The 2025 PISA 2025 results show that 90 countries around the world have the lowest levels of science, reading and math proficiency among 15-year-olds on record.
The PISA study is conducted every three years by order of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and covers hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren (both in OECD and non-OECD countries).
In 2025, 760 thousand people from 91 countries took the PISA test.
The latest report states that one in five teenagers demonstrates low levels of knowledge in three key areas - science, mathematics and reading.
Specifically, 45%—almost half of the study participants—do not achieve basic reading literacy. This is not about the ability to read words, but about the ability to understand and analyze what is read.
The report's authors emphasize that over the past three years - since the last study - reading scores have deteriorated particularly sharply.
OECD education director Andreas Schleicher called reading "the foundation of all skills" and said the sharp decline in results was a serious concern.
Over the past decade, he said, students' ability to read and understand complex texts has declined so much that it equates to the loss of about two years of schooling.
Long-term PISA studies also show that teenagers who read longer books perform better. According to Schleicher, such reading develops the ability to retain and comprehend large amounts of complex information.
The report says that the decline in precisely those skills that are becoming increasingly important in the age of artificial intelligence is particularly alarming: most notably the ability to think critically and evaluate the reliability of information.
PISA tests not so much school knowledge per se, but the ability to analyze information, solve problems, apply acquired knowledge in practice and draw conclusions.
Singapore, China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea form the top five educational systems with the highest results.
Ireland, Estonia, Great Britain and New Zealand made the top ten.
However, although the UK performed well overall, performance in different parts of the country again varied significantly. England, which has a markedly different school system, consistently outperforms Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Some progress over past studies has also been observed in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Montenegro, Qatar and Slovakia. Costa Rica showed significant improvement in one area: science.
Among OECD countries, the sharpest declines in reading are in Slovenia and Iceland.
Germany ranked 24th, only slightly above the OECD average. The United States was in 13th position, Poland in 14th, and Türkiye in 18th.
In mathematics, Germany's results were below the OECD average: the country came in 26th place, just one place ahead of the United States.
The lowest scores among study participants were recorded in Cambodia and Rwanda - about 300 points in each of the three disciplines.
In 2025, Ukraine participated in the study for the third time in total and the second time under conditions of full-scale war.
According to the report, Ukrainian schoolchildren are about a year and a half behind their peers in developed countries in math and science, and about two years behind in reading.
According to PISA, 46% of Ukrainian schoolchildren surveyed do not reach the basic level in mathematics, and 45% in reading. In the natural sciences there are 35% of such teenagers. In general, 56.4% of Ukrainian 15-year-old schoolchildren show low results in at least one of three areas.
Another result is especially indicative: 29.3%, that is, almost every third Ukrainian schoolchild, did not reach the basic level in all three disciplines simultaneously.
However, there is good news, PISA researchers note. After a sharp deterioration in indicators in the period from 2018 to 2022, the results of Ukrainian schoolchildren have stabilized - there was no new significant drop in 2025.
Ukraine's average PISA score was 448 in science, 431 in math and 418 in reading. This is respectively 34, 32 and 43 points below the average for OECD countries - mainly countries with developed economies.
Based on the combined results of the three disciplines, Ukraine with 1319 points is ahead of Bulgaria, Moldova and Georgia, but is inferior to Slovakia, Poland and Estonia.
Another noticeable change in education, which was recorded by the latest OECD study, was the increasing use of artificial intelligence systems by schoolchildren.
The report found that 46% of schoolchildren in OECD countries use AI chatbots to help them study once a week or more. At the same time, 28% of respondents in developed countries admitted that their classmates are constantly distracted from science lessons to check their digital devices.
The authors of the study note that the impact of AI on education is an ambiguous process, which has both negative and positive sides.
For example, PISA data “showed that students who use AI for certain school tasks, such as highlighting, writing and research, scored lower in science than those who do not use AI.”
In such cases, students working without the help of artificial intelligence are about a year ahead of those using it.
However, using AI for more general purposes does not lead to a drop in scores, and in some cases even leads to slightly higher science scores.
The report's authors warn that overuse of AI could lead to what is known as "cognitive offload": students increasingly rely on technology to find and process information instead of doing the work themselves.
The study compares this to the widespread use of a vaccine among schoolchildren that has not yet been tested.
OECD Education Director Andreas Schleicher called on governments to develop clear rules for the use of artificial intelligence in schools.
According to him, it is necessary to determine how to apply AI in a targeted manner so that it helps teachers and the educational process, and does not turn into a tool for schoolchildren that allows them to simply “get ready-made answers faster.”
