Romanian pupils score poorly in PISA 2018 tests, prompting questions about capacity to use knowledge in everyday life

A little over 50% of Romanian pupils are able to use knowledge accumulated in school in their everyday lives, as shown in resuts of PISA 2018 tests published on Tuesday. In this edition of the tests, Romania scored even poorer results than in testing made in 2015 and 2018 in the program aimed at checking the capacity of pupils to adapt their knowledge to their social and economic lives.

The PISA 2018 results are expected to fuel debates on the state of Romanian education, which has been marked by a lack of sustainable reform, by temporary changes and confusing governmental measures for the past decade.

The 2018 PISA results show Romania is one of three countries, along with Malta and Taiwan reporting a drop in performance in mathematics as compared to 2015.

The OECD report shows that pupils reported lower scores than the average in all three segments of the tests – reading, mathematics and science.

And a smaller proportion of pupils, as compred to the OECD average, reported the highest level of competence at at least one subject of the three. The same is valid for the opposite – a smaller proportion than the OECD average reached a minimum level of competence at at least one of the three subjects.

Romania’s scores in PISA tests: