Abstract:

PISA is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment, measuring the 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. While waiting for the results of the PISA2022 survey, we analysed the currently available results of the previous PISA2018 survey in mathematics (MATH), READING and SCIENCE performance (https://www.oecd.org/pisa/) and their relationship with selected economic indicators for 2018.; percentage of GDP allocated for pre-primary, primary and secondary education (%GDP) and country's average salary (in Euros) (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat). All 27 EU countries are included in the analysis.

First, the countries were clustered according to the economic indicators and then their test results on MATH (mean score 488±24.24), READING (480.8±28.15) and SCIENCE (483.2±26.43) were analysed. Utilizing standardized data on the percentage of GDP allocated for education and country's average salary relative to the EU average, the EU countries were grouped into 8 clusters using pseudo T-square statistics. We identified the countries that make up each cluster using k-means clustering:
Cluster 1 (Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovak Republic) stands out for average salaries having the lowest in the EU. The lowest results in all subjects.
Average salaries in Cluster 2 (Germany, Ireland) are also below the EU average, but their subject results are higher than the EU average.
Cluster 3 (Luxembourg) is only slightly lower than the EU average, the average salary is by far the highest in the EU the subject results slightly below the EU average.
Cluster 4 (Croatia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Spain) invest in education the EU average, with salaries below the EU average and the results on their tests are above the EU average.
Cluster 5 (Austria, Finland, France, Italy, Netherlands), invest in education slightly more than the EU average, have higher salaries than EU average with subjects results higher than the EU average.
Cluster 6 (Cyprus, Estonia, Slovenia) invest in education more than the EU average but the average salaries are less than the EU average. Cyprus results below and Estonia and Slovenia above EU average.
Cluster 7 (Belgium, Denmark) invests in education and the average salaries are among the highest in the EU, with above-average results in all subjects.
Cluster 8 (Sweden), with the highest investment in education in the whole EU, and salaries that are above EU average have above average results in all subjects but do not follow the share of investment.

Keywords:

PISA2018 results, economic indicators, k-means clustering, EU countries.