PISA test: The impact of school characteristics and individual attitudes toward SES on students' academic achievement in Western Balkan countries: Case study Kosovo

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international OECD study designed to assess education systems around the world. PISA assesses how well 15-year-old students can use their knowledge in reading, mathematics and science to tackle real-world problems. Kosovo participated in the PISA test in 2015, 2018 and 2022. Since 2015, Kosovo has not shown any significant progress and has even regressed in some areas. Although Western Balkan countries perform better than Kosovo in the PISA test, these countries also do not rank high in the OECD average. To understand how Western Balkan countries, and Kosovo in particular, stand, we analyzed OECD data for the aforementioned years. The study aimed to examine the impact of school characteristics and individual attitudes towards socio-economic status (SES) on the academic achievement of students in Western Balkan countries, with a particular focus on Kosovo as a case study. To analyze the data and test hypotheses, various statistical analyses were used, such as descriptive analysis of data for all categories, mean and standard deviation, t test and multiple regression were used to assess the impact of SES on independent variables. STATA 17 software was used to ensure more reliable results. Most Western Balkan countries have recorded a decline in achievement in 2022. The results show that the overall performance of Kosovo students in the PISA test has declined, especially in mathematics and reading in 2022. In all three assessment areas, Kosovo has performed below the OECD average and is usually at the bottom of the rankings compared to Western Balkan countries. In terms of gender, there are no major differences between boys and girls in test results in Kosovo, although girls stand slightly higher in reading, as is the trend in most countries around the world. In the areas of mathematics and science, results are almost equal between the genders. Students with higher SES have better results, confirming the importance of social and economic support in education.