OAT and ACER Win Best International Implementation Award for PISA 2025 at the 2026 e-Assessment Awards

TAO-Powered PISA 2025 Digital Assessment Programme Honoured for Global Delivery Across 91 Countries and Economies

CAPELLEN,, LUXEMBOURG, June 17, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and its platform partner Open Assessment Technologies (OAT) — the organisation behind the TAO assessment platform, are proud to announce that the groundbreaking delivery of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025 has been named Best International Implementation at the 2026 e-Assessment Awards.

Presented annually by the eAssessment Association (eAA), the awards celebrate excellence and innovation in digital assessment worldwide. The PISA 2025 implementation, was selected as the winner of the Best International Implementation category, which recognises outstanding achievement in delivering assessment programmes across international markets and excellence in scale, innovation, operational delivery and impact. The official list of winners and finalists can be viewed at: https://www.e-assessment.com/eaa-awards/2026-winners-and-finalists/best-international-implementation.

PISA is the world’s largest internationally comparative survey of 15-year-old students, assessing the extent to which they have acquired key knowledge and skills essential for full participation in social and economic life. The results are used by governments worldwide to provide comparable evidence on the performance and equity of their education systems, shaping education policy and reform.

The award acknowledges the successful implementation of one of the most ambitious digital assessment programmes ever undertaken. Together, ACER and OAT delivered PISA 2025 across 91 countries and economies, supporting more than 900,000 assessment sessions in 54 languages through a single, integrated assessment platform.

For the first time, PISA was delivered through a centralised digital assessment platform capable of supporting both online and offline delivery models. This ensured every student experienced a consistent assessment, regardless of connectivity, geography or language — a critical requirement for maintaining global comparability.

The implementation combined advanced adaptive testing, interactive digital tasks, speaking and listening assessments, multilingual localisation and secure data collection at an unprecedented global scale.

"Delivering PISA 2025 demonstrated how a secure, scalable digital assessment platform can support international education assessments at unprecedented scale while preserving validity, comparability and operational reliability," says Miguel Prieto, Vice President Corporate Strategy, OAT.

"This award reflects the strength of collaboration, innovation and shared commitment across our organisations and partners. Delivering a programme of this scale required more than technology. It required a platform capable of maintaining validity, reliability and comparability across highly diverse educational, linguistic and technical environments."

The PISA 2025 programme represented a significant evolution in international assessment delivery. Powered by TAO, the platform enabled a consistent assessment experience regardless of connectivity conditions, language, or location. More than 800,000 assessments were delivered online, while over 100,000 were successfully completed offline, ensuring equitable participation across regions with varying infrastructure capabilities.

"At its core, PISA is about understanding whether young people are equipped to succeed in an increasingly complex world. Delivering that insight at global scale and with genuine comparability is what makes this work so important.” said Goran Lazendic, Chief Research Director at ACER.

"This recognition reflects the dedication of the global consortium and national partners worldwide to ensuring every country can trust and act on its data with confidence. PISA 2025 has established a proven foundation and a clear, credible pathway for future cycles, supporting the continued delivery of high-quality data to inform education policy globally.”

The award-winning implementation was delivered by an international consortium led by ACER and OAT, in partnership with cApStAn and HallStat. Together, the consortium ensured operational consistency, linguistic quality, data integrity, and technical reliability across one of the most complex assessment programmes in the world.

The innovations recognised by the eAA were:

- Delivery of adaptive assessment pathways at international scale
- Support for both online and offline testing within a unified platform
- Large-scale multilingual localisation across 54 languages
- Integration of speaking and listening assessments
- Event-level interaction data capture for enhanced measurement
- Secure, standards-based interoperability using QTI and LTI frameworks
- Reliable delivery under highly diverse technical and infrastructure conditions

The successful implementation demonstrated that international digital assessment can scale without compromising assessment validity, comparability, security, or operational control. It also established a practical model for future global assessment programmes seeking to combine centralised governance with flexible local delivery.

The eAssessment Awards celebrate excellence and innovation in the use of technology to transform assessment worldwide. Winning the Best International Implementation category underscores the impact of the PISA 2025 project and the role of collaboration in advancing the future of digital assessment.
The award-winning PISA 2025 implementation demonstrates that global digital assessment can scale without compromising fairness, comparability or trust and establishes a new standard for how education systems can be measured worldwide.

PISA 2025 Project at a Glance

• Award: Best International Implementation, eAssessment Awards 2026
• Programme: OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025
• Platform: TAO Digital Assessment Platform
• Lead Organisations: Open Assessment Technologies (OAT) and ACER
• Countries and Economies: 91
• Languages Supported: 54
• Assessment Sessions Delivered: 900,000+
• Online Sessions: 800,000+
• Offline Sessions: 100,000+
• Assessment Features: Adaptive Testing, Interactive Digital Tasks, Speaking and Listening Assessments, Multilingual Delivery

About Open Assessment Technologies (OAT)

Open Assessment Technologies is the organisation behind TAO, the world's leading open digital assessment platform. Used in more than 160 countries and supporting over 30 million tests annually, TAO enables governments, educational institutions, certification bodies, and enterprises to deliver secure, scalable, and interoperable digital assessments.

About Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)

For more than 95 years, ACER has been driven by a single purpose – to improve learning for all.
Founded in 1930, ACER began as a small team of researchers determined to bring rigour and evidence to education and assessment. Over the decades, that commitment has evolved into a global mission – combining world-class assessment and research to help learners, educators and systems in more than 150 countries understand what works in education, and why.

Samantha Leonard
Open Assessment Technologies
email us here

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.