What is PISA?

• The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international research programme which measures 15-year-old students’ achievement in science, mathematics, and reading. It evaluates how well education systems around the world are preparing their students to meet real-life opportunities and challenges after they finish school. PISA has been running since the year 2000, and New Zealand has participated in every cycle.
• This study is an initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Its mission is to shape policies that foster prosperity, equality, opportunity, and well-being for all.

Who takes part and how are they selected?

• Over 760,000 students from 91 countries/economies, including 38 OECD countries, took part in PISA 2025. Countries all over the world participated, including South, Central and North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific and Oceania.
• In New Zealand, just over 5,000 students from 133 English-medium schools (state, state-integrated, and independent schools) took part in the study in Term 2 or Term 3 of 2025. Both school and student identities remain confidential.
• Schools are selected by Westat, an international statistical organisation, from a list of all schools in New Zealand with PISA-eligible students enrolled. Schools are randomly selected based on the following characteristics: school size (number of students), equity index (EQI), location (major urban or smaller communities), authority (state or independent) and type (co-educational or single sex).
• Students are selected randomly from a list of all PISA-eligible students in each school using specialised sampling software. All students in New Zealand are eligible for PISA if they are: aged between 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months (hereafter, “15-year-olds”) and enrolled in Year 8 and above. Most students are in Year 11.
• New Zealand was 1 of 5 countries asked to complete a non-response bias analysis due to low participation. The analysis found that for New Zealand the participating schools represented the population well across different categories, but that the student sample was slightly biased toward higher achievers. It is important to note that the bias may not affect trend or country comparisons to its full extent, because a similar (although, likely, smaller) bias may also affect past results and the results of other countries and economies. This is likely to be the case when looking at change in scores from PISA 2022 to PISA 2025 for New Zealand as the level of bias for 2025 is similar to that for PISA 2022.

What does PISA 2025 assess?

• In 2025, science was the major focus and mathematics and reading were minor domains. Mathematics was the major focus in 2022; reading will be the major focus in 2029. Each subject framework is refreshed ahead of the cycle in which it is the major focus to ensure it accurately reflects contemporary essential skills.
• Previous PISA studies have focused on reading, mathematics, and science literacy as the area of assessment. However, the 2025 framework for science has moved to a focus on the outcomes of science education. This is framed in terms of 3 competencies that define what is important for young people to know, value, and do in situations that require scientific knowledge.
• PISA defined these competencies as the ability to:
  • Explain phenomena scientifically.
  • Construct and evaluate designs for scientific enquiry and interpret scientific data and evidence critically.
  • Research, evaluate, and use scientific information for decision-making and action.
• Learning in the Digital World (LDW) was the innovative domain assessed for the first time in 2025. LDW measures students’ capacity to engage in self-regulated, iterative knowledge building and problem-solving with computational tools and practice.
• Test questions in PISA are not what you would find in a typical standardised test. They do not measure memorisation of facts or curriculum, but rather demand that students draw on their knowledge and use their problem-solving skills to respond to real-world scenarios (see example). A sample PISA test is available on the OECD’s PISA Test platform. There are also examples of science questions in the PISA 2025 Science Framework – 2 of the screens from 1 longer question are shown below.

• PISA asks students and principals to complete a background questionnaire that provides further information to help better understand the data. Students cannot learn everything they need to know in school. To be effective lifelong learners, young people need not only knowledge and skills, but also an awareness of why and how they learn. That is why PISA asks students about their motivations, beliefs about themselves and learning strategies.

What can PISA tell us?

• PISA monitors overall student performance so that we can observe whether achievement is improving, remaining stable or declining over time. This allows us to monitor progress towards education goals such as raising achievement and reducing inequity.
• PISA also allows us to examine New Zealand’s performance relative to the rest of the world to learn from the experiences of other countries and for us to spread our current practices.
• The PISA questionnaire collects data on different factors in the system that contribute to student achievement over time including aspects of well-being, family background, the school environment, what happens in the classroom, and students’ own attitudes, experiences, and perceptions.
• International and national organisations trust and use PISA data. For example, UNESCO uses PISA data to measure countries’ progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal #4 which aims for inclusive and equitable quality education for all students regardless of gender or wealth.
• PISA cannot measure everything we value, so will only ever show specific aspects of a student’s competencies. Therefore, it is important to combine PISA findings with our understanding of performance from other research that uses other methodologies.

How is PISA developed?

• PISA is the result of a collaboration between the OECD Secretariat, international contractors, experts, and teams at participating countries and economies.
• First, assessment and questionnaire frameworks are developed under the guidance of expert groups. Participating countries/economies are then invited to submit questions that are then added to items developed by the OECD’s experts. The questions are reviewed by the by participating countries/economies and are carefully checked for cultural bias. In New Zealand, items are carefully reviewed by subject matter experts for cultural relevance and whether they are cognitively appropriate for 15-year-olds.
• The questions are then adapted to individual countries’ contexts and if needed, translated to the language of instruction. Adaptations ensure students read about scenarios within contexts they are familiar with, and the language and names reflect New Zealand.
• Countries who translate go through a strict process where they perform 2 independent translations which are reconciled and then verified by a third party. This is to ensure any differences in performance cannot be attributed to language differences.
• Before the main test is conducted there is a trial test run in all participating countries and economies. If any test questions prove to be too easy or too difficult in certain countries and economies, for reasons not related to the overall level of proficiency of students (as demonstrated on the remaining questions), they are dropped from the main test in all countries and economies.

How is PISA administered?

• PISA uses high-quality technical standards which all countries must follow.
• Test administrators are hired to lead the test and survey sessions. They follow identical instructions and script to ensure the test conditions are uniform around the world.
• Independent quality monitors conduct site visits to schools to ensure that the rules are followed globally.
• Stats NZ has closely scrutinised the methodological rigor underpinning PISA which is why Cabinet approved it as a Tier 1 statistic. That means PISA meets high expectations of impartiality and statistical quality, has long-term continuity, and provides international comparability.