PISA 2022: Analysis of OECD Countries
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Key Takeaways
- Preparation and Exploration of the Data / Pre-processing of the Data
- Graphs and Inferences
- Final Analysis
Introduction
PISA 2022’s main subjects are reading, science, and mathematics. Being proficient in mathematics today involves more than just repeating routine mathematical procedures. PISA defines a mathematically proficient person as someone who can mathematically reason their way through complex real-life problems and solve them by formulating, employing, and interpreting mathematics.
Key Takeaways
- Top Scorers of OECD Countries: Two Far Eastern countries, Korea and Japan, and three Eastern European countries, Estonia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, are outstanding in terms of mean scores of all three subjects.
- Not The Best As Expected in OECD Countries: Finland, the country of which the education model is taken as a role model, has a mediocre performance. The most advanced countries like Germany, France, and the USA have again a mediocre performance.
- Lack of teaching staff: If schools have ‘no’ or ‘a lot of staff missing teaching mathematics’, then their students’ performance in mathematics drops. If schools have a moderate number of missing (‘very little’ and ‘to some extent’) students’ performance in mathematics is not affected much.
- Professional Development: Does your school offer professional development to mathematics teachers in any of the following? It seems there is no difference in students’ mathematical performance whether their school provides or does not professional development to the teachers.
- Is your school a public or a private school? Answer to this question: In general, the school type does not matter much in students’ performance in PISA 2022.
Preparation and Exploration of the Data / Pre-processing of the Data
2022 student and school questionnaire data files from PISA 2022 database webpage are downloaded in .sav format, and uploaded to Python in .csv format.
The variables to be analyzed from these two datasets are combined as below:
Given that the questionnaire data includes not only the questions and answers of students but also the average student scores for math, reading, and science subjects based on 10 different cognitive aspects (codes such as PV1MATH, PV1READ, etc..ie performance values), the average of these 10 values for 3 different subjects are filtered out from student questionnaire.
Explanation of question and answer codes in the school questionnaire are inspected from Explanation of School Questionnaire Codes. Only the columns with the questions by which we will be checking the mean PV results are filtered.
PV results filtered from the student questionnaire and the filtered question codes from the school questionnaire are merged as one data frame.
The final data frame is saved as .RData file to further be analyzed in R.
Graphs and Inferences
Graph 1: Average mathematics score by OECD countries.
When there is not a lack of teaching staff, the mean scores in all three subjects are interestingly lower than when there is some shortage of staff. On the other hand, as expected, the mean score drops when there is a severe shortage of teaching staff.
Graph 2: Mean Of Math, Reading, and Science Scores by Lack Of Teaching Stuff.
The score does not appear to change significantly based on professional development or lack thereof (Graph 3).
The graph implies that the overall educational experience and environment play a crucial role in student performance, regardless of whether the school is public or private (Graph 4). The effectiveness of education is a complex and multifaceted issue influenced by various factors.
Final Analysis
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What Did OECD Find?
In mathematics:
- Singapore scored significantly higher than all other countries/economies in mathematics (575 points) and, along with Hong Kong (China), Japan, Korea, Macao (China), and Chinese Taipei, outperformed all other countries and economies in mathematics. Another 17 countries also performed above the OECD average (472 points), ranging from Estonia (510 points) to New Zealand* (479 points).
- An average of 69% of students in OECD countries are at least proficient in mathematics. This means they are beginning to demonstrate the ability and initiative to use mathematics in simple real-life situations.
- In 16 out of 81 countries/economies participating in PISA 2022, more than 10% of students attained Level 5 or 6 proficiency, meaning they are high-performing: they understand that a problem is quantitative and can formulate complex mathematical models to solve it. By contrast, less than 5% of students are high-performing in 42 countries/economies.
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What Striking Results We Found
This analysis examines the effects of various factors on student mathematics achievement, based on data obtained from the PISA 2022 exams. First, the shortage of mathematics teachers in educational institutions emerges as a critical factor that significantly affects student performance. When the shortage of mathematics teachers is at ‘none’ or ‘many’ levels, a significant decrease is observed in students’ mathematics achievement. However, if these deficiencies are at ‘very minor’ or ‘some extent’ levels, there is no significant impact on student performance. At this point, the importance of educational institutions ensuring balance in teacher supply should be emphasized.
Secondly, no significant relationship can be detected between the professional development opportunities offered to mathematics teachers and student achievement. Opportunities for professional development of mathematics teachers do not make a significant difference in terms of student performance. This situation reveals the need for educational institutions to review and improve their professional development programs.
Finally, the school type factor taken into account in the analysis, that is, whether it is a public or private school, does not show a significant effect on student achievement. This shows that student success depends more on other factors, especially the quality of teaching staff.
In this context, it may be an effective strategy for educational institutions to address faculty shortages as a priority to increase student success. Educational institutions can also create a more comprehensive success strategy by reviewing professional development programs and evaluating other factors that influence student success.
