PISA 2025 Results Show Sharp Decline in Reading and Math Skills Across OECD

The OECD's PISA 2025 report, released this week, found that average reading scores among 15-year-olds fell by 28 points across member countries between 2015 and 2025 - equivalent to roughly a year and a half of lost learning. The share of students who read quickly but inaccurately, described by researchers as “hasty reading,” nearly doubled to 9 percent between 2018 and 2025.

Performance varied widely across Europe: seven EU countries scored significantly above the OECD average, while thirteen scored well below it. Students in Spain, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, Greece, Romania, Cyprus and Bulgaria fell below the OECD average across reading, mathematics and science, while Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Austria, Poland and Czechia were among the few to score above it. Researchers linked the broader decline to the growing prominence of screens and students' shrinking ability to sustain attention through longer texts, though they noted one unexpected twist: disadvantaged students' reading scores fell by only 4 points on average, compared with a 20-point drop among advantaged students, narrowing a gap that had been widening for years.