Costa Rica is positioned third in the Latin American region in the last Program for the International Evaluation of Students (PISA) study, which evaluates quality, equity and efficiency of the educational systems.

Chile continues to lead the list in the region and it takes position 44 globally, followed by Uruguay (47 in the world), Costa Rica (55), Colombia (57), Mexico (58), Brasil (63), Peru (64) and Dominican Republic (70).

Globally the countries that take the first positions are Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Finland and Canada.

Close to 540 thousand students 15 years old in 72 countries participated in the tests that are applied every 3 years by the Organization for the Economic Cooperation and Development, tests are applied in the areas of science, math, and reading.

In Costa Rica the PISA tools were applied between May 25 and June 19, 2015, with an aleatory sample, that included 6,866 students in total, from educational centers that capture the great variety of educational modalities in the country, be it day and night schools, technical schools, rural high schools, etc.

Angel Gurria, General Secretary of the Organization for the Economic Cooperation and Development explained that the evaluation not only determines if the students can reproduce what they have learned but also examines if they can apply this knowledge to circumstances in and out of the education center: “Science is not only test tubes and the periodic table; it’s the base to almost every tool we use – from a simple can opener to the most advanced space explorer, everyone needs to be able to “think as a scientist”: be able to balance the evidence and reach a conclusion”.

The Ministry of Public Education of Costa Rica approved this year the new programs for Science topics, these new programs respond to the big challenges of the XXI century, framed in the curriculum transformation promoted by the Ministry which hopes to shape students with analytical thinking abilities, which will construct knowledge instead of memorizing it.