Global Literacy and Math Scores Hit Historic Lows in New International Assessment

PARIS — Academic achievement among 15-year-old students has plunged to historic lows across the developed world, with reading and mathematics scores experiencing severe, across-the-board drops, according to the latest international benchmark assessment published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, evaluates basic competencies every three years across dozens of countries. The 2025 assessment, which tested approximately 760,000 teenagers representing 33 million students across 91 participating economies, indicates that prior pandemic-era declines were not temporary anomalies, but rather the acceleration of a deepening global crisis in basic skills.

Average reading performance across member nations dropped by 28 points between 2015 and 2025, an erosion equivalent to losing roughly a year and a half of typical schooling. Math performance followed a similarly steep downward path, dropping 22 points across the same decade. The findings show that one out of every five students in advanced economies cannot solve basic arithmetic problems or extract key ideas from simple texts, an increase from 16 percent just three years earlier.

A Decade of Compounding Losses

The decline recorded in the newest assessment marks the lowest average performance ever tabulated by the OECD in both reading and mathematics since testing began in 2000. While science outcomes remained largely flat compared to 2022, literacy indicators deteriorated rapidly. Between 2018 and 2025 alone, reading scores dropped in three-quarters of the educational systems surveyed.

The scale of the reduction has left analysts searching for explanations beyond the school closures tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. While pandemic disruptions caused an initial sharp fall in the 2022 dataset, the lack of any post-pandemic rebound in 2025 suggests structural vulnerabilities in how young people learn. Across non-OECD nations, reading marks dropped by 16 points and math marks by eight points over the decade, proving that the downturn reaches far past Western industrial capitals into middle-income economies.

In Latin America, countries like Argentina posted their lowest math scores on record, while Mexico touched its lowest marks in nearly two decades. Even systems historically recognized for steady academic standards, including Canada, Germany, and parts of Western Europe, saw substantial erosion over multiple testing cycles.

The Impact of Screen Time and Digital Shifts

Researchers analyzing the 2025 data have linked the drop in reading skills to changing media habits, device dependency, and the erosion of sustained concentration.

Over the past decade, voluntary reading for leisure among teenagers has dropped sharply across participating countries. Instead, everyday student reading has shifted toward short digital texts, social feeds, and bite-sized messaging. The assessment notes that the percentage of hurried readers—students who rapidly skim without parsing nuances—has roughly doubled since 2018.

Classroom technology has yielded mixed returns. While educational software can help personalize practice exercises, excessive screen time during the school day correlates strongly with lower academic outcomes. Widespread access to generative artificial intelligence tools has further complicated the learning environment, often leading students to outsource writing and reasoning tasks before building foundational synthesis skills.

Educators also point to widespread labor constraints. Severe shortages of qualified math and language teachers have forced many districts to rely on uncertified instructors or increase class sizes, dampening the quality of instruction at critical developmental stages.

Equity Gaps and Outlier Systems

Socioeconomic status remains the single greatest predictor of student performance worldwide, though the latest testing reveals unexpected demographic twists.

Across OECD member countries, socioeconomically advantaged students outscored disadvantaged peers by an average of 85 points. While the statistical gap between rich and poor students actually narrowed slightly from 2022 to 2025, the compression was not caused by struggling students catching up. Instead, it stemmed largely from wealthier students experiencing sharper test-score drops than in previous cycles, particularly in reading comprehension.

Despite the pervasive slump, a select group of education systems maintained robust results or bucked the negative trajectory. East Asian jurisdictions—including Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Chinese Taipei—dominated the upper tier of rankings across all tested domains. European performers such as Estonia also preserved high proficiency levels through curriculum stability and equitable resource distribution.

These resilient models share key structural characteristics: a curriculum that focuses deeply on a narrower set of fundamental concepts rather than broad surveys, rigorous professional standards for educators, and cultural norms that emphasize effort and parental engagement.

Policy Repercussions and Future Workforce Concerns

The prolonged slide in core academic abilities carries substantial long-term economic consequences. Basic reading fluency and quantitative literacy serve as the bedrock for modern technical training, higher education, and economic competitiveness.

Economists warn that a permanent downward shift in foundational skills threatens productivity growth and could limit future workforces from adapting to complex technical careers. When a fifth of an entire cohort leaves compulsory education lacking basic numeracy, entry-level vocational programs must allocate greater resources to remedial instruction rather than advanced training.

In response to the figures, education ministries in multiple countries are already re-evaluating classroom policy. Several regional and national governments have initiated bans or strict limits on personal smartphone use during school hours to restore student focus. Others are revising elementary and middle school curricula to mandate phonics-based reading methods, paper-based assessment, and focused math instruction.

Reversing the trajectory will require sustained policy interventions that outlast short-term political cycles. As schools attempt to balance modern technological integration with traditional cognitive discipline, the latest global figures provide clear evidence that educational models must adapt quickly to secure the basic competence of the next generation.