The OECD released today the results of PISA 2025, the largest international assessment of 15-year-olds’ reading, science, and math literacy. The data shows that Portuguese students’ scores declined in all three assessed areas: in reading, the score was 462 (vs. 477 in 2022); in math, the score was 460 (vs. 472 in 2022); and in science, the score was 482 (vs. 484 in 2022). These results are also worse than those from the first PISA tests in which Portugal participated, in 2000 (in reading) and 2006 (in the other two subjects).
“Perhaps the most concerning result is in reading. Portuguese students have lost 15 points in just three years. This is a very significant drop that cannot be explained simply by the impact of the pandemic, because it occurred after 2022,” explains João Marôco, author of ED_ON and an expert in educational statistics.
Equally concerning is “the long-term trend: since 2015, Portugal has lost 36 points in reading—dropping from 498 to 462. In 2025, we are even 10 points below the 2006 score (472). In other words, in this area, we are facing a decline that leaves us below a level achieved nearly two decades ago,” says João Marôco.
The expert also points out that “there is an important paradox here: Portugal remains virtually in line with the OECD average—462 versus 463 points—but that does not mean our system is doing well. It means that the international average has also fallen and that Portugal has lost a substantial portion of the progress it had made. The question these results raise is not just ‘how do we compare ourselves to others?’, but ‘why are we losing skills that our students had already acquired?’ This downward trend, especially in reading, is concerning.”
From 2000 to 2015, Portugal’s overall PISA results had remained stable or improved compared to previous editions. In 2018, there was a decline in the performance of Portuguese students, which became more pronounced in 2022 and reached historic lows in 2025.
The most important aspect of the 2025 results is not, therefore, a one-time decline, but the fact that we are “facing a continuing trend of declining performance, particularly evident in math and reading. And this is significant because we are not just comparing Portugal with other countries: we are comparing Portugal with itself and with what it had previously achieved.” The decline in 2025 comes at a time when the OECD’s average performance has also fallen, and Portugal is in line with the OECD average. “But the key point is that Portugal has lost skills in recent years after spending nearly two decades gaining them. This reversal of the trend—more so than Portugal’s position in the OECD rankings—should be a cause for concern,” concludes João Marôco.
PISA is a large-scale sample study in which students are selected to adequately represent the population of 15-year-old students in each participating country. The 2025 edition included more than 760,000 students from 91 countries and economies around the world. In Portugal, 6,945 students from 225 schools selected at random throughout the country participated.
Access the report here.