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.
Teachers or subject coordinators (Department Heads) who are selected to participate in the national subject coordinator survey are those who teach the ‘major domain’ (see “What is PISA?“). For example, in PISA 2025, science coordinators in each PISA school will be invited to complete a questionnaire. For PISA 2022, teachers of Junior Cycle mathematics were invited to complete a questionnaire.
For PISA 2025, parents of students participating in the assessment will be invited to complete a parent questionnaire. This element of PISA was introduced in Ireland for the first time in 2015 and was also included in 2022. 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.
| Respondent | Instrument |
| Students | Computer-based PISA Assessment (2 hours) and Student Questionnaire (1 hour) |
| School Principals | Online School Questionnaire (1 hour) |
| Teachers or Subject Co-Ordinator of ‘major domain’ |
Online Teacher or Subject Co-Ordinator Questionnaire (30 minutes) |
| Parents | Paper-based Parent Questionnaire (35 minutes) |
Which countries participate in PISA?
The number of countries/regions participating in PISA has increased from 32 in 2000 and is expected to increase to over 90 for PISA 2025.
Since 2003, all OECD member countries have taken part in PISA.
The table of participating countries shows the countries and regions that participated in 2022.
Given the large number of participants, for reporting purposes, it is helpful to compare results against a common international benchmark – the OECD average. In national reporting, comparisons focus on a subset of countries that are of interest for policy, linguistic or cultural reasons.
Click on the links below for further information.
PISA National Advisory Committee for Ireland (2022-2025)