Abstract—The programme for international student assessment (PISA) is a 3-year assessment for students aged 15 and 16 years old on the subject of Mathematics, Science and Reading. Its aim is generally to PISA stands in a tradition of international school studies by the International Association for the evaluation of educational achievement (IEA). The global world has seen the participation of OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) member countries and partner countries, and this programme is to stress that what is communicated by the international assessment organizations is just a tip of the iceberg, but participating countries are advised not to overly interpret the PISA results. Malaysia is one of the countries that subscribed to the assessment with a benchmarking of its education system. In the past 2 sessions that Malaysia had participated namely 2009 and 2012, the results were welcomed with mixed reaction. To resolve the mixed reactions of the Malaysian society, the society’s perception of PISA, particularly students aged 15 and 16 years old is necessary. A qualitative case study on the stakeholders’ concepts behind PISA showed differences. The differences were detected, and the impact of the differences was discussed. Index Terms—Awareness, education system, ranking. I. BACKGROUND As the name suggests, the programme for international student assessment (PISA) is an approach to assess the status of a nation’s education system. It is an assessment of a nation’s education system by gauging Mathematics literacy, Science literacy and Reading literacy for 15- and 16-year-olds. The design and implementation of PISA was a jointed effort of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), the National Institute for Educational Measurement (CITO) in the Netherlands, Westat and the Education Testing Service (ETS) in the United States, and the National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER) in Japan. Implemented for the first time in 2000, the global world saw the participation of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries and partner countries in this global assessment since OECD’s mission is to “promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world” [1], [2]. The OECD’s participation encouraged other countries to participate in PISA. Manuscript received February 24, 2015; revised June 12, 2015. Amnah Abdullah is with the Faculty of Education (Science Education) Universiti Teknologi MARA, Selangor, Malaysia (e-mail: amnahaaa@yahoo.com). Robert Francis Peters is with the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Malaysia (e-mail: rfpeters@ums.edu.my). Malaysia is a developing nation that envisions its students are to be of international quality. To achieve the vision, Malaysia made many improvements to its education system, and to determine the quality of the Malaysian education system, Malaysia participated in PISA 2009 and PISA 2012. The outcomes of the participants is listed the following tables. TABLE I: OECD, PISA RESULTS 2009 On the overall Reading scale On the Mathematics scale On the Science scale Mean score in PISA 2009 (OECD average) 493 496 501 Singapore Netherlands United States United Kingdom Malaysia 526 508 500 494 414 562 526 487 492 404 542 522 502 514 422 Adapted and modified from Source: OECD, PISA 2009 Database. TABLE II: OECD, PISA RESULTS 2012 On the overall Reading scale On the Mathematics scale On the Science scale Mean score in PISA 2012 (OECD average) 496 494 501 Singapore Netherlands United States United Kingdom Malaysia 542 511 498 499 398 573 523 481 494 421 551 522 497 514 420 Adapted and modified from Source: OECD 2014 In the 2009 participation, out of 74 participating countries, Malaysia ranked as follows; 57th place in Mathematics with the score of 404; 53rd place in Science with the score of 422; and 55th place in Reading with the score of 414 [3]. In the PISA 2012 results, Mathematics score 421 dropped below OECD’s average score of 494, Science mean score 420 dropped below OECD’s average score of 501, and Reading mean score 398 dropped below OECD’s average score of 496 [4]. Even though some of the Malaysian schools performed above the OECD average, the overall ranking was still below OECD’s average [5] thus Malaysia’s overall ranking was 52nd place out of 65 participating countries. In comparison to the United States of America (USA) overall ranking 36th and the United Kingdom (UK) overall ranking 26th, the drop in the Malaysian students’ achievement was significant enough to suggest a flaw in its education system [5]. Malaysia’s Post-PISA2012 Direction Amnah Abdullah and Robert Francis Peters International Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2015 15 doi: 10.18178/ijch.2015.1.1.003