Assesment of PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS results

PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS assesments provide international comperative data for monitoring country's performance in science, maths and reading literacy. These assesments' outcomes also help policy makers consider about effectiveness of reforms which they practice in their education systems. The number of countries and economies which participate in these benchmarkings have increased since 1995. In this study, implementing procedures and assesment contents of PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS are introduced and for each assesment participant country's performances are presented. When outcomes of assestmens that were implemented in science, maths and reading literacy in the period of 1995-2012 taking into cosideration, South Korea, Japan, Finland, Hong Kong and Singapore seem as the countries which was consistently in the top five rank in most of these assesments. In the study, detailed outcomes of assesment in which Turkey participated are also presented. According to these outcomes, Turkey's performance in PISA and TIMSS has improved since 1999 which its first participating in TIMSS. Both in PISA and TIMSS, Turkey's average score and ratios of student who can reach high and advanced international benchmark levels have significantly increased in mathematics, science and reading literacy. In these surveys, it is seen that performance of East and Southeast Regions of Turkey is dramatically lower than performance of Turkey's other regions. Whereas most succesful schools have been science high schools, in secondary education vocational high schools and multi-program high schools have shown the poorest performance. In all assesments girls have been significantly more succesful than boys in reading literacy. When we analyse ratio of education payment in budget and GSYİH and education expenditure per student of countires which shows very high performance in PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS, it is seen that indicators of some countries were below OECD average in some years. This situation shows that it should be paid attention to the necessity of other factors which can determine success as much as we care about economic factors as well. Key words: PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS, Turkey, International Assesment