Tatiana Meshkova, Director of the Centre for Cooperation with OECD (OECD-HSE Partnership Centre), International Organizations Research Institute, State University - Higher School of Economics. PhD in Political Science

OECD’s latest PISA-2006 survey of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds shows that some countries have seen significant improvements in student performance since 2000. In many countries the PISA results are the subject for large discussion as well as the basis for education policy improvement and for changes in education strategies. But is not the case of Russia where there are no any improvements in student performance in comparison with previous PISA’s cycles. Taking into account the actuality of PISA’s methodology of quality assessment based on the competency approach for priorities and objectives of Russian education reforms the author put the following questions: What is the reason for this contradiction between this importance of PISA’s results for Russia and this political inertia? What kind of practical lessons could be derived for Russia? And what are the possible directions for usage of PISA’s experience? PISA’s lessons for Russia includes such measures as: systemic and successive introduction of competency approach into education process, development of lifelong learning, use of PISA database for revealing of different correlation between education results and large social and national context, analysis of factors of successful education policy of leading countries participating in PISA.