Foreword

In 2000, PISA ushered in a new era in international comparative studies. Backed by a large international economic organization, the survey was given a firm financial and organizational foundation. It became possible to develop subjects for the surveys for the long term, and the common framework for data collection let us follow the trends and the changes over time. The surveys fit into a broader framework, the system of the OECD education development program. The OECD provides support in many ways for the utilization of these experiences in both research and education policy.

Also, PISA is a breakthrough because it is the first international survey that consistently abandons curriculum based subjects. It does not assess the extent to which students have learned the school curriculum but rather it studies if 15-year-olds possess the basic knowledge required for their further development and their personal success in an advanced social environment and at the workplace. So it compares the performance of schools and education systems not to their own goals but rather it measures the whole society's ability to convey and improve knowledge.

It follows from this principle that defining the subjects for the surveys requires further analysis: only systematic scientific work can describe usable knowledge, identify the social requirements for knowledge and take the question of personal development into account. The scientific working groups working on the development of the PISA content framework did an excellent job in this respect, too. They integrated the results of the cognitive revolution that happened in the second half of the past century into the first assessment cycles, whereas in the latter cycles the focus is on discovering behaviour and the drives for learning as well as on the analysis of motivation and attitudes.

The PISA surveys have to meet two main criteria: they must be scientifically authentic and relevant for educational policy at the same time. Scientific authenticity is ensured by the fact that the world's most distinguished scholars participate in both the working groups planning and administering the survey and in the expert groups responsible for the given areas. Given the enormous resources, the vast scope that covers the bigger (and the wealthier) part of the world, the close attention of the scientific community, educational politics and mass communication, it is a must for these surveys to be the best of their kind in every respect and to use the best available knowledge and the most advanced methods.

Beside the three main subject areas each cycle contains an additional assessment, a technical-methodological solution, which has never been used before in similar surveys. Such was the examination of learning strategies and self-regulated learning in 2000, the survey - carried out using novel, embedded techniques - of complex problem-solving skills in 2003 and of the attitudes towards science in 2006. It was an original idea in 2006 also that science knowledge was tested using computers, though unfortunately Hungary did not participate in this optional program.

Quite naturally, no innovative, pioneering principles are free from conflicts and contradictions. Sometimes interpreting the results and drawing the conclusions pose a serious challenge to the expert community and educational policy in the participating countries. However, the majority of the revealed connections can be interpreted easily, their messages can be explicitly translated into action programs, whereas those results that are unexpected and difficult to interpret may inspire further, more detailed research.

The surveys hold up a mirror to the participating countries. This mirror, however, is based on extremely complex principles, figuring out the secrets of its operation requires special expertise. So it is inevitable that those results will become widely known which can be summed up in a few clear-cut facts and numbers. But it is important to note that PISA provides much more for the participating countries.

This executive summary gives an overview of the results of the third PISA survey. As such, it cannot discuss all the exciting details of the assessment, upcoming analyses will deal with this. The most easily interpretable and definitely meaningful data are the average score points for a country's students. These brought no surprises for us in 2006, but are demanding, ever more strongly, changes and measures for improvement.

This detailed assessment has confirmed that our students are average performers in science and perform below the international average in mathematics. Now we had to face for the third time that in reading we rank at the bottom third among developed countries. Again, it is a recurring message that we belong to those group of countries in which students' performance is determined the most by their home background, where between-school differences are the biggest and where these differences mainly reflect the socio-cultural differences between students. While our weaknesses in knowledge level can only be addressed in the long-run, we could find solutions that produce results already in the short term for the latter, that is for containing selection within the school system.

It is never convenient to encounter problems. But our PISA scores can also have a positive interpretation. The surveys have shown that with hard work we can do a lot to improve the performance of our educational system. Some Nordic countries have climbed from the middle ranks to the top within one generation, while some Asian countries have made even greater progress, starting from the very bottom and ending up at the top.

Those countries where the PISA results revealed similar problems and impelled intervention can be even better examples to us. In Germany, for example, the publication of the first, not really pleasing results echoed across the nation, and then inspired serious, long-term action programs: the founding of academic knowledge centres and new research and development institutions as well as the launching of large-scale development projects indicates that negative results do not necessarily have paralyzing effects.

I do hope that the same message arriving now for the third time will reach the stimulus threshold in Hungary as well, resulting in a wider cooperation to push our educational system out of stagnation. With this optimistic attitude, I commend this executive summary to the attention of all stakeholders.

Benő Csapó
Member of the PISA Governing Board