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PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

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Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#31

Post by jcfrei »

getnormality wrote: post #23
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #3

Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. AI already writes most of the articles I see posted here, is doing math at the level of the best mathematicians, and is writing a ton of the code out there. Given another decade to develop, the kids will be hitting the workforce with very stiff competition. It's not a shock they're putting th…

> Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. If true, this is a disastrously foolish thing to believe. Education is only going to become more important as supervising increasingly advanced AI agents becomes more difficult. We need people who understand all different domains of human endeavor at the deepest level possible. I mean, what…

Just like kids eventually take over most of the daily tasks for their parents (for people in countries where you don't have any kind of retirement fund and assisted living, etc.). Same will happen here - on one hand because the human population keeps growing older without any replacement and on the other because all the new tech will be too complicated for humans to understand.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#32

Post by yorwba »

lordnacho wrote: post #19

The decline seems to have started in the 2010s. Makes me wonder if this is connected to Jon Haidt's ideas about the impact of social media.

If you're referring to the few-point difference between 2012 and 2018 in the first chart here: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum... I think that's more likely to be statistical noise. Keep in mind that PISA was originally normed to a mean of 500 and standard deviation 100. Even the more obvious drop after 2018 (I blame the pandemic) down to a mean of 466 on the reading test in 2025 isn't all that huge in absolute terms, though definitely statistically significant with the large sample they have.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#33

Post by omnicognate »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #28
omnicognate wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quoted Terence Tao. Are you suggesting he hasn't solved any open problems?

Sure, if these kids can all perform at Tao's level, they could likely be able to keep up with the AI capabilities from a decade before they would enter the workforce.

I was clear on what I was responding to, and quoted it: "is doing math at the level of the best mathematics". This is misinformation and a public perception that will harm maths as it continues to spread. For some actual insight on the relationship between human and LLM maths (including on why thinking of it in terms of "levels" is misguided), see the video I linked.

Your broader point is based on a future extrapolation of LLM capabilities that is far from guaranteed to play out, so it sounds like poor risk management to me, even accepting your framing of it purely in terms of value in the workforce (which I don't).

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#34

Post by jfim »

kmitz wrote: post #27

PISA data show that students who use AI for specific schoolwork tasks, such as summarising texts, drafting or conducting research, attain lower scores in science than students who do not use AI. See graphs on PISA 2025 homepage : https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum... So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers. Seriously, this should be a major signal to keep s…

The breakdown for AI usage is four categories though, not three. While the first three are negatively correlated with increased usage, the one for using AI "to help me learn" is much more flat when it comes to usage frequency.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#35

Post by blululu »

Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split:

Japan: -3

S Korea: -1

Singapore: +1

Taiwan: +9

---

Germany: -45

France: -38

Sweden: -33

US: -10

This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently than their East Asian counterparts and stop pursing those actions as national policy

*edit for formatting

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#36

Post by Forgeties79 »

adrianN wrote: post #15
nntwozz wrote: post #10

At Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg Sweden 80% of the students would pass the entrance exam in the 60s. These days it's reversed, only 20% pass. I was told this was the case around 2005 when I studied there. The exam has not changed in difficulty.

What percentage of the population is expected to get university education today vs the sixties?

Also, is a 1960’s test that hasn’t substantively changed a good metric? Maybe it is, I honestly don’t know, but I’d be curious to see the content before assuming it’s a useful benchmark.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#37

Post by zulban »

kmitz wrote: post #27

PISA data show that students who use AI for specific schoolwork tasks, such as summarising texts, drafting or conducting research, attain lower scores in science than students who do not use AI. See graphs on PISA 2025 homepage : https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum... So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers. Seriously, this should be a major signal to keep s…

Sloppy conclusion about edtech startups.

If everyone is hiring a "tutor" to just do their homework for them, that doesn't mean that all tutors are bad.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#38

Post by bsoqk »

blululu wrote: post #35

Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split: Japan: -3 S Korea: -1 Singapore: +1 Taiwan: +9 --- Germany: -45 France: -38 Sweden: -33 US: -10 This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently…

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Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#39

Post by rayiner »

The U.S. scores are interesting. On page 28, look at the column that says "Share of top performers" (in science, reading or mathematics): https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report....

The U.S. is at 17.8% top performers, well behind Japan and Korea but around the same as Canada and Switzerland. But the U.S. is significantly ahead of the big EU countries: Germany is at 14%, France is at 9.8%, Italy is at 10.1% and Spain is at 7%.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#40

Post by cufjufxtx »

blululu wrote: post #35

Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split: Japan: -3 S Korea: -1 Singapore: +1 Taiwan: +9 --- Germany: -45 France: -38 Sweden: -33 US: -10 This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently…

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