India has not been participating in PISA since 2009. Here's an archived India Today's report on that matter:
India may drop out of international student assessment PISA again - India Today
So, what's PISA? According to their website:
PISA is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.
After being ranked 72nd out of 73 countries in 2009, beating Kazakhstan with "great success", India stopped participating in PISA. Indian officials cited two main reasons for the withdrawal:
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"cultural disconnect": Probably meaning that India has a different pedagogical philosophy than the "West". China was ranked 1 in 2009, BTW.
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Misinformation regarding the language of examination: In '09 students thought that the only language they could take the exam was English. So they didn't perform well.
In 2019, India was to reengage with PISA, and had decided to take the 2021 test. The officials made sure that the misinformation regarding the language is clarified, they also chose a few schools that would participate (generally the schools are chosen from a list of eligible schools by PISA's organizing body), and also made sure that a few questions about India are included in the exams so that the students could improve their performance.
However, Corona hit in 2021 and it was decided to reengage in 2025. But now it looks like it may never happen.
So, why would a country which is never in the bottom 2 percentile in any other international exams like the International Math/Physics/Chemistry Olympiads, GRE, TOEFL, etc. perform differently in PISA? There is a "cultural disconnect" in these exams as well, right?
Here's my hypothesis:
All the other international exams mentioned are taken by candidates who specially prepare for those examinations. In Olympiads a team of 6 highly trained students represents a country, and GRE, TOEFL are taken by individuals who prepare for them specially. In contrast, for the PISA exam however, each country draws a sample (randomly?) of 5000 students, as mentioned on the wiki, Programme for International Student Assessment - Wikipedia:
To fulfill OECD requirements, each country must draw a sample of at least 5,000 students. In small countries like Iceland and Luxembourg, where there are fewer than 5,000 students per year, an entire age cohort is tested. Some countries used much larger samples than required to allow comparisons between regions.
Now, because of the representation by five thousand students, the exam measures the average quality of education in schools, which I believe is why India is in the bottom 2 percent. There is a lot of talk about the IIT alumni doing well in academics outside India, but they do not represent the average education in India which exams like PISA test.