From Pisa to Santander: A Statement on Children’s Growth and Wellbeing

The rise of the PISA standards has taken the educational world by storm, with intense media attention and debate every time they are published. Over the past two decades, they have been gaining an increasing role in shaping educational systems and policies across the world, gaining a "canonical status" among member countries, and becoming a global "benchmarker of standards" (Rinne, 2008). These authors believe, however, that the transformation of educational systems according to comparative standards based on a universal, standardised test measuring a narrow range of cognitive abilities across cultures and contexts is problematic in various ways. In contrast to other international assessments such as TIMMS, which is focused on academic achievement, PISA purports to measure "the ability to complete tasks relating to real life, depending on a broad understanding of key concepts, rather than limiting the assessment to the understanding of subject specific knowledge" (OECD, 2007, p. 20). There are issues, however, to what extent PISA really assesses competencies related to real-life context. A more fundamental and epistemological issue is PISA's narrow view of what education is about, namely a reductionist, measurable, economic project (Meyers, 2013). The authors of this article believe in a broader agenda of education, one integrating the person's physical, social, emotional, artistic and spiritual development. They believe that the PISA standards may also pose a threat to diversity and social inclusion, and consequently to social justice and equity. They are therefore arguing for a different kind of education than the one emerging from the PISA standards process.