Costs of Programme for International Student Assessments: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/01630
Date received: 13 July 2017
Date responded: 8 August 2017

Information requested

The costs spent so far and estimated costs in the future of the Programme for International Student Assessments.

Response

Scotland's participation in the triennial Programme for International Student Assessments (PISA) began in 2000. Our record of costs which cover fieldwork as well as publication of the research and are the costs incurred over the three years in each cycle are shown below.

Cycle	Fieldwork Contractor	OECD and international consortium subscriptions (1)
2000	£77,400	€0
2003	£170,360	€29,000
2006	£199,860	€163,600
2009	£469,326	€129,800
2012	£443,056	€146,500
2015 (2)	£734,463	€182,378
2018	£691,030	€206,105

(1) Scotland was involved in PISA 2000 as part of the UK but only since 2003 as a separate study centre.

(2) The 2015 PISA collection cycle saw a move away from a paper based delivery, to a fully computer based delivery. This has resulted in an increase in costs in order to accommodate our share of the logistics involved with the new delivery platform as well as for appropriate testing activity of the new platform In addition Scotland took part in an additional element of the PISA data collection compared to 2012, which saw a corresponding increase in staff costs.

Regarding future costs, the Scottish Ministers have yet to make a decision about participation in rounds of PISA in 2021 and beyond.

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