PISA is a collaborative effort, bringing together experts from the participating countries, steered jointly by their governments based on shared, policy-driven interests.
A PISA Governing Board, on which each country is represented, determines the policy priorities for PISA, in the context of OECD objectives, and oversees adherence to these priorities during the implementation of the programme. This includes setting priorities for the development of indicators, for establishing the assessment instruments and for reporting the results.
Experts from participating countries also serve on working groups that are charged with linking policy objectives with the best internationally available technical expertise. By participating in these expert groups, countries ensure that the instruments are internationally valid and take into account the cultural and educational contexts in OECD Member and Partner countries and economies, that the assessment materials have strong measurement properties, and that the instruments place emphasis on authenticity and educational validity.
Through National Project Managers, participating countries and economies implement PISA at the national level subject to the agreed administration procedures. National Project Managers play a vital role in ensuring that the implementation of the survey is of high quality, and verify and evaluate the survey results, analyses, reports and publications.
The design and implementation of the surveys, within the framework established by the PISA Governing Board, is the responsibility of external contractors. For PISA 2022, the overall management of contractors and implementation was carried out Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the United States as the Core A contractor. Tasks under Core A also included the instrument development, development of the computer platform, survey operations and meetings, scaling, analysis and data products. These tasks were implemented in co-operation with the following subcontractors: i) the University of Luxembourg for support with test development, ii) the Unité d’analyse des systèmes et des pratiques d’enseignement (aSPe) at the University of Liège in Belgium for test development and coding training for open-constructed items, iii) the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in the Netherlands for the data management software, iv) Westat in the United States for survey operations, and v) HallStat SPRL in Belgium for translation referee.
The remaining tasks related to the implementation of PISA 2022 were implemented through additional contractors – Cores B1, B2, B3, C, D and E to D. The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in the United States facilitated the development of the mathematics assessment framework as the Core B1 contractor. ETS also facilitated the development of the background questionnaire frameworks as the Core B2 contractor. ACT/ACTNext in the United States Netherlands performed the test development for the innovative domain as the Core B3 contractor. Core C focused on sampling and was implemented by Westat in the United States in co-operation with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Core D was managed by cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control in Belgium for linguistic quality control in co-operation with BranTra in Belgium. Core E focused on country preparation and implementation support and was managed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in Australia.
The OECD Secretariat has overall managerial responsibility for the programme, monitors its implementation daily, acts as the Secretariat for the PISA Governing Board, builds consensus among countries and serves as the interlocutor between the PISA Governing Board and the international Consortium charged with implementing the activities. The OECD Secretariat also produces the indicators and analyses and prepares the international reports and publications in co-operation with the PISA Consortium and in close consultation with Member and Partner countries and economies both at the policy level (PISA Governing Board) and at the level of implementation (National Project Managers).