On PISA tests and what they show about Romanian education, with psychologist Dragoș Iliescu, professor at the UB Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences

Professor Dragoș Iliescu, PhD, teaching staff at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Bucharest, invites us, in a new episode of the UB Science Dose series, to a new discussion on PISA tests and Romanian education, situated between the fascination of excellence and an acute lack of equity.

What are PISA tests and why are they relevant? What do the results obtained by Romanian pupils at the PISA tests show about our education system? What are PIAAC tests and why should Romania participate to them? What are the main problems of Romanian education? What are the solutions and how much time would it take to implement them? Professor Dragoș Iliescu, specialist in Education Sciences, comes with answers to these questions and more in the present edition of the UB Science Dose series.

Episode no. 18 of the UB Science Dose series is available below.

Edition 2023 of the PISA tests (Programme for International Student Assessment) has once again showed that nearly half of Romanian pupils are functional illiterates, result which places Romania in the penult place in the European Union in what concerns 15-year-old pupils’ performance in math, sciences and reading.

Professor Dragoș Iliescu explains that, event though the comparison between counties does not represent the main goal of the PISA tests, this ranking forces us to become aware that educational policies in Romania are not producing the results we were hoping for, and also obliges us to find out what is not functioning, by looking both inwardly, at the realities of Romanian education, as well as outwardly, towards those states which have managed to identify efficient and viable solutions in education.

As such, what is behind the results of Romania at the PISA tests? Do we have few pupils who are very-very good? Or too many pupils who have very poor results? PISA tests show that we have both too few very good pupils, as well as too many weak pupils in comparison to the majority of the states in the EU.

However, the difference between the number of very good pupils in Romania and the number of very good pupils from other countries is not a significant one and should not represent the element for concern.

On the contrary, says Dragoș Iliescu, the problem of Romania is the extremely large percent of students who are very weak, meaning those with poor chances, who will, finally, become adults with no opportunities. And, thus, the most important problem of Romanian education is strongly connected to the lack of equity in Romanian society. Children who come from families with a low socio-economic status, from underprivileged environments, especially from rural areas, don’t have real access to education and lack chances, the probably of such a child to attain to excellence in education being under 1%. And the lack of access to education is equivalent, for each of them, to being sentenced to poverty and a life without opportunities.

This precisely, considers Dragoș Iliescu, is the lesson learned from the PISA tests: the insolvency of the Romanian education system is not correlated to the reduced percentage of excellence, but to the lack of chance of the majority of children in Romania. And this situation, beyond individual implications, also involves societal effects, prefiguring a precarious economic system that lacks qualified human resources.

Thus, considering the fact the adequate training and the quality of human resources have an impact on economy and economic growth, the participation of Romania to PISA tests should be complemented by participating to PIAAC tests (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies). These evaluate existing competencies on the work market in representative areas with adults aged between 18 and 65, and allow the identification of competencies levels for various generations and age groups.

As such, if the PISA tests results can be considered a sort of an early warning which would allow the fixing of problems in the course of the following 4 years of high-school, the PIAAC tests show the existing situation on the work market at a certain moment in time. In other words, participating to PIAAC tests would allow, among others, to identify those occupational areas in which the human resource has become or tends to become more reduced, highlighting the fields which certain public policies should concentrate on.

Dragoș Iliescu will talk more, in episode 18 of the UB Science Dose,  about the current state of the Romanian education system, on the relevance of PISA tests, on the way in which participating to PIAAC tests could contribute to economic growth and crayoning appropriate educational public policies, as well as the solutions that Romania should embrace in order to achieve practical and durable results in education.

Dragoș Iliescu is a professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Bucharest and Director of the UB Doctoral School in Psychology. He also serves as extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University. He is a specialist in organizational psychology, as well as in psychological  and educational testing and evaluation.

He conducted and participated in several important psychological and educational testing and evaluation projects, in commercial and governmental contexts, in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Among others, he is part of the OECD workgroup which calibrates PISA tests and lead the International Testing Commission, an organism setting the frame in what concerns psychological and organizational evaluation.

He is a co-founder of the Psyence group, that the Brio standardized digital tests platform is part of, by means of which Romanian pupils in grades I – XII can objectively evaluate their knowledge in main subjects and can improve their performance in exams. He has recently published, at Humanitas publishing house, the book Testarea standardizată în educație (Standardized testing in education) meant to explain to the broad audience the processes behind standardized testing.

Dragoș Iliescu is an associated editor of the European Journal of Psychological Assessment and author of over 100 scientific articles, books and book chapters. He has recently published, in the prestigious Nature Magazine, two articles in his fields of interest. Titled Proliferation of measures contributes to advancing psychological science, one of the papers brings to the table the proliferation and variability of psychological measurements and their role in developing theory, transparency, replicability and validity, while the other, titled Adopt universal standards for study adaptation to boost health, education and social-science research, proposes practical measures to advance progress in social sciences, health and education research.

More details about Dragoș Iliescu are available here and here.

The UB Science Dose proposes a concentrated and dynamic manner of sharing scientific information in a lively, expressive and inciting format, establishing a dialogue platform with the broad public interested in science.

Initiated in October 2021 within the Science Communication Program of the University of Bucharest, the UB Science Dose is addressed to the large audience and encourages the connection between the academic and non-academic settings, based on current subjects that are of interest for society.

The guests of this series, meant to represent, in a synthetic and captivating communication manner, the various areas of science, are mainly professors and researchers within the academic community of the University of Bucharest.

The materials presented in the UB Science Dose include short and dynamic presentations of subjects relevant for contemporary society: pollution, climate change, education, digitalization, significant contributions to research, and others. Next to the fundamental need to communicate scientifically proven information, the Dose proposes an important component of social responsibility, confirming the role and mission of the University of Bucharest in society and contributing to increasing awareness on acute contemporary problems and finding and promoting possible solutions for them.