Pisa tests postponed

PISA tests looking at global education standards, in which Wales has historically trailed, have been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Wales ranked worst in the UK for the fifth time running in the last set of Pisa tests published in December 2019, but it showed some improvement.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which runs the tests, said member countries have decided to postpone the next two Pisa surveys in light of disruption caused by the pandemic.

Students will now take the test in 2022, not 2021, and the results will be published in December 2023. The following Pisa survey will then be published in 2026, not 2025.

The Program for International Student Assessment – popularly known as the Pisa test – is widely seen as a gauge for how well Wales’ diverging education system is performing.

The two-hour test is usually taken every three years by 15-year-old pupils in participating countries including the US, China, most European nations and all the UK nations.

After the 2016 results, the fourth time Wales had done worse than the other UK nations, then First Minister Carwyn Jones said the results made for “uncomfortable reading”.

The latest results last December showed 15 year-olds in Wales were still adrift of the other UK nations in reading, maths and science, although narrowing the gap.

Those results were an improvement on previous years in all three areas and the performance gap between pupils on free school meals and their better-off peers also improved.

More than 3,165 pupils aged 15 sat the two hour tests in 107 schools across Wales last year, including 458 who took it in the Welsh language.

They were among 600,000 students taking the test in 79 participating countries across the globe.

Wales now ranks alongside countries like the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland but below the average of developed nations (known as the OECD average) and the UK average.

The best education systems in the world, as assessed by Pisa, are those of China’s major mainland cities Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang and as well as Singapore.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “Pisa is an important measure of education performance in key subjects. In Wales we saw an improvement in all three subjects in last year’s assessments, including best ever scores in reading and maths.

“The need to postpone PISA is perfectly understandable under the current circumstances and we look forward to participating once the assessments return.”