Janison is delighted to announce that its partnership with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to deliver the PISA-based Test for Schools (PBTS) will be making an impact on school education in another country: Portugal.
On 5 December, Portugal formally announced that it will participate in a pilot of the schools assessment in the spring of 2020, and the test and results analysis will run in autumn. A total of 44 municipalities and 103 school groups will take part in the test for 15-year-old students.
The PISA-based Test for Schools (PBTS) is based on the globally renowned Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). While the PISA delivers national-level results every three years, the PBTS delivers school-level results annually, allowing school leaders to benchmark their individual school’s performance with that of national education systems worldwide.
Notably, the assessment – which tests maths, reading and science ¬- also measures students’ socio-emotional skills, their family context, teaching environment and their attitudes towards learning. This allows educators to understand how factors such as gender and students’ socioeconomic index influence their abilities and their relationship with the results achieved.
The Janison PBTS platform is based on Janison Insights. It offers educators an enhanced dashboard and streamlined reporting structure alongside a suite of other practical features which allow them to explore their own data. The Janison PBTS platform has delivered the test throughout Russia, will complete delivery in Brazil in January 2020, and will also commence delivery in the United States and Spain in January 2020.
Portugal is committed to taking proactive steps to bolster its education system, particularly at schools level. It is one of the few PISA-participating countries which has shown a consistent positive trajectory of improvement over the past decade across all three subjects – maths, reading and science. It has also made considerable progress in reducing its early school leaving rate – to 12.6 per cent in 2017 compared with 28.3 per cent in 2010.
In Portugal, the PBTS project will run slightly differently from other countries, taking a more collaborative approach between the nation’s schools, with the creation of PISA for Schools in municipalities. This will add a layer of interconnected local networks to a nationwide schools network, allowing ministers and educators to get a broader and shared understanding of local learning with the ultimate goal of systemic empowerment.
The 5 December announcement took place at the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, in a ceremony attended by the project’s main partners – president of Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon Elmano Margato; the president of the Evaluation Institute Education (IAVE), Luís Pereira dos Santos; the OECD’s PISA Test for Schools team coordinator Joanne Caddy; national project coordinator Gonçalo Xufre; and Amadora’s mayor Carla Tavares, as well as some of the municipalities involved.
Janison founder Wayne Houlden said: “It is an exciting development to be working with progressive organisations in Portugal on PBTS. Our team is looking forward to the opportunities to offer PBTS to schools across Portugal.”
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