Finite time to learn and play

Reader’s Guide

The PISA 2022 dataset includes data from 81 countries and economies. The test was originally planned to take place in 2021 but was delayed by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The exceptional circumstances throughout this period, including lockdowns and school closures in many places, led to occasional difficulties in collecting some data. While the vast majority of countries and economies met PISA’s technical standards (available on line), a small number did not. In prior PISA rounds, countries and economies that failed to comply with the standards, and which the PISA Adjudication Group judged to be consequential, could face exclusion from the main part of reporting. However, given the unprecedented situation caused by the pandemic, PISA 2022 results include data from all participating education systems, including those where there were issues such as low response rates (see Annexes A2 and A4).

Adjudicated entities not meeting the sampling standards

The results of 13 adjudicated entities (i.e. countries, economies and regions within countries) listed below will be reported with annotations. Caution is required when interpreting estimates for these countries/economies because one or more PISA sampling standards listed below were not met.

The 13 entities are comprised of the two following groups:

(i) entities that submitted technically strong analyses, which indicated that more than minimal bias was most likely introduced in the estimates due to low response rates (falling below PISA standards): Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Scotland;

(ii) entities that did not meet one or more PISA sampling standards and for whom is not possible to exclude the possibility of more than minimal bias based on the information available at the time of data adjudication: Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong (China), Jamaica, Latvia, the Netherlands, Panama and the United States.

An asterisk (*) next to the name of a country or economy indicates that caution is required when interpreting estimates because one or more PISA sampling standards were not met.

Data underlying the figures

The data referred to in this paper are presented in Annex B. Two symbols are used to denote missing data:

• c There were too few observations to provide reliable estimates (i.e. there were fewer than 30 students or fewer than 5 schools with valid data).

• m Data are not available. There was no observation in the sample; these data were not collected by the country or economy; or these data were collected but subsequently removed from the publication for technical reasons.

Coverage

This publication features data from 81 countries and economies, including all OECD Member countries except Luxembourg and 44 non‑OECD Member countries and economies (see map of PISA countries and economies in “What is PISA?”). Specific territorial disclaimers and footnotes applicable to this publication are included in the copyright page (p.2).

The designation “Ukrainian regions (18 of 27)” refers to the 18 PISA-participating jurisdictions of Ukraine: Cherkasy Oblast, Kirovohrad Oblast, Poltava Oblast, Vinnytsia Oblast, Chernihiv Oblast, Kyiv Oblast, Sumy Oblast, the City of Kyiv, Zhytomyr Oblast, Odesa Oblast, Chernivtsi Oblast, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Rivne Oblast, Ternopil Oblast, Volyn Oblast and Zakarpattia Oblast. Due to Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine, the following nine jurisdictions were not covered: Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.

International averages

The OECD average corresponds to the arithmetic mean of the respective country estimates. It was calculated for most indicators presented in this paper.

In this publication, the OECD average is generally used when the focus is on comparing performance across education systems. In the case of some countries, data may not be available for specific indicators, or specific categories may not apply. Readers should, therefore, keep in mind that the term “OECD average” refers to the OECD Member countries included in the respective comparisons. In cases where data are not available or do not apply for all sub-categories of a given population or indicator, the “OECD average” is not necessarily computed on a consistent set of countries across all columns of a table.

High income countries/economies average corresponds to arithmetic mean of countries or economies with GNI per capita superior to USD 13 845 in year 2022. Similarly, middle income countries/economies average corresponds to average of countries or economies with a GNI per capita between USD 1 136 and USD 13 205 in year 2022 (source: World Bank Analytical Classification, presented in the World Development Indicators, https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/378834-how-does-the-world-bank-classify-countries). This paper uses the same classification as PISA 2022 Volume V (see Table V.B1.7.1).

Rounding figures

Because of rounding, some figures in tables may not add up exactly to the totals. Totals, differences and averages are always calculated on the basis of exact numbers and are rounded only after calculation.

All standard errors in this publication have been rounded to one or two decimal places. Where the value 0.0 or 0.00 is shown, this does not imply that the standard error is zero, but that it is smaller than 0.05 or 0.005, respectively.

Reporting student data

The paper uses “15-year-old students” as shorthand for the PISA target population. PISA covers students who are aged between 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months at the time of assessment and who are enrolled in school and have completed at least 6 years of formal schooling, regardless of the type of institution in which they are enrolled, and whether they are in full-time or part‑time education, whether they attend academic or vocational programmes, and whether they attend public or private schools or foreign schools within the country.

Reporting school data

The principals of the schools in which students were assessed provided information on their schools’ characteristics by completing a school questionnaire. Where responses from school principals are presented in this publication, they are weighted so that they are proportionate to the number of 15-year-olds enrolled in the school.

Focusing on statistically significant differences

This paper discusses only statistically significant differences or changes. These are denoted in darker colours in figures and in bold font in tables. Unless otherwise specified, the significance level is set to 5%.

Abbreviations used in this report

ESCS	PISA index of economic, social, and cultural status
GDP	Gross domestic product
ICT	Information and communications technology
Score dif.	Score-point difference
S.D.	Standard deviation
S.E.	Standard error
% dif.	Percentage-point difference