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ABSTRACT
In 2018 the OECD published the findings of its PISA for Development (PISA-D) pilot project which was undertaken to make the regular PISA framework more accessible and relevant to low- and middle-income nations. This would encourage such nations to join PISA as part of the OECD’s Learning Framework 2030 and provide them with ‘contextualised’ policy recommendations. In 2019 the OECD declared the project a success. We analyse and compare the PISA-D reports as well as its portrayal as a success. We suggest that, whilst PISA-D clearly made technical adjustments relating to the longstanding challenges which face low-income nations engaging in comparative assessments it replicates rather than addresses those challenges. Drawing on literature on organisational legitimacy and the politics of expertise, we interpret the PISA-D pilot as a political strategy primarily deployed to legitimate and extend rather than evaluate the project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The PISA-D International Seminar was held in London on 25 September 2019. It launched the PISA-D reports and discussed the outputs and findings. The Seminar was attended mainly by the OECD staff, contractors to the project and five representatives from participating nations.
2. Bhutan was excluded as the data was incomplete. Panama only conducted the out-of-school survey.
3. This version of events contradicts earlier statements by OECD analysts who insisted that the project had been demand-led and initiated by low- and middle-income nations (see Auld, Rappleye, and Morris Citation2019).
4. These include six stages of development: prenatal, early development, pre-primary, early primary, late primary and lower secondary, and upper secondary.
5. Sources of the original reports are available here.