Pisa

PISA 2009 Results:
Executive Summary
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OECD (2010), PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary
Introduction to PISA
PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary © OECD 2010 3
PISA focuses on young people’s ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-lifechallenges. This orientation
reflects a change in the goals and objectives of curricula themselves, which are increasingly concerned with what
students can do with what they learn at school and not merely with whether they have mastered specific curricular
content. PISA’s unique features include its:
• Policy orientation, which highlights differences in performance patterns and identifiesfeatures common to highperforming
students, schools and education systems by linking data on learning outcomes with data on student
characteristics and other key factors that shape learning in and outside of school.
• Innovative concept of “literacy”, which refers both to students’ capacity to apply knowledge and skills in key
subject areas and to their ability to analyse, reason and communicateeffectively as they pose, interpret and solve
problems in a variety of situations.
• Relevance to lifelong learning, which goes beyond assessing students’ competencies in school subjects by asking
them to report on their motivation to learn, their beliefs about themselves and their learning strategies.
• Regularity, which enables countries to monitor their progress in meeting key learningobjectives.
• Breadth of geographical coverage and collaborative nature, which, in PISA 2009, encompasses the 34 OECD
member countries and 41 partner countries and economies.
To learn more about PISA and to download our publications and data, please visit our website: www.pisa.oecd.org
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THE OECD PROGRAMME FOR
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTASSESSMENT (PISA)
PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary © OECD 2010 5
Executive Summary
What Students Know and Ca n Do: Student
Performance in Reading, Mathematics and
Science.........................................................................................................6
Overcoming Social Background: Equity in
Learning Opportunities and Outcomes............9
Learning to Learn: Student...