Attainment in mathematics of Maltese students participating in PISA 2009

Abstract

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) organised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international comparative survey of educational achievement of 15-year-olds. The purpose of this programme is to assess the knowledge and skills in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy of students as they near the end of their compulsory secondary education. This paper examines the mathematical literacy of 15-year-olds in the PISA 2009 countries and economies. It first describes the task characteristics of the mathematical literacy proficiency levels and then explores attainment of Maltese students in mathematics compared with 73 other countries, describing the distribution of students’ scores across the proficiency levels. Moreover, this paper compares in mean performance in mathematical literacy between male and female students and between students attending different school types. Although the results reported for mathematics are based on the performance of students presented with the mathematics test tasks, the sample data still provide strong inferential statistics in which reliable predictions and other generalizations can be made for the whole population of 15-year-olds in Malta.