THE OECD PROGRAMME FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ASSESSMENT (PISA) - 2009 Results/Executive Summary

Highlights

• Korea and Finland are the highest performing OECD countries, with mean scores of 539 and 536 points, respectively. However, the partner economy Shanghai-China outperforms them by a significant margin, with a mean score of 556.
• In 18 participating countries, including Mexico, Chile and Turkey, the highest reading proficiency level achieved by most students was the baseline Level 2.
• At the other end of the proficiency spectrum, an average of 7.6% of students attain Level 5, and in Singapore, New Zealand and Shanghai-China the percentage is more than twice the OECD average.
• At the other end of the proficiency spectrum, an average of 7.6% of students attain Level 5, and in Singapore, New Zealand and Shanghai-China the percentage is more than twice the OECD average.
• Korea, with a country mean of 546 score points, performed highest among OECD countries in the PISA 2009 mathematics assessment. The partner countries and economies Shanghai-China, Singapore and Hong Kong-China rank first, second and third, respectively.
• Shanghai-China, Finland, Hong Kong-China and Singapore are the four highest performers in the PISA 2009 science assessment.
• Some 14.6% of students in Shanghai-China and 12.3% of students in Singapore attain the highest levels of proficiency in all three assessment subjects.
• Girls outperform boys in reading skills in every participating country.
• Countries of similar prosperity can produce very different educational results.
• The best performing school systems manage to provide high-quality education to all students.
• Disadvantaged students may have access to more teachers, but not necessarily to the best teachers.
• Home background influences educational success, and schooling often appears to reinforce its effects. Although poor performance in school does not automatically follow from a disadvantaged socio-economic background, the socioeconomic background of students and schools does appear to have a powerful influence on performance.
• Regardless of their own socio-economic background, students attending schools with a socio-economically advantaged intake tend to perform better than those attending schools with more disadvantaged peers.
• Across OECD countries, first-generation students – those who were born outside the country of assessment and who also have foreign-born parents – score, on average, 52 score points below students without an immigrant background.
• Students in urban schools perform better than students in other schools, even after accounting for differences in socioeconomic background.
• In all countries, students who enjoy reading the most perform significantly better than students who enjoy reading the least.
• On average across OECD countries, 37% of students – and 45% or more in Austria, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg – report that they do not read for enjoyment at all.
• High-performing countries are also those whose students generally know how to summarize information.
• While factors such as predisposition, temperament, peer pressure and socialization may contribute to boys having less interest in reading than girls, boys could be encouraged to enjoy reading more and to read more for enjoyment.
• In recent years, the gender gap in reading engagement has widened, as has the gender gap in reading performance.
• Successful school systems – those that perform above average and show below-average socio-economic inequalities – provide all students, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds, with similar opportunities to learn.
• Most successful school systems grant greater autonomy to individual schools to design curricula and establish assessment policies, but these school systems do not necessarily allow schools to compete for enrolment.
• After accounting for the socio-economic and demographic profiles of students and schools, students in OECD countries who attend private schools show performance that is similar to that of students enrolled in public schools.
• School systems considered successful tend to prioritise teachers’ pay over smaller classes.
• In more than half of all OECD countries, over 94% of 15-year-old students reported that they had attended pre-primary school for at least some time.
• Schools with better disciplinary climates, more positive behaviour among teachers and better teacher-student relations tend to achieve higher scores in reading.
• Between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of low performers in Chile dropped by more than 17 percentage points, while the share of top performers in Korea grew by more than 7 percentage points. 
• The gender gap in reading performance did not narrow in any country between 2000 and 2009.
• Across OECD countries, overall performance in mathematics remained unchanged between 2003 and 2009, as did performance in science between 2006 and 2009.
• On average across OECD countries, the percentage of students who report reading for enjoyment daily dropped by five percentage points.