9th September 2026
There are few subjects more important to parents than the education their children receive. It determines not only what they know when they leave school, but increasingly their opportunities throughout adult life.
That is why the latest international education results should concern everyone in Scotland.
The OECD's new PISA 2025 assessment of 15-year-olds presents a striking picture. England is now among the world's better-performing education systems in mathematics, reading and science. Scotland remains above the OECD average in reading and science, but its long-term performance has deteriorated. Wales is performing considerably worse, falling below the OECD average in all three subjects.
The figures deserve careful examination because they tell a more complicated story than simply saying that England is improving while Scotland is declining.
England's mathematics score was 492, its reading score 497 and science 516. Mathematics was virtually unchanged from the previous assessment, reading increased only marginally, but science improved significantly.
Scotland recorded 467 in mathematics, 488 in reading and 491 in science.
The difference between England and Scotland is particularly striking in mathematics: 25 points separate the two countries.
In reading the difference is nine points and in science it is 25 points.
Scotland remains a respectable international performer. Its reading score is well above the OECD average of 461, and only about one pupil in five performs below the internationally recognised Level 2 threshold in reading.
So this is not a story about Scottish education collapsing.
It is a story about relative decline and lost ground.
Scotland's own official analysis shows that its mathematics performance in 2025 was significantly below every PISA assessment between 2003 and 2018. Reading performance was also significantly below several of its earlier results.
That raises a difficult question.
What happened to a Scottish education system that was once regarded as one of the strongest in the world?
The answer is unlikely to be a single policy.
One possibility is the different educational philosophy adopted in Scotland.
Curriculum for Excellence was introduced with ambitions to provide a broad education and develop successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. Those are worthwhile objectives.
But there has been increasing criticism that Scotland moved too far away from the traditional emphasis on knowledge, subject content and measurable standards.
Perhaps the balance needs reconsidering.
Children cannot develop critical thinking without having something to think critically about. They cannot analyse complicated texts without a strong vocabulary. They cannot solve difficult mathematical problems without a secure understanding of basic mathematics.
There is another factor which cannot be ignored: technology.
The latest PISA findings provide a serious warning about the effect of digital distraction on young people.
Across developed countries, reading performance has fallen dramatically. The OECD is particularly concerned about the effect of smartphones, social media and other digital distractions on concentration and sustained reading.
This is not simply a Scottish problem.
Indeed, it is one of the most important findings in the entire international assessment.
Today's children are growing up in an environment of constant stimulation. They can move from one short video to another within seconds. They can ask artificial intelligence to produce an answer rather than struggle through a difficult piece of reading themselves.
The danger is that young people may become very good at finding information without becoming equally good at understanding it.
Reading a long article, following an argument, identifying bias, remembering what was read and forming an independent judgement are different skills from scrolling through hundreds of short pieces of information.
Parents therefore have a role as well as schools.
If children rarely see adults reading books, newspapers or substantial articles, it is difficult for schools alone to create a culture of reading.
But schools must also be given the conditions in which they can teach.
This brings us back to England.
England has spent more than a decade putting considerable emphasis on basic literacy and numeracy, including systematic phonics in early reading. It has also introduced a more knowledge-rich curriculum and placed greater emphasis on externally assessed examinations.
It would be wrong to claim that these policies alone explain England's current position.
There are enormous differences between education systems, communities and social circumstances.
But the results make it impossible to dismiss the possibility that some of these reforms have worked.
Indeed, an earlier international reading assessment, PIRLS, provided encouraging evidence for England's approach to early reading, with England performing among the world's leading countries.
The most interesting comparison may therefore not be between Scotland and England at all.
It may be between all four UK nations and the countries at the top of the international tables.
Singapore and other East Asian systems continue to perform exceptionally well. Estonia has also developed an education system that combines strong academic performance with substantial vocational education.
What are they doing that others are not?
And perhaps an equally important question is what they have refused to abandon.
They have not decided that because the world is changing, basic knowledge is no longer important.
They have recognised that technology makes knowledge more, rather than less, important.
Artificial intelligence can produce an answer in seconds. The difficult part is knowing whether the answer is correct.
That requires knowledge, judgement and the ability to read critically.
There is another lesson in the PISA figures that politicians should consider carefully.
England has risen in the international rankings partly because other countries have fallen.
That is not the same as genuine educational improvement.
England's own Department for Education has acknowledged that its results in reading and mathematics have essentially stagnated over the past decade and says that being high in the league table is not a reason to stop reforming.
That is exactly right.
England should not become complacent.
Scotland should not become defensive.
