School students of Madhya Pradesh will now be evaluated under Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) starting 2024 and preparations for the same will begin from academic session 2020-21.
India will participate in PISA 2021 for the first time, as announced by MHRD. Due to coronavirus pandemic, PISA has been extended by a year and will now be conducted in 2022.
In case MP is able to prepare students for evaluation by the end of this academic, there might be a chance that the state will participate in PISA 2022.
PISA is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students who are nearing the end of their compulsory education.
In order to prepare students for the evaluation, preparations and strategies are being formed by the school education department. The assessment will begin from 2024 and then next would be conducted in 2027.
The decision was taken in a video conferencing discussion among Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) chairman Manoj Ahuja, CBSE director (academics) Joseph Emmanuel, Chandigarh director of school education Rubinderjit Singh, principal secretary of MPBSE Rashmi Arun Shami Principal Secretary and Commissioner, directorate of public instruction, Jaishri Kiyawat.
Ahuja appreciated the decision of Madhya Pradesh to join PISA and the strategy prepared by the representatives of CBSE for the preparation of PISA.
Rashmi informed about the educational efforts being made in the state as well as the schemes being adopted for teachers and children in the state during the crisis of Covid-19.
Dr Shweta Singh, Joint Secretary Academics gave a detailed presentation on the basis of CBSE's experiences regarding PISA preparations.
What does PISA evaluate?
PISA assesses how well they can apply what they learn in school to real-life situations. So far, over 90 countries have participated in the assessment which began in 2000. Every three years students are tested in the key subjects: reading, mathematics and science.
PISA aims to test literacy and competence of students in three fields: reading, mathematics, science on an indefinite scale.
Apply Math to Life, Construct meanings
The PISA mathematics literacy test asks students to apply their mathematical knowledge to solve problems set in real-world contexts. To solve the problems students must activate a number of mathematical competencies as well as a broad range of mathematical content knowledge.
PISA claims to measure education's application to real-life problems and lifelong learning (workforce knowledge).
PISA does not measure the extent to which 15-year-old students are fluent readers or how competent they are at word recognition tasks or spelling. Instead, they should be able to construct, extend and reflect on the meaning of what they have read across a wide range of continuous and non-continuous texts.
PISA also assesses students in innovative domains.
How is the evaluation done?
PISA test, in most countries, is administered in the computer-based mode. Test questions include a mixture of Multiple Choice Questions and questions which require students to write their own response.
