How Much Progress Do Children in Shanghai Make Over One Academic Year? - Evidence From PISA

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Stanley

Analyzes what PISA can and cannot reveal about Shanghai’s education quality by focusing on students’ academic progress within a school year rather than cross-sectional performance at age 15. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, the study shows that incorporating one-year progress yields a substantially different interpretation of Shanghai’s PISA results. The key finding is that the first year of upper secondary school in Shanghai adds essentially no average value to students’ PISA reading, science, and mathematics scores.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background on PISA and Shanghai

Research Question and Approach

Limits of cross-sectional PISA evidence

Measuring academic progress within a school year

Methods and Key Findings

Fuzzy regression discontinuity design

Value-added effects in upper secondary school

AERA Open October-December 2016, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 1–13 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858416678841 © The Author(s) 2016. [http://ero.sagepub.com](http://ero.sagepub.com) How Much Progress Do Children in Shanghai Make Over One Academic Year? Evidence From PISA Jake Anders UCL Institute of Education John Jerrim UCL Institute of Education and Education Datalab Andrew McCulloch Education Datalab Since its entry into the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009, the Chinese province of Shanghai has been the top-performing economy within these international rankings. Many have interpreted this as demonstrating how Shanghai has a “world class” education system, the most effective teaching methods, and the best schools. This article questions such interpretations of the PISA results. Specifically, we argue that statements about school and school system quality require information on the progress that children make during their time at school, which the PISA rankings do not provide (at least not directly). Our empirical analysis then uses a “fuzzy” regression discontinuity design approach to demonstrate how a rather different perspective of Shanghai’s performance in PISA emerges once pupils’ academic progress over one particular school year is considered. Our key finding is that the first year of upper secondary school in Shanghai adds essentially no value (on average) to children’s PISA reading, science, and mathematics test scores. Keywords: PISA, Shanghai, East Asia, regression discontinuity design, value added The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year-olds’ academic achievement. PISA is conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) every 3 years, and the results now routinely attract significant academic, media, and political attention. Policy makers worldwide have shown particular interest in the exceptionally strong performance of Shanghai since its entry into PISA in 2009. This Chinese province has been listed at the top of the PISA reading, science, and mathematics rankings, even extending its lead over most Western economies between 2009 and 2012. Consequently, there is now widespread belief that Shanghai has the best schools and the most effective education system in the world. This notion has been actively promoted by the OECD, with Andreas Schleicher (2013), director of education and skills at the OECD, arguing that the PISA rankings demonstrate “what Asian schools can teach the rest ofthe world”(our emphasis) . But does PISA provide any hard evidence that Shanghai does indeed have the best schooling system in the world? In reality, PISA headline findings do not provide the answer. Why? Because PISA and other similar studies are based on only cross-sectional data, documenting the skills of school pupils in a limited range of subjects at a single point in time (age 15) . Children’s achievement on this test will therefore be influenced by a range offactors (e.g., parents, peers, family, and community), many of which are likely to operate even before children have started school. In other words, there are likely to be significant differences across countries in children’s knowledge and skills even before the schooling system has been involved. Consequently, before anything meaningful can be said about school system quality and how this may vary across countries, it is the academic progress that children make that needs to be measured. Without doing so, isolating the impact of schools on children’s achievement is almost impossible.1 This observation then leads to an interesting question. How much progress do children in the “world’s best schooling system” of Shanghai really make? The OECD (2010, p. 167) has presented a basic analysis of how an additional year of schooling influences children’s PISA test scores. By estimating a simple multilevel model, including controls for just gender, immigran

FAQs

Why does the article question common interpretations of Shanghai’s PISA ranking?

It argues that PISA rankings reflect achievement at a single time point and do not directly measure the academic progress students make during schooling.

What methodological approach does the study use to analyze Shanghai’s performance?

It applies a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to examine how perspectives change when one-year academic progress is considered.

What is the study’s key finding about progress in Shanghai upper secondary schooling?

The first year of upper secondary school in Shanghai adds essentially no average value to PISA reading, science, and mathematics test scores.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Stanley