Who takes part in PISA?

PISA assesses 15- and 16-year-old students, because in most OECD countries students at this age are approaching the end of compulsory schooling. First, a representative sample of schools is selected (reflecting a mixture of schools by size, location, type, and gender and socioeconomic composition).

Next, students are sampled within participating schools.

In Ireland, participating students are in both junior cycle and senior cycle. PISA has rigorous technical standards, so response rates must be high. At least 85% of schools, and 80% of students, need to participate, for results to be deemed valid.

For PISA 2025, parents/guardians of students participating in the assessment will be invited to complete a parent questionnaire that asks about the students’ home environment. This element of PISA was introduced in Ireland for the first time in 2015. It is important that as many parents as possible return a questionnaire so that the results will be deemed valid and can contribute to the development of educational policy.

The school principals in participating schools are also asked to complete a questionnaire that askes about school management, resources, policies and practices. In each cycle of the study, the ERC develops a national questionnaire for teachers or subject coordinators who teach the ‘major domain’. As science is the major domain, or main focus, of the assessment in 2025, science coordinators or science department heads in each participating school will be asked to complete this questionnaire which asks about the organisation of science learning within the school. For PISA 2022, teachers and coordinators of mathematics were invited to complete a questionnaire.