OECD PISA 2025: Student reading and math scores plummet across developed nations
PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD
The OECD's PISA 2025 results reveal a sharp decline in reading and mathematics performance across member countries, marking one of the steepest drops in the assessment's history. The report highlights widespread learning losses, with significant implications for education policy and workforce readiness. OECD analysis points to systemic challenges, including the lingering effects of the pandemic and increased student disengagement.
The PISA 2025 results are a wake-up call for governments and educators worldwide, showing that many education systems are failing to prepare students for the challenges of the modern world.
- somenameforme
IQ scores in most of the Western world began reversing sometime from the 90s to early 00s. [1] That link is for the US but similar stuff has also been observed in most of every Western/OECD nation. By contrast they're still rapidly increasing in the 'Global South'. You'd expect this to manifest in reduced test scores and reduced quality of outcomes across a breadth of fields over time paired with the inverse happening in countries seeing gains. And that does not seem inaccurate.
Why this is, is an interesting question but it hits on too many taboo topics. Though perhaps rational discussion becoming taboo is itself a part of the reason. When you accept reality, whatever it gives you, you're obviously going to have a far more rational population and better outcomes than one that insists on bending reality to fit a desired narrative, even when it obviously does not. After all this is precisely what brought Greater Arabia from the center of education and learning in the world to rather the opposite. It wasn't religion, but letting ideology dominate reality instead of the other way around.
[1] - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...
- blululu
Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split:
Japan: -3
S Korea: -1
Singapore: +1
Taiwan: +9
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Germany: -45
France: -38
Sweden: -33
US: -10
This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently than their East Asian counterparts and stop pursing those actions as national policy
*edit for formatting
- kmitz
PISA data show that students who use AI for specific schoolwork tasks, such as summarising texts, drafting or conducting research, attain lower scores in science than students who do not use AI.
See graphs on PISA 2025 homepage : https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum...
So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers.
Seriously, this should be a major signal to keep screens and AI solutions out of classrooms. That's not solving everything but at least students would be given a few hours window of de-brainroting everyday.
I'm open to accept that AI can have a positive impact on education but people and tools are apparently not ready and for the moment using it is a net negative.
- aennassiri
This is alarming.
I believe it is probably a combination of several factors:
- Social media and doomscrolling without sufficient parental controls: Several OECD countries are already addressing this by introducing or considering restrictions on teenagers’ access to social media.
- App UX/UI: Many apps are designed to compete for our attention, which can gradually reduce our ability to sustain focus.
- LLMs: The impact of AI is more recent and still needs to be properly assessed. However, LLMs could significantly affect attention and critical thinking for both adults and children, especially as we increasingly delegate parts of our thinking to AI models.
- Changes in the education system: In France, for example, mathematics was removed as a mandatory subject for some high-school tracks for a period of time. In my view, that was a major mistake.
- COVID-19: Many students experienced significant gaps in their education during the pandemic, with the effects often being more pronounced among students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
- nntwozz
At Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg Sweden 80% of the students would pass the entrance exam in the 60s.
These days it's reversed, only 20% pass.
I was told this was the case around 2005 when I studied there.
The exam has not changed in difficulty.
- gonzalohm
Anecdotal, but in Spain kids don't take these tests seriously.
I remember when we were in school we would ask if the tests counted towards the final note for the subject and they didn't so we would just basically finish asap so we could do other things.
And I think this wasn't a "just my class" kind of thing.
- lordnacho
The decline seems to have started in the 2010s. Makes me wonder if this is connected to Jon Haidt's ideas about the impact of social media.
- logifail
"English pupils have pulled ahead of the rest of the UK in international reading, maths and science tests, new data suggests, with Scotland and Wales falling further behind."
Appreciate this stuff gets political very quickly, but I'm curious what did England do that Scotland and Wales did not do (or vice versa)?