Students in OECD member countries, the club of 38 mostly wealthy economies, posted the worst average scores in the history of Pisa, the Programme for International Student Assessment, across all three areas the test measures: science, reading and mathematics. The 2025 results, released on Tuesday (8), were reported by Brazil's Folha de S.Paulo. The exam, given every three years to 15-year-olds, covered more than 760,000 students in 91 countries and regions and, for the first time, tested the ability to solve problems using computational tools.
Among the 23 countries that have taken part since the first edition in 2000, the average math score fell 32 points over two decades, to 469. Reading lost 29 points, averaging 466, and science is down 17 points since 2006, at 486. Because a 20-point swing in Pisa equals roughly one year of schooling, students in those countries are learning, on average, a year and a half less math and reading than peers of the same age did 20 years ago.
The OECD says that after the "unprecedented" drop recorded in the first post-pandemic cycle, in 2022, performance kept falling in many countries, a sign of structural problems in global education. The share of students in member countries performing below the expected level for their age in all three areas rose from 25% in 2022 to 29%.
"Pisa 2025 recorded the lowest average performance of OECD countries observed so far. Reading performance fell after peaking around 2012, science performance declined more gradually over the past decade, and mathematics performance fell especially sharply after 2018," the report states.
Brazil, stuck at a lower level
Brazil, which is not an OECD member, moved in no direction at all. Brazilian students scored 409 points in science, close to the 401 of 2015, and 377 in mathematics, exactly the same as ten years ago. More than 30,000 Brazilian students took the test. According to G1, 43.8% of Brazilian students are below the minimum level in science, math and reading at the same time.
The scores keep the country far from the averages of the OECD's 38 members in the current edition: 482 in science, 461 in reading and 463 in mathematics. The gap is wide inside Brazil as well. The quarter of students with the highest socioeconomic status scored 96 points more in science than the quarter with the lowest, around 476 against 380. The average gap across the OECD is 85 points; in Germany it reaches 125, the organization's largest, and in Canada it stands at 59.
On digital policy, Brazil more than doubled in three years the share of students in schools that ban cellphones, from 37% to 81%, an effect of the national rule adopted in January 2025. Across the OECD, the figure rose from 34% to 49%. According to Pisa, students in schools that ban phones are about 13% less likely to report digital distraction during lessons. The advance did not come with a better capacity to weave technology into teaching, which remains below the international average. While OECD countries debate how to reverse a two-decade slide, Brazil faces an older task: raising performance that has not moved since 2015.