PISA 2025: A 28-Point Reading Drop Across the OECD, and a Doubt About Testing

Across OECD countries, 15-year-olds' average reading scores fell by 28 points between 2015 and 2025, and by 22 points in mathematics over the same period. Those figures come from the 2025 results of the Programme for International Student Assessment, the OECD's testing programme, as reported in a Conversation Canada analysis. The decline is the number; the argument is about the remedy. Standardized testing, that analysis contends, was never the simple answer for educational attainment — a claim it frames as something the results suggest, not as something the OECD itself states. Worth separating the two: a measurable drop in scores and a judgment about whether testing fixes scores are different kinds of claim, and only the first is a number.