Countries

The table below lists the total number of education systems that have participated in each of the three administrations of PIRLS. This number includes both countries and subnational entities, such as Canadian provinces, U.S. states, England, and Hong Kong. (Below the table that follows, see the more detailed explanation about the distinction between countries and education systems.) In the first administration of PIRLS in 2001, 36 education systems participated, followed by 45 in 2006. In the most recent administration of PIRLS in 2011, a total of 57 education systems participated (though note that this total of 57 includes four education systems that only gave the 4th-grade assessment to 5th- and 6th-graders).

Countries or Education Systems?

The international bodies that coordinate international assessments vary in the labels they apply to participating entities. For example, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), which coordinates PIRLS and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), differentiates between IEA members, which the IEA refers to as "countries" in all cases, and "benchmarking participants." IEA members include countries such as the United States, as well as subnational entities such as England (which is part of the United Kingdom) and Hong Kong (which is a Special Administrative Region of China). IEA benchmarking participants are all subnational entities and include Canadian provinces, U.S. states, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (among others). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which coordinates the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), differentiates between OECD member countries and all other participating entities (called "partner countries" or "partner economies"), which include countries and subnational entities. In PISA, the United Kingdom and Belgium are reported as whole countries. Hong Kong is a PISA partner country, as are countries like Singapore, which is not an OECD member but is an IEA member.

In an effort to increase the comparability of results across the international assessments that the United States participates in, the PIRLS 2011 U.S. national report uses a standard international classification of nation-states (see the U.S. State Department list of "independent states" at http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/4250.htm) to report out separately "countries" and "other education systems," which include all other non-national entities that received a PIRLS score. The report’s tables and figures, which are primarily adapted from the IEA’s PIRLS 2011 international report, follow the IEA PIRLS convention of placing members and nonmembers in separate parts of the tables and figures in order to facilitate readers’ moving between the international and U.S. national report. However, the text of the PIRLS 2011 U.S. national report will refer to "countries" and "other education systems," following the standard classification of nation-states.

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