Student performance in science, reading and math is declining worldwide – and Canada is no exception. But despite the downward trend, Canadian teens are still well above the global average and only slightly behind the world’s top academic performers, ranking No. 9 in science, No. 11 in math and No. 12 in reading. The data comes from the latest report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA assesses 15-year-old students worldwide every three years in areas such as knowledge, skills and attitudes towards learning. The largest survey of its kind, more than 760,000 students from 91 countries and economies participated in PISA’s 2025 assessment, including roughly 24,600 Canadian teens from 897 schools. On average, the top-performing students in science, reading and math came from parts of China, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. Other countries that cracked the top 10 in all three subjects included South Korea, Estonia and the United Kingdom. But even the highest-ranking countries saw declines in most measures of academic performance. “Following the unprecedented drop in performance recorded in PISA 2022, learning outcomes have largely stagnated or continued to decline in many countries,” the PISA report stated. “In all three subjects, PISA 2025 results are the lowest ever observed in PISA in Canada, and are significantly below results from a decade earlier, in 2015.” Despite its falling scores, Canada still ranked well above the OECD average in all three subjects. The OECD’s 38 member nations include the world’s most advanced and developed democracies. Canada also did well in other measures, including student engagement, computational problem solving and socioeconomic performance gaps. “Average 2025 results in Canada were lower than in 2022 in mathematics and reading, and about the same as in 2022 in science,” PISA’s profile on Canada said. “Over this period, performance declined to a larger extent among advantaged than among disadvantaged students.” Globally, academic performance declines in 2025 were the most precipitous in reading and math and more modest in science. “In reading, increased digitalisation, longer screen time and falling rates of reading for enjoyment have coincided with weaker literacy outcomes,” the report explained. “Countries with the largest declines in reading also tended to record the largest drops in mathematics and science.” Some countries, however, are bucking the trend, including Costa Rica, Turkiye and the United Kingdom, which all saw average science scores improve. The PISA report points to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic as a contributing factor to the global decline in educational performance, but it also notes that the downward trend was already in progress in many countries before the pandemic struck. “The long-term declines in performance suggest deeper structural issues within education systems, with challenges at the school and system level,” the report said. “These include changing attitudes towards reading, the impact of digital distractions on students and rising levels of absenteeism. “Overall, the data suggest weaknesses in how education systems are adapting to social, technological and economic change,” the report added.
