What Could PISA 2021 Turn Out To India?

India is all prepared for participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) almost after a decade. PISA is led by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which evaluates educational systems by measuring the scholastic performance of 15-year-old students in Science, Mathematics, and their abilities of reading.

In 2009, India took the assessment and was ranked second last among the 73 other participating countries. The joint secretary of MHRD, Maneesh Garg said that the participation of India in PISA 2021 is an attempt to move away from the learning which is rote and move towards competency-based education. He added that the assessment will help us set global benchmarks for Indian institutes.

Many factors will be taken into account in 2021 according to Andreas Schleicher, director (PISA), OECD. He added that not just India, but PISA has also evolved considerably since 2009. There is now higher attention paid to the adaptation of the assessment to the educational, social and cultural context of countries.

Impact of PISA 2021: In a world of 'Google knows everything', a shift towards competency-based education system becomes very crucial and significant. People are no longer rewarded on the basis of the utilization of knowledge. It is hard to offer competency-based education in classrooms because it needs very different learning and teaching pattern.

PISA will help India understand various different ways of learning and substantiate difficult educational reforms. It will analyze if poverty is the actual reason for limited education. They will find out whether Indian schools are breaking the vicious cycle or not which is between disadvantage and poor educational outcomes.

Just a month ago, ASER 2018 represented a negligible improvement in learning outcomes of class 8th students and these students are going to be a major part of PISA in 2021. With this condition of the education system, it becomes difficult to anticipate the score of India score in the assessment.

Why East Asian countries like Singapore, Japan, China, and South Korea are at the top as per the analysis of the last three PISA results? These have been dominating the rankings by being in the top 7. They have left behind countries like the US, UK, and Finland. In Western countries, students are often segregated into different tracks at early ages, showcasing the notion that only some children can get world-class standards, which is one of the major reasons behind western countries not making it to the top of the list.

India could possibly accept some of the top practices from these countries for improving the ranking in the upcoming assessment. Gard said that they are yet to start processes for understanding the complete guidelines and methodology of the assessment. They would invest resources and time for understanding the practices of high-achieving East Asian countries.

By: Preeti Narula

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