India to participate in PISA after a gap of 12 years

After a gap of 12 years, the country's school students will participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a triennial study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in 2021.

India and OECD will sign an agreement on Monday in presence of Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar for the conduct of the study.

The PISA evaluates educational systems in the member and non-member nations by measuring 15-year-old school students' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading to provide comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies and outcomes.

According to official sources, the HRD ministry had been in talks with the OECD for the last several months for India's participation in the PISA.

India had participated in the PISA only in 2009 through schools in two states—Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.

The results of the study had indicated overall standard of education in India was well below the global standards.

Exposing the gaps in the country's education system, the PISA 2009 results had ranked Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh 72 and 73 out of a total of 74 participants.

Since then, India never participated in the PISA.

After the students in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh fared miserably in the PISA 2009, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) developed its own system—the National Achievement Survey— on the instructions of the HRD ministry to assess the performance of the country's school students.