The OECD, the club of mostly rich countries that runs the Pisa exam, released the 2025 results on Tuesday (8). Pisa is given every three years to measure what 15-year-olds in 91 countries and economies have learned, and Brazil's episode has had the same plot for a decade: 377 points in math, the same score as in 2015, 71st place among the 89 countries ranked in the subject, and six Latin American neighbors ahead of it.
In the regional match-up, Brazil lost to Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia in math, and tied with Lebanon. According to G1, Globo's news portal, Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Guatemala scored lower. In reading Brazil got 408 points (52nd, alongside Mexico and Albania), and in science, the spotlight subject of this edition, 409 points (67th, tied with Azerbaijan).
The bigger scoreboard
More than 760,000 teenagers took the test worldwide, around 30,000 of them in Brazil, Folha de S.Paulo reports. For the first time there was a fourth assessment, on solving problems with computational tools. Brazil scored 406 points there, against an OECD average of 500.
The heaviest number sits outside the ranking table: 43.8% of Brazilian students scored below the minimum proficiency level in all three subjects at once, more than double the OECD average of 19.7%. At the other end, only 1.8% reached top performance in at least one area, against 11.9% among rich countries. Folha also points to a 96-point gap in science between the wealthiest 25% and the poorest 25% of Brazilian students.
Stable, at a low level
The 2025 edition had ten more participants than 2022 (91 against 81), which by itself pushes countries down the ranking. G1 reports that Brazilian scores were statistically stable in the three areas, a stability that has lasted since 2015 and, as the outlet sums it up, sits at a low level. Meanwhile, OECD member countries posted their worst average in the history of the exam; in math, the group average fell 22 points between 2015 and 2025, the equivalent of a bit more than one year of learning.
Spoiler for ranking fans: Singapore led in reading with 535 points. The full Pisa 2025 report, with every table, is available on the OECD website, oecd.org, for a country-by-country check.