While the UK bucked the trend, results on the continent continued a slide that began in 2018. Photograph: Peter Lopeman/Alamy
France and Germany among countries with low Pisa scores, which show how well 15-year-olds use school learning in life
France’s were its worst ever. Germany’s, too. In the Netherlands, results also tumbled to all-time lows. Even in Finland, Europe’s much-vaunted schools champion and a global leader for decades, scores plummeted.
The 2025 Pisa scores, which assess how effectively 15-year-olds apply school-learned knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics and science to real-life situations, have rocked some of western Europe’s education powerhouses.
While the UK bucked the trend, results on the continent continued a slide that began in 2018. In France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, the proportion of 15-year-olds lacking basic functional literacy and maths skills rose to nearly one in three.
Pandemic learning losses accelerated the drop, but education experts say the roots of the problem run much deeper: chronic teacher shortages, repeated curriculum reforms that have neglected basic skills and widening inequalities within increasingly segregated systems.
Compounding it all, incessant smartphone use has dramatically reduced attention spans, replacing “deep reading” with scrolling, and pupil motivation has collapsed.
Pupils in Germany got their worst-ever Pisa report card, reviving a decades-old debate about the country’s weaknesses in schools, integration and closing the wealth gap. Samuel Greiff, the German Pisa study coordinator, noted an alarming rise in youngsters who lack basic skills for citizenship and employment, including the ability to understand a written text and do rudimentary consumer maths.
The study found that in Europe’s top economy the link between academic performance and socioeconomic status was particularly strong: only 2% of pupils from low-income families achieve high levels of competence, against 25% from higher-income families – a correlation twice as strong as in Denmark or Norway.
“Other countries are far more successful in decoupling educational success from family background,” Greiff told local media, noting that class had a far greater influence on teens’ academic success than whether their family had immigrated.
Germany endured a first “Pisa-Schock” in 2000, when the report’s dismal ratings triggered a nationwide effort to raise performance. The 2012 report identified significant improvement, putting the country above the OECD average.
But the 2025 edition showed Germany slipping back to average, with about one in four pupils lacking competency in natural sciences and one in three in reading and maths. About one in five demonstrated insufficient capabilities in all three areas.
The number of teens deemed “at risk” because they lacked the reading and maths skills for further education has doubled over the last decade, and reading for pleasure has declined at a faster rate in Germany than in other industrialised countries: one in two 15-year-olds said they only read when it was required.
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Strikingly, pupils from the most socioeconomically privileged neighbourhoods recorded the sharpest decline in reading comprehension. Education minister Karin Prien said the report required an urgent response, highlighting the negative influence of excessive social media use and pledging to present new measures to protect younger children by the end of the year.
In the Netherlands, the scores marked a historic low point, setting troubling new records in reading literacy, where a record 39% of 15-year-olds now lack the basic skills required to navigate modern society, evaluate the credibility of sources or process multi-page texts, up from 33% in the previous 2022 edition.
Researchers noted that the Dutch reading score has plunged by more than 60 points over the last decade, meaning today’s 15-year-olds are effectively reading at the level that 12-year-olds achieved 10 years ago.
The decline was less marked in maths, where Dutch pupils once dominated the European rankings, but still represented a record low only marginally higher than the OECD average, while the science score was also below its previous level.
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The Dutch education ministry promised urgent action, acknowledging that the assessment “confirms our decline was not a temporary post-pandemic dip, but a structural issue. We can’t accept a society where a third of our youth leave school unprepared for basic reading in daily life.”
However, teachers’ unions and literacy advocates reacted with frustration. The AOb teachers’ union argued reading levels would never improve as long as “classes are routinely cancelled, non-qualified staff are filling gaps, and the workload is driving experienced educators out of the profession.”
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The reading advocacy group Stichting Lezen added that the failure lay “not with pupils, but with an approach that has turned reading into a set of mechanical comprehension tricks rather than fostering deep reading habits”.
In France, the scores were similarly grim. “It’s worrying, but it’s unfortunately not a surprise,” said Édouard Geffray, the education minister. Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate, called the outcome a “catastrophe” and a reflection of the nation’s decline.
French education analysts have long warned of a lack of state investment, particularly in primary schools, as well as a highly unequal system where socioeconomic status dictates results, while governments have tended to approach education failings by debating timetabling and how many hours children sit at their desks.
Over the past decade, a succession of eight different education ministers has resulted in constant policy changes and reversals, leaving teachers feeling more stressed by the avalanche of directives than by teaching in class. Mid-career salaries, meanwhile, remain below the OECD average and another recent report found just 4% of French teachers felt valued.
Éric Charbonnier, an OECD education analyst, argued that the focus should shift away from debates over desk hours toward greater autonomy to explore teaching methods, and more method-focused training.
In Finland, average results were lower than in 2022 in maths and reading, and stable in science. Dr Arto K Ahonen, Pisa national project manager at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, said the results had prompted serious discussion over pupils’ perseverance and effort.
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“The goal remains to reverse the decline and return to a rising trend,” Ahonen said. “Meanwhile, we recognise the universal decline we are part of.”
Ahonen noted that the Finnish system had seen “no major change in our education system in 50 years,” warning that “curricula must be renewed as times and society change. It’s unlikely that any school system could operate with the same curricula for decades, even a successful one.”
In neighbouring Sweden, record-low results spurred heated political debate ahead of recent elections, with party leaders blaming everything from screens to immigration and insufficient teaching staff. But experts say there is no single explanation.
In its report on the latest scores, Skolverket, the national education agency, said several changes were already under way aimed at reinforcing pupils’ knowledge and the classroom role of teachers in creating a “safer and more equal environment”.
