A test taken by 15-year-olds around the world has delivered some of the worst news in its history for European schools. The Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, is run by the OECD every few years and measures how well teenagers can apply what they learn in school to real-life problems in reading, mathematics and science. The 2025 results, published on 8 September, showed reading and maths performance falling sharply across the OECD, and the Guardian’s analysis of the European picture, published on 19 September, found some of the region’s best-known education systems at or near their lowest ever scores.
- 760,000+Students who took the PISA 2025 test
- 91Countries and economies taking part
- 39%Dutch 15-year-olds lacking basic reading skills (33% in 2022)
- ~1 in 3Pupils lacking basic literacy and maths in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland
The global picture
PISA 2025 covered around 33 million 15-year-olds across 91 countries and economies, with science as the main subject, according to the assessment summary. Four Chinese provinces and municipalities, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, recorded the highest average scores in mathematics and science. The OECD’s own headline summary said that students’ reading and mathematics performance declined sharply across its member countries.
Europe’s slide
Results in continental Europe have been sliding since 2018, The Guardian reported, and 2025 continued the trend. In France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, the share of 15-year-olds lacking basic functional literacy and maths skills rose to nearly one in three. England was an exception and bucked the trend.
- Germany posted its worst-ever result, reviving the debate that followed the country’s first “Pisa shock” in 2000. About one in three pupils lacked basic competence in reading and maths, and only 2% of pupils from low-income families reached high proficiency, against 25% of those from higher-income families, a link twice as strong as in Denmark or Norway, according to the study’s German coordinator Samuel Greiff. Education minister Karin Prien has pledged new measures to protect younger children from excessive social media use by the end of the year.
- The Netherlands recorded historic lows. A record 39% of 15-year-olds lack basic reading skills, up from 33% in 2022, and the Dutch reading score has dropped by more than 60 points in a decade, meaning today’s 15-year-olds read at roughly the level 12-year-olds did ten years ago. The Dutch education ministry called it a structural problem, not a post-pandemic dip.
- France had its worst result ever. Education minister Édouard Geffray said it was worrying but not a surprise. France has had eight education ministers in a decade, mid-career teacher pay below the OECD average, and, according to another recent report, only 4% of teachers feel valued.
- Finland, long a global leader, saw average maths and reading scores fall below 2022 levels while science was stable. The Finnish study manager, Arto Ahonen, said the country had seen no major change in its education system in 50 years and that curricula must be renewed as society changes.
- Sweden had record-low results, which fuelled political debate before recent elections.
What is behind the fall?
The Guardian quotes experts who point to several overlapping causes rather than one:
- Pandemic learning losses, which accelerated the decline.
- Chronic teacher shortages and heavy workloads.
- Repeated curriculum reforms that neglected basic skills.
- Widening inequality in increasingly segregated school systems.
- Constant smartphone use, which has cut attention spans, replaced “deep reading” with scrolling and weakened pupil motivation.
In Germany, reading for pleasure has declined faster than in other industrialised countries: one in two 15-year-olds said they read only when required. Strikingly, pupils in the most privileged neighbourhoods saw the sharpest fall in reading comprehension.
What experts suggest
The OECD’s Éric Charbonnier argued that the debate should move away from how many hours children spend at their desks towards giving schools more freedom to explore teaching methods, backed by more method-focused teacher training. Dutch reading group Stichting Lezen said the failure lay with an approach that has turned reading into a set of mechanical comprehension tricks instead of building deep reading habits, and the AOb teachers’ union said reading will not improve while classes are routinely cancelled and workloads drive experienced teachers out.
How to read PISA results
PISA tests a sample of students, not every pupil, and it measures particular skills at one moment in time, so small differences between countries should not be over-read. What draws attention this time is the direction of travel: falling scores across many countries at once, and, in several places, the lowest results since the tests began.
