Pisa results | The Pisa test does not affect the grades and that is why some students dismiss it as a joke – “No one cares how you do the test”

Can you Could it partly be that not all students can concentrate on the test and instead click through the electronic test quickly? Some parents are thinking about this.

HS asked parents in December, how they have reacted to Finland's declining Pisa results. A few respondents said that they had heard from their children that they had flunked the exam.

A ninth grader Kukka Keinänen participated in the latest Pisa test, which was carried out electronically in 2022. According to Keinänen, some of his classmates did not do the test properly, but started “cheating”, i.e. answered the questions incorrectly on purpose.

“Some also shouted test-related things in class. They didn't give others peace of mind.”

According to Keinänen, the teachers have said that taking the Pisa test does not affect the grades, which can affect the students' motivation to take the test properly.

“Some of the teachers encourage taking the test carefully, but some view it more as something that should be dealt with quickly.”

Keinänen describes participating in the Pisa test as a somewhat stressful experience, because the test had to be done in the shortest possible time and he wanted it to be successful. His friends also wanted to pass the exam with honors.

He does not know how many people recklessly take the Pisa exam. He believes that if several schools act as in his class, it could already affect Finland's Pisa results.

Also Kukka Keinänen's older brother, in the first grade of high school Joonatan Keinänen participated in anonymous tests in the ninth grade. It was not a Pisa study, but even these tests had no effect on the grades and the time spent on the tasks was measured.

According to him, anonymity and the absence of consequences affect students' motivation. He himself says that he tried seriously, but at the end of the long test, his concentration began to falter.

“No one really cares how you do the exam anymore, as long as you get it out of the way. Some don't have enough patience and they just screw something up.”

HS interviewed a professor of education in 2022 Mari-Pauliina Vainikai about young people's Pisa motivation. He and his groups have studied how persistently young people do test tasks and how easily they give up.

According to Vainikainen, studies have shown that girls are able to try harder than boys.

“Boys give up more easily and do a little bit in that direction. This often happens when the student knows that the test will not affect his grades”, commented Vainikainen in the interview.

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“The motivation of young people has not changed significantly since the previous survey in 2018.”

A year 2022 National Research Director of the Pisa study Arto Ahonen doesn't agree with the concern about the students being lazy. According to him, in connection with the Pisa study, students are asked every year to evaluate how hard they invested in the exam.

The average of Finnish youth on a scale of one to ten was 7.7 in the latest survey. The students say that if the test affected their grades, they would put more effort into it. In that case, the average would be up to 9.1, says Ahonen.

“The motivation of young people has not changed significantly since the previous survey in 2018.”

In this year's study, the fact that some of the young people did not take the test until the last week of school before the summer vacation did not affect their efforts.

“We had a doubt that those who took the exam in the last week were trying at a lower level than the others, but there was no difference. There was also no difference in the averages of the students' competence.

The national research director of the 2022 Pisa study, Arto Ahonen, would not be worried about the level of investment of young Finns in the Pisa exam. Picture: Antti Aimo-Koivisto / Magazine photo

Ahonen has personally observed the PISA exams in schools, and he has not noticed that the students typed in the answers in the summanmuti. According to him, the Pisa tasks are very different from school exams.

“It has activating and interactive tasks. They are not simply questions to which the answer is written. Actually, there is quite a bit of writing in the Pisa exam.”

According to him, sometimes teachers have been doubtful whether it is worth including students with learning or concentration difficulties in the exam.

“We have encouraged you to at least try. You can cancel if it doesn't work. The teachers have been surprised that even such students have managed to pass the exam from start to finish quite well.”

“Based on this, I wouldn't put too much weight on the level of students' effort or its reduction.”