Seven in ten Brazilian 15-year-olds, or 72%, scored below level 2 in mathematics in Pisa 2025, the minimum threshold the assessment treats as satisfactory. The results were released on Tuesday (Sept. 8). This edition tested more than 760,000 15-year-olds across 91 countries and regions, including more than 30,000 Brazilians, according to Folha de S.Paulo. Pisa is the Programme for International Student Assessment, run every three years by the OECD, the group of mostly rich countries, to measure math, reading and science.
In practice, by the examples cited by G1, a student at that level cannot multiply to convert currencies, for instance saying how many reais 2 dollars are worth knowing that 1 dollar equals 5.13 reais, or compare the distances a car travels on two different routes. The OECD defines level 2 as the baseline needed to take full part in society. Among member countries, 35% of students fall below it in math, less than half the Brazilian share.
Most of the Brazilian students who miss the minimum sit at the very bottom of the scale. According to G1, 44% score below even level 1a, the very low band, and another 28% stop at level 1a. At the top, the picture flips: virtually no Brazilian student reaches levels 5 or 6, the highest in Pisa, where 8% of students sit in the OECD average.
No measurable change in a decade
Brazil's average math score was 377 points, exactly the same as ten years ago, according to Folha. From 2022 to 2025 it fell 2 points, a variation that can sit within the sampling margin of error and that, under Pisa methodology, does not show a real change in performance. The average across the OECD's current 38 members was 463 points, and the group posted its worst results in the assessment's history in all three areas, with a steep math decline after 2018. The 2025 edition also included, for the first time, a computational problem-solving test, in which Brazil scored 406 points, near Jordan and Argentina and almost 100 below the OECD average of 500, according to G1.
What researchers say
On causes, the test measures nothing. The explanations come from researchers. For Ernesto Martins of Iede (Interdisciplinarity and Evidence in the Educational Debate), a Brazilian research center, the weakness in math is shared across South America: none of the eight countries in the region with data in 2025 comes close to the OECD average, and Brazil, at 377 points, sits ahead of only Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay, with Uruguay, the region's best, at 405. In his view, one reason lies in how teachers are trained.
"We need to expand teachers' mathematical repertoire. Our degree programs often attract candidates with a weaker basic education, and during their studies they cannot always make up for these gaps and sufficiently prepare the future teacher for classroom practice," Martins told G1.
On the student side, the gaps pile up year after year.
"Math has a progression that depends particularly on earlier learning. A child who does not consolidate number sense, operations, fractions and proportionality reaches the final school years with gaps that make algebra, geometry and problem solving harder. The teacher in those final years then teaches more advanced content to students who have not yet mastered the fundamentals," he said.
For families and schools, the practical reading of the data lies in that progression: the gaps that stall teenagers form in the early years, in foundations such as number sense, operations, fractions and proportionality. Catching and fixing those difficulties early, and expanding teachers' mathematical training, is the path the researcher points to for lifting Brazil off the bottom of the Pisa scale.