The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy. PISA has been conducted every few years since 2000, most recently in 2022. PISA is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of 38 industrialized countries. PISA is financed exclusively through direct contributions from the participating countries and economies’ government authorities, typically education ministries.
Immigrant students often do worse on PISA assessments than non-immigrant students, especially in industrialized countries. However, the performance gap between immigrants and non-immigrants varies considerably across countries. For example, in reading:
And in mathematics:
The immigrant/non-immigrant performance gap is partly explained by socio-economic and language factors, which were not accounted for in the above charts. Unsurprisingly, when comparing the results of immigrant and non-immigrant students of similar socio-economic and language background, the performance gap is much smaller; and in some cases, immigrant students perform better than their non-immigrant peers, especially in English-speaking countries:
The immigrant/non-immigrant performance gap is still large in Sweden and Finland, though. I’m guessing cultural tensions play a role, reflecting a failure of assimilation. It’s probably no accident that anti-immigrant sentiment is rather strong in both these countries.