OECD Releases 2025 PISA Results Showing Mixed Performance Across Latin America and Spain

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released the 2025 results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on Tuesday, evaluating 15 year old students across 91 countries and economies. The assessment measured competencies in reading, mathematics, science, and a new category for computational problem solving. East Asian nations, specifically China and Singapore, maintained the highest overall performance in science, reading, and mathematics, while Macau and Japan also excelled in computational problem solving.

In Latin America, Brazil continued to rank among the lowest performing countries. Brazil placed 52nd in reading, 57th in mathematics, 67th in science, and 69th in computational problem solving. Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica scored higher than Brazil across all four analyzed competencies. While Brazil saw a slight increase in science scores, rising from 403 to 409 points, its reading and mathematics scores fell slightly from 410 to 408 and 379 to 377, respectively. Additionally, the report found that 86 percent of Brazilian students have used AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, for school activities, most commonly to help them learn.

In Spain, the results were described as a general debacle among autonomous communities. Thirteen territories saw drops of 20 points or more in reading, and ten recorded similar declines in mathematics. The Valencian Community experienced a significant collapse, dropping 58 points in reading, 38 points in mathematics, and 33 points in science. The Basque Country also saw a decline of 47 points in reading. While Madrid remained the top performing Spanish region in mathematics and science, it still suffered point losses in all three core subjects compared to previous results. Only Castilla La Mancha showed a relative improvement, gaining 10 points in science.