PISA 2025 – Information for Schools, Teachers, Parents and Students

The PISA 2025 Main Study

Preparations are now underway for the PISA 2025 Main Study, due to take place in Ireland in March and April 2025. Approximately 8,000 students from 172 schools across Ireland will be asked to participate in the Main Study. Principals and science coordinators from these schools, as well as the parents/guardians of participating students will also be invited to complete questionnaires as part of the study. A copy of the PISA Technical Standards is available here.

The PISA 2025 Field Trial

The Field Trial for PISA 2025 took place between March and April 2024. We tested in 53 schools and sampled 50 students per school. Over 2,000 students participated in the Field Trial. Principals, and science coordinators from these
53 schools also participated, including the parents/guardians of participating students.

The student assessment and questionnaire, as well as the school and science coordinator questionnaire were entirely computer-based. The parent questionnaires were paper-based.

The PISA Assessment was delivered via an online and an offline mode. This mode of delivery is a new feature for PISA 2025 which was developed to ensure that the assessment runs smoothly across schools with differing internet capabilities.

Short summaries on PISA findings

The OECD publishes short, themed summaries of PISA results which may be of interest to students, parents, teachers and policymakers.

Try out the PISA tests!

Try out released questions from PISA here.

Policy on confidentiality and anonymity

All information collected as part of PISA in Ireland is done so in accordance with the Data Protection and Statistics Acts and GDPR. The confidentiality and anonymity of participants is very important, and information on an individual school will only ever be provided to that school and will never be released to other schools or individuals. Information on individual teachers, students and parents will never be released.

PISA & GDPR

As well as measuring pupils’ achievement in in mathematics, science and reading, PISA also collects contextual information through questionnaires completed by pupils, parents/guardians, teachers, and principals.

The information collected through these questionnaires is used to provide a more complete picture of the experiences of pupils in the Irish education system. For example, it allows us to answer questions such as ‘do fifteen year old students who say that they enjoy their mathematics lessons in school tend to have higher scores in mathematics?

More information on how the data for each questionnaire are processed (including details about confidentiality and the retention of data) can be found in the links below.

DATA PROTECTION DECLARATION for parents/guardians and students

DEARBHÚ UM CHOSAINT SONRAÍ do tuismitheoirí /chaomhnóirí agus mic léinn

DATA PROTECTION DECLARATION for teachers / science coordinators

DEARBHÚ UM CHOSAINT SONRAÍ do múinteoirí/comhordaitheoirí eolaíochta

DATA PROTECTION DECLARATION for principals

DEARBHÚ UM CHOSAINT SONRAÍ do phríomhoidí

For more information on the ERC’s data protection policy, please click here.