And Wales should not simply blame the latest results on circumstances beyond its control.
The PISA results should instead prompt a much more fundamental discussion about what schools are actually for.
Is the priority to produce examination results?
Is it to develop employability?
Is it to create well-rounded citizens?
The answer should surely be all three.
But none of them can be achieved without strong basic literacy and numeracy.
A young person who cannot confidently understand a complicated written argument is disadvantaged in almost every aspect of modern life. The same is true of someone who struggles with basic mathematics.
The consequences extend far beyond school.
Employers need people who can understand instructions, communicate clearly, analyse information and solve problems. Universities need students capable of independent study. Democracy itself depends upon citizens being able to distinguish evidence from assertion.
That is why the latest PISA results should not be treated as simply another set of league tables.
They are a warning.
And they should be a particular wake-up call for Scotland.
The evidence does not say that Scottish education is a failure. Far from it. Scottish pupils continue to perform above international averages in important areas.
But the long-term direction is worrying.
England has demonstrated that it is possible to remain internationally competitive while much of the developed world is experiencing an educational decline.
The question Scotland should now ask is not whether England has adopted the perfect system.
It clearly has not.
The question is much simpler:
What is England doing that Scotland should be willing to learn from?
And perhaps parents, teachers and pupils themselves deserve to be part of that conversation.
Because this is not really about league tables.
It is about whether today's children are being given the knowledge and skills they will need when they leave school.
If the answer is not good enough, the time to change course is now — before another generation discovers that the opportunities available to them have been reduced by an education system that failed to keep pace with the world around it.
Read the full OECD report HERE
OECD Said
Student performance across OECD countries has continued to decline, reaching the lowest average ever recorded by the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in mathematics and reading. Across the OECD, one in five 15-year-old students is now a low performer in science, mathematics and reading, up from 16% in 2022.
PISA 2025 was the largest assessment to date, involving 760 000 students across 91 countries and economies. This year’s edition focused on science, where average performance was stable between 2022 and 2025 across OECD countries, after having trended downward between 2009 and 2022.
Average reading scores fell by 28 points across OECD countries between 2015 and 2025, equivalent to about one and a half years of learning. Mathematics scores fell by 22 points, equivalent to just over one year of learning. Among non-OECD PISA participants, reading scores fell by 16 points and mathematics scores by eight points over the same period.
Socio-economic background remains a powerful predictor of performance. Across OECD countries, advantaged students scored 85 points higher in science than disadvantaged students. The gap narrowed between 2022 and 2025, but largely because advantaged students performed less well rather than improvements among disadvantaged students.
“PISA 2025 shows that reversing declines in student performance is urgent. The most successful education systems focus on fewer areas in greater depth, invest in teachers, engage parents and provide targeted support for the students and schools that need it the most,” said OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann. “Technology and AI can strengthen learning and help prepare young people for the future, but only when used purposefully and not as a substitute for attention, effort and understanding.”
Between 2015 and 2025, some education systems improved performance in contrast to broader trends. Science performance rose in Lithuania, the Slovak Republic, Türkiye, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Macao (China), Montenegro, Qatar, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and Uruguay.
Türkiye, the Slovak Republic, Montenegro, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates increased their share of top performers while reducing their share of low performers in science.
Most participating Chinese jurisdictions, together with Estonia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei and the United Kingdom, ranked among the ten highest-performing education systems in science, mathematics and reading.
PISA 2025 also shows that when artificial intelligence and digital tools are used, they should be used with care, for clearly defined purposes, and in moderation. Students tended to perform less well when use became excessive or when devices were used for leisure at school.
Digital distraction also affects the wider classroom. More than one in four students said that classmates were distracted by digital devices in most or every science lesson. Students surrounded by distracted classmates performed less well, were less engaged in learning and felt less connected to their school.
Students who say they did not use AI to draft text for writing assignments outperformed those who say they did. Among frequent users, however, students who used AI to help them learn and were taught how to assess the quality of AI-generated information tended to perform better than those who received no such guidance.
PISA’s new Learning in the Digital World assessment provides new insights on how well prepared students are to work with digital tools and break complex problems into small solvable steps. Across OECD countries, almost two-thirds of students reached the relevant proficiency level in computational problem solving. But only half reached this level while also demonstrating basic proficiency in science, reading and mathematics. The results underline the need for both: strong foundations in the core subjects and the ability to apply that knowledge when solving problems with digital tools.
Further PISA analysis will follow in 2027. Results from the Foreign Language Assessment will be released in April, followed by the full results and analysis from the Learning in the Digital World assessment in May.