PISA’s Impact on China’s education policy

Abstract

This article analyzes PISA’s impact on China’s education policy. This is done by analyzing the reports related to PISA released by the ministry of education of the Republic of China. This study aims to demonstrate how Chinese government utilizes the PISA result to support the previous dicisions about education policy or to identifies problems existing in the national education system? The analysis shows that PISA mainly impact China’s education policy in five ways: (1) PISA is considered as an external but legitimate barometer to measure the national education system (2) PISA is used as a reference to make technical improvement to the national educational system (3) PISA is used to generate evidence for existing policies. (4) PISA is used to find out future required development in the national education system. (5) PISA is helping to create a new international identity for the country which is one of the main goals of the ongoing educational reform. Thus, the analysis shows that the PISA result is used to support some existing policies and to improve the country’s political situation. However, it does have a substantial impact on the national educational policy, especially in the assessment area.