Challenge
IEA’s key challenge was moving PIRLS to digital delivery at a global scale while maintaining the quality and reliability of the assessment, modernising it to reflect online reading skills, and managing that transition during COVID-19 disruption.
Results
The move to digital enabled IEA to assess nearly 400,000 students across 57 countries more consistently and efficiently, while continuing to generate high-quality data to inform education policy and literacy improvement. The success of the transition also created a foundation for future cycles, with TIMSS 2023 delivered digitally on the same platform and RM later selected again for TIMSS 2027.
Product
RM Assessment Master
RM Ava is RM’s adaptive virtual accreditation platform, designed to support the full assessment cycle from content creation and secure online testing through to marking, results, and feedback.
IEA and the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College are pleased to be working with RM to adapt the Assessment Master to the exacting demands of TIMSS 2027.
This latest cycle will introduce exciting advancements and innovative new assessment items to capture rich data about the breadth and depth of these subjects as they are taught in the participating countries.
About IEA
International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA) is an international cooperative of national research institutions, governmental research agencies, scholars, and analysts working to research, understand, and improve education worldwide.
PIRLS
PIRLS, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, is one of the core studies of IEA. Directed by the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development and conducted every five years since 2001, PIRLS is recognised as the global standard for assessing trends in reading achievement at the fourth grade. PIRLS provides internationally comparative data on how well children read and offers policy-relevant information for improving learning and teaching.
Goals
IEA decided to transition to digital assessments for PIRLS 2021 to capitalise on advances in technology and measurement methodology to improve the assessments. It also allowed them to encompass new online reading literacy skills.
For PIRLS 2021, the usual progress of education was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
What was the solution?
IEA chose RM, a UK based company with an accomplished record in delivering digital assessment solutions, to help them achieve their goals of improving measurement through more engaging and interactive assessment materials and procedures.
Using RM’s platform meant operational procedures (e.g. the digital equivalents of printing and sending materials to schools) were more consistent and efficient after the move to digital assessments.
Results
Nearly 400,000 students in 57 countries were assessed. The results of the study are used to inform education policy and raise literacy rates. An example finding from the study was that the gender gap favouring girls, as found in each successive PIRLS cycle, persisted in PIRLS 2021. Girls had higher reading achievement than boys in 51 of the 57 countries, with an average advantage of 19 points.
“During the digital assessments, we saw the gender gap favouring girls found in each successive PIRLS cycle persisted in PIRLS 2021, when girls had higher reading achievement than boys in 51 of the 57 countries, with an average advantage of 19 points.”
PIRLS 2021 was the only international assessment of educational achievement that collected data during COVID-19’s disruption in students’ schooling, affecting nearly half the assessed students for 8 weeks or more*
TIMSS, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, is a flagship study of IEA. TIMSS is an international assessment of student achievement in mathematics and science at fourth and eighth grades. Measuring trends in achievement since 1995, TIMSS data have enabled countries around the world to make evidence-based decisions to improve educational policies related to mathematics and science teaching and learning.
For numeracy, IEA’s 2023 TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) also went digital using the same platform from RM.
In May 2025, RM signed a contract with IEA to continue to provide the digital platform for TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) 2027. For TIMSS 2023, the latest cycle of the study, more than 650,000 students in 64 countries participated. IEA used RM's platform to conduct the assessments digitally for the first time in 2023 and, continuing this cooperation, RM will now deliver the next assessment in 2027.
*This case study was included in British Expertise International’s Education Report, “Systems Strengthening: The UK Education Providers’ contribution to the global education systems”, as part of their Education Working Group under the pillar “Provision of Inclusive Quality Education”.
Education is a crucial pillar of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This case study is an example of Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
