National Research Coordinators (NRC) Meeting in Santiago de Chile (September)

The fourth meeting of the ICCS 2027 National Research Coordinators (NRCs) took place in Santiago, Chile, from 7 to 11 September 2026. The meeting was hosted by the Chilean ICCS team at the Agencia de Calidad de la Educación and jointly organized with the ICCS International Study Center (ISC) at the University of Bath. In the preceding week, the ICCS Project Advisory Committee (PAC) had met at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago to advise on and support the further development of the study. The NRC Meeting followed, with representatives from 22 countries attending in person and participants from additional countries joining online in a separate moderated group.

A major focus of the five-day NRC Meeting was to review the 2026 Field Trial and prepare for the ICCS 2027 Main Study. Participating countries received information on the next steps leading up to data collection, procedures during and after data collection, quality assurance, and the planned publication of results. Main Study data collection will begin in March 2027 in the Northern Hemisphere and continue until November 2027 in the Southern Hemisphere.

At the heart of the joint work was the selection of items for the Main Study. Based on the results of the 2026 Field Trial, NRCs discussed in small groups the selection proposed by the ISC for the student cognitive test as well as the student, teacher, and school principal questionnaires.

The feedback from participating countries will now inform the further revision and final composition of the ICCS 2027 instruments. The meeting thus marked an important milestone in the study, bringing the participating countries one step closer to the Main Study and the start of data collection in 2027.