LAUSR

either intentionally or subliminally, countries are absorbing this message. It is a message that runs parallel to, and may support, the neo-liberal reform agenda in education. The overriding lesson of PISA is how to ‘see like PISA’ and buy in to the idea of governance through numbers, focusing on a single index of success. What is remarkable is that this volume manages to fill 250 or more pages with discussion, insight and analysis, while hardly ever examining the actual content of PISA. It will undoubtedly become essential reading for anybody interested in national policy debates in an international context, but only in the context of Singapore does it come close to analysing what the substance of PISA means. That discussion hinges on the question of whether a high score on PISA can result from teaching to the test, or whether, as the OECD claims, PISA measures meta-cognitive abilities that cannot be learned by rote. But while the issue is raised, it is hardly resolved, and similar issues, such as whether a reading score in Chinese can be equivalent to a reading score in English or French, are never addressed. The various contributors to this volume cite PISA scores and ranks without any examination of what they indicate. Ironically, it may be scholars of comparative education, the contributors to this book among them, who have learned to ‘see like PISA’.