate and authentic. The OECD therefore applies strict conditions at all levels to make sure student data accurately reflect students’ ability and performance, and do not involve any form of cheating. This assurance starts with the Agreement for Participation between the OECD and each country. Article 4 of the agreement requires countries to comply with the comprehensive Technical Standards for PISA, including the secure management of test materials and secure administration of the assessment. These requirements are then reinforced through the PISA Operations Manual, the School Co-ordinators Manual and the Test Administrators Manual. These manuals have explicit instructions for the secure receipt, handling and storage of all test-related materials, and for the secure administration of the test itself. No one other than approved project staff has access to secure PISA data, and embargoed material and formal confidentiality arrangements are in place for all approved project staff.
Adherence to the standards is monitored throughout all project-implementation phases, and all deviations (e.g. deviations from the agreed test-administration protocol), both minor and major, are recorded for further review. After students sit the assessment, each national dataset is reviewed and any inconsistencies flagged for further analysis. Such inconsistencies include, for example, differences between one country and others in how items functioned, and differences in a country between the field trial and the main study in how items functioned. Data adjudication is the quality-control process through which each national dataset and quality-monitoring report are reviewed, and through which a judgement about the appropriateness of the data for the main reporting goals is formed.
Data for adjudicated regions are also reviewed, although not all sub-national jurisdictions choose to undergo the data-adjudication process.
The process and outcomes of data adjudication for PISA 2025 are described in the PISA 2025 Technical Report.
Over recent cycles, the national ministry has been piloting PISA in several provinces/municipalities in preparation for fuller participation across China. Shanghai has participated since PISA 2009. In PISA 2015, the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Guangdong participated. In PISA 2018, the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang participated.
Chinese provinces/municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang) China were participants in PISA 2022 but were unable to collect data because schools were closed during the intended data collection period.
In PISA 2025, the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang participated.
In a 2012 OECD survey of PISA-participating countries and economies, a large majority of respondents reported that the policies of high-performing countries or improving systems had been influential in their own policy-making processes. The same number of countries and economies also indicated that PISA had influenced the development of new elements of a national or federal assessment strategy. In relation to curriculum setting and standards, many countries and economies cited the influence of the PISA frameworks on: comparisons of national curricula with PISA frameworks and assessments; formation of common standards nationally; impact on their reading frameworks; the incorporation of PISA-like competencies in their curricula; and for setting national proficiency standards.
The OECD strives to identify what policies and practices appear to be “working” in countries and economies that are recording high performance or show evidence of significant improvement over time on PISA. It then reports those findings and supports countries and economies that wish to investigate and explore the extent to which they would benefit from similar programmes. The OECD is aware of the different circumstances in different countries and economies (with 91 participating in PISA 2025). There is no “one size fits all” education model for countries and economies. It is not possible or appropriate to “cut and paste” one country's education system into another country or economy.
The initial PISA 2025 results were released in one volume on 8 September 2026, while two additional volumes will be released in 2027. The first volume, Future-ready Students, examines whether young people are prepared to thrive – and eventually lead – in a rapidly changing and interconnected world where lifelong learning beyond formal education is essential. Taking a multi-dimensional view of learning shaped by cognitive, emotional and social aspects, the volume analyses 15-year-old students’ proficiency in science, reading, mathematics and computational problem solving (learning in the digital world), alongside engagement-related attitudes and dispositions reported by the students, such as curiosity, perseverance and learner agency. Students’ outcomes are considered within their broader contexts, including safe and fair learning environments and the support provided by families and schools. The volume concludes with an assessment of students’ readiness to respond to environmental challenges.
The second volume, Connected through English, examines students’ proficiency in reading, listening and speaking in English as a foreign language in the 22 countries and economies that participated in this optional assessment. The volume explores how proficiency in each of these skills relates with proficiency in the others and how it varies across socio-demographic factors. It also offers an overview on where and how 15-year-olds learn and practice English, and on what role they perceive English having in their present and future. In addition, it explores which school factors are related to differences in English-language performance between schools and provides insights for policy and practice informed by the data.
The third volume, Effective Learners in the Digital World, examines how students self-regulate their learning and problem solving using computational tools. The volume makes extensive use of student response process data to shed light on how students managed their task engagement, the strategies they used to make progress on the test, and whether they engaged in self-evaluation and reflection. It highlights how self-regulated learning processes support performance outcomes and unpacks differences in learning and problem-solving approaches across countries and economies, student groups and task types.