An Exploration of Reasons for Shanghai’s Success in the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009

The outstanding performance of Shanghai students in the 4th Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2009) gained widespread attention at home and abroad. In this paper, the authors attribute this outstanding performance to three traditional factors and six modern factors. The traditional factors are high parental expectations, belief in the power of effort, and the mechanisms of personnel selection. The modern factors are the openness of Chinese education, curriculum and teaching reform, teacher training, improvement of comparatively poor schools, the financial resources allocation mechanism in compulsory education, and the reform of high school enrollment.