1. School achievement

During the last decades, the levels of educational achievement reached by both individual students and educational systems have increasingly come into focus. Setting standards for school achievement targets crucial societal objectives by defining educational benchmarks at different achievement levels.142 This could provide feedback to policymakers, schools, and teachers about the strengths and weaknesses of a school system. Standard setting therefore needs to be accurate, reliable, valid, useful, and defensible. There is a lack of studies on standard setting in the Nordic countries, where the number of national tests is increasing, and there are concerns about the time and effort spent on testing at schools without feedback being provided.

The development of school achievement in the Nordic countries has recently been analysed using published results on literacy and numeracy from the international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) in 1964–2012.143 Such studies have grown in terms of number of participants and frequency of repetition.144 The analysis included the ILSAs done by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in 1960–1990, the TIMSS repeated on a four-year cycle since 1995, and the PIRLS in grade 4 since 2001. In 2000, OECD carried out the first round of the PISA study, with a similar methodology as that used in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) but with 15-year-olds. The PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) study was established in 2012 by the OECD to investigate literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills among adults in the age range of 16–65. The goal of PIAAC is to assess and compare the basic skills and the broad range of competencies of adults around the world. The assessment focuses on cognitive and workplace skills needed for successful participation in 21st-century society and the global economy.145

142 Blömeke S., & Gustafsson J. E. (2017). Introduction. In S. Blömeke & J. E. Gustafsson (Eds.), Standard setting in education. Methodology of educational measurement and assessment. Springer. 143 Gustafsson, J. E., & Blömeke, S. (2018). Development of school achievement in the Nordic countries during half a century. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 62(3), 386–406. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2018.1434829 144 Gustafsson, J.-E. (2008). Effects of international comparative studies on educational quality on the quality of educational research. European Educational Research Journal, 7(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.1 145 https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/