Poor results in PISA tests, decisively influenced by poverty

The PISA tests do not measure knowledge, but rather the ability of 15-year-old students to use knowledge in three main areas: reading, mathematics, and science. As is well known, Romania consistently scores below the OECD average, ranking second to last among EU countries in all three tests (only Bulgaria scored lower). In all three tests, Romania scored an average of 428 points. This score is lower than the OECD average (472 points in math, 476 in reading, and 485 in science). In Europe, the best results were achieved by students in Estonia: 510 points in mathematics, 511 in reading, and 526 in science. Across all countries, students from families with higher economic status achieve better results in the PISA tests.

If we were to rank the population according to income (from highest to lowest) and divide it into four equal parts, we would see that young people in the first quartile (with the lowest incomes) perform at a much lower level than those in the fourth quartile (with the highest incomes). For example, in mathematics, Romanian students in the highest income quartile score 500 points, while those in the lowest income quartile score only 368 points. In Bulgaria, the averages for the two quartiles are 473 and 366 points, in Finland 529 and 446 points, and in Estonia 553 and 472 points. It can be seen that in countries with good test results, the gap between the scores of students with higher economic status and those with lower status is smaller than in countries with poor results.

Romania has the largest gap of all the countries included in the study between the results of students with higher economic status and those with lower status. In the examples above, the average score of the quarter with the highest income is 36% better than that of the quarter with the lowest income, while in Bulgaria it is 29% higher. At the opposite end of the spectrum, among the countries with the best results, the gap is 19% in Finland and 17% in Estonia.