Identifying young people’s skills and their need for support in schools is important
PISA offers comprehensive information about the capabilities of 15-year-olds students to participate in society and move onto further studies after their comprehensive education. The study measures the performance of young people in mathematics, science, and reading.
The results from PISA 2022 published in December 2023 showed that the capabilities and skills of Finnish young people are still at a good level internationally, even if the students’ performance fell in mathematics, reading and science.
In the PISA 2022 study, the oversampling of students with an immigrant background was carried out for the second time in Finland. It enabled a more detailed examination of the performance of immigrant students. The study was carried out in 2012 in a similar manner.
A report on the performance of students with an immigrant background in PISA 2022 was published in September 2024.
The results initiated a broad social debate on the different factors connected to the learning results of young people.
Since the publication of the report, there has also been a good debate on the importance of support for learning and schooling as well as literacy, among other issues.
Educational performance has declined in all student groups
How has the performance of young people with an immigrant background changed in ten years? What factors explain the differences in performance in the 2022 PISA study? What things in education should especially be taken into consideration based on the study?
The performance levels fell in both immigrant and non-immigrant student groups.
The students’ performance, however, declined less among immigrant students.
Among them, only reading performance showed a statistically significant decline.
The differences in performance between girls and boys with an immigrant background were also significantly smaller than among native students. The performance of immigrant students in all the assessment areas was, however, still weaker than that of native students, even though the performance differences in mathematics and science had decreased.
Students need alternative ways to demonstrate competency
The most significant reasons for the disparities in performance between immigrant and non-immigrant students in the PISA 2022 study were explained by the students’ socio-economic background and fluency in reading.
It should thus be noted that an immigrant background alone doesn’t predict poor results in the PISA exam, but the main factors would seem to be an insufficient command of the school’s language of instruction often associated with an immigrant background, and the lower socio-economic status of immigrant families. If the student has a poor command of the language of instruction, it makes it difficult not only for the student to learn but also to identify the student’s skills and competence.
This is why it is important that students with an immigrant background receive sufficient support for learning the language of instruction, while being offered different alternatives to demonstrate their competence if their language skills are insufficient.
The diverse backgrounds of the immigrant students must be taken into consideration in teaching and competence assessments. Some of the students have only moved to Finland at primary school age. In addition, there is variability in the students’ countries of origin, native language, family backgrounds, as well as reasons for the family’s immigration.
If young people have difficulties in learning at school, it is important to identify what skills they have and what type of support they need. There may be many potential reasons for learning difficulties and the need for support.
The author works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research of the University of Jyväskylä in the research team for assessment of education. She was reporting the results of the PISA 2022 study related to the oversampling of students with immigrant backgrounds
