PISA – Shocks, after shocks and misconceptions

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is as a triennial event of ranking compulsory education performance of students in participating countries. The results are published as a leagues table, which attracts much attention from politicians, media, employer groups, academics and other interest groups. Many of the responses and much of interpretation of PISA results are arguably misguided, for they mistake quality of education within performance of education systems. In this paper we are attempting to demystify PISA results by focusing on issues OECD-PISA education concept, test results and its limitations from a quality of education perspective.