PISA is an international comparative study conducted regularly to assess the state of education systems. This programme is increasingly considered not only as a performance evaluator but also as an instrument to understand the social impact of education systems. The results of PISA have a substantial impact on the educational policy of the participating countries (Bieber, 2011 and Breakspear, 2012). However, studies about the impact of PISA on national reforms in education are scarce, and those that exist – trying to establish a relationship between the ability of OECD initiatives to influence national reforms with the PISA programme – are not deep enough and insightful (Grek, 2009). This study aims at examining to what extent the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) can be an important tool in the definition of public policies in education in Portugal. Also to what extent this international program does have oriented deep political reforms of education systems (Pepin , 2011). The major challenge of this study is to demonstrate in which aspects PISA can be a way to stimulate, regulate and guide the discussion and action about education policy for quality and school effectiveness – a result tobe achieved by promoting the debate and decision making on educational policies aimed at improving teaching and conditions of student learning. International studies such as PISA have been used as indicators of educational performance at national and international levels. For this reason, policy makers have to take into account the results obtained by their country in each PISA cycle. However, it is not yet clear what is the impact of PISA in the reorganization of national education systems or the OECD influence on the discussion of public education policies. It seems therefore important to understand what is the impact of the PISA as an instrument developed and applied for this purpose. PISA is in fact, on the one hand, an international monitoring program of education systems through evaluation of student performance, and on the other hand, an important instrument provinding key policy recommendations for political dialogue on education (Alasuutari, 2011). Portugal participates in PISA since its first assessment cycle in 2000, but never thoroughly studied what impact this international program has had on public policy making in education in the last 10 years, especially in the promotion of education policies to improve the quality and efficacy of the Portuguese education system. Between 2000 and 2009 PISA, Portuguese results showed a decrease of about 8% of students with low reading literacy performance, from about 52% of total students to 44%. For instance, to understand what underlies this results, it is important to identify (i) which measures to reduce student failure were implemented during this period and that have a relationship with PISA, and, (i) what characterizes this group of students in order to understand what differentiates students with moderate to high levels of performance. The questions which are intended to respond to this study are: •What changes in educational policies and practices have been made in the light of PISA results? •What is the impact of PISA results in educational policy as student failure? •How do policy makers interpret the PISA results in order to justify decisions in national educational policy in the past? And what about new areas of development related to education?

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PISA, Public Policies