PISA 2025: What Europe’s slump reveals for Australian schools

# Summary The OECD released PISA 2025, the triennial assessment of 15-year-olds' ability to apply learning in reading, maths and science. Average performance across OECD countries is at its lowest on record in all three domains. Australia scores above the OECD mean but shows worrying long-term declines and inside-the-numbers equity problems that echo the European slide.

# Australia's results at a glance Australia's results reported by ACER: science 509 (OECD average 482), reading 491 (OECD average 461), maths 478 (OECD average 463). These place Australia roughly 10th worldwide in science and reading and about 16th in maths among participating systems. Reading fell 7 points since 2022 and 37 points since 2000. Maths has dropped 9 points since 2022 and 46 points since 2003, marking a steady decline over two decades.

# How Australia's debate is shaping up

# Europe's harder landing — why it matters for Australia

• Germany shows a strong link between socioeconomic background and performance: low-income students are far less likely to reach top performance bands than wealthier peers. The national coordinator warned of rising numbers of teenagers leaving school without basic literacy and numeracy for citizenship and employment.
• The Netherlands now reports a much larger share of 15-year-olds lacking reading proficiency, up to a record level.

Those patterns mirror Australian research showing widening socioeconomic learning gaps by Year 9 and illustrate how national averages can mask deep, structural inequities.

# Practical implications for school leaders

• Treat national averages as a starting point: drill into state, school and demographic data to find where declines are concentrated.
• Address systemic equity gaps — both targeted supports for disadvantaged students and measures that limit socioeconomic stratification across schools.
• Revisit curriculum scope and sequencing where long-term declines persist, while monitoring reforms that have produced improvements elsewhere.

# Bottom line Australia sits above OECD averages in PISA 2025, but the long-term declines in reading and maths and persistent attainment gaps match warning signs seen in Europe. The dataset highlights that policy choices matter: some systems have reversed trends, while others have continued to decline. For Australian school leaders, the task is to translate national findings into focused, local interventions that address equity, curriculum clarity and staffing capacity.