Canadian teens are still outpacing most of the developed world when it comes to math, reading and science, but their scores continue to slide, according to international test results released Tuesday.
Canada’s decline mirrors a global downward trend, according to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which in 2025 tested 15-year-olds in those three subjects and surveyed them about habits, attitudes and home life.
But what stands out in the Canadian data is a rare combination of strong academic results with strong social-emotional outcomes, meaning most teens across the country are curious, persevering, goal-oriented and engaged in learning.
“Those kinds of things are actually also really important,” Andreas Schleicher, OECD’s director for education and skills, told the Star in an interview. Canada, he said, is one of the few countries that manages to “reconcile” both, unlike some other countries such as Singapore that excel academically, but sometimes at the expense of student well-being.
A global slide
The test was taken by more than 760,000 students worldwide, while in Canada about 24,600 teens in 897 schools took part. Canada’s scores are measured against the OECD average — a benchmark drawn from 38 of the world’s wealthiest nations, including Canada — but the test included 91 countries and economies.
In 2025, four Chinese jurisdictions — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang — competed as a single education system in PISA, and along with Singapore topped the rankings across all three subjects. Also in the top 10 across all three subjects were Macao, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Estonia, and the United Kingdom. Canada scored ninth in science, eleventh in math and 12th in reading.
OECD countries, however, recorded their worst results on record across all three subjects since the PISA was first administered in 2000. Reading has slid since 2012, math has fallen sharply since 2018 and science has gradually declined over the past decade.
The reading crisis
The PISA report flags “steep declines” in reading as particularly alarming, calling it “the gateway through which most academic learning passes.”
“The decline in reading skills is really troubling, because (students) are losing the kind of reading skills that are particularly valuable in the AI world: the capacity of students to reflect, to contrast, critique, evaluate,” explained Schleicher.
By contrast, the report notes that instances of “hasty reading,” with students giving fast and incorrect responses, almost doubled in OECD countries between 2018 and 2025. “In a world increasingly flooded with information, our students are less likely to think deeply and separate signal from noise,” it warns.
Schleicher said skimming and scrolling through social media, and processing information quickly, may be making it tougher for kids to engage in deep reading with complex texts.
A separate concern is that the majority of young people in OECD countries believe common sense should be relied on more than evidence and scientific study.
“I would have expected school is all about building an evidence-based world view and making you trust in science, research and data ... But at the end of the day, it doesn’t seem that we are that successful,” said Schleicher. Many schools, he added, may be teaching students about physics and chemistry, but they’re not teaching them to “think like a scientist.”
Canada strong but slipping
The most recent PISA test, which is administered every three years, saw Canadian scores hit their lowest point, yet they remain above the OECD average. Canadian teens achieved 510 points in science (OECD average 482), 490 in reading (OECD average 461), and 485 in mathematics (OECD average 463). (For comparison purposes, the combined score of the four Chinese jurisdictions was 597 in science, 527 in reading, and 612 in math.)
For the first time, the 2025 test also measured computational problem solving, with Canadian teens scoring 525, versus an OECD average of 500.
Another bright spot in the test is that the gap between Canada’s most and least socio-economically advantaged students remains below the OECD average, suggesting Canada has a more equitable system than many of its peers.
However, Schleicher warned that Canada may be growing complacent.
“I do think Canada has become, perhaps, a bit complacent in levelling down the horizon of (its) learners,” he said, noting that score declines here have been steeper among students from advantaged backgrounds than disadvantaged, which is unusual. That, he said, suggests a lowering of ambitions and expectations.
Parents, phones and passivity
Schleicher said when looking at the Canadian data he was struck by how parental interest in education has “deteriorated quite a lot,” noting parental involvement is an even stronger predictor of learning outcomes than family wealth.
For instance in 2025, only 69 per cent of students said their parents asked them at least once a week about school, down from 78 per cent in 2022. And weekly conversations about problems at school dropped to 40 per cent, down from 55 per cent.
“It’s not about parents doing three hours of homework with their kids. It’s more about parents showing students what you do in school matters to me,” he said. “That used to be the case in Canada: Parents were very interested. And now they seem to have become more like the client of schools.”
When it comes to AI, Canadian students use chatbots for school work less than the OECD average — 38 per cent reported using them at least once a week, compared with 46 per cent across OECD countries. PISA data show that students who don’t use AI tend to outperform those who do, but the report stops short of saying AI is the cause of lower scores.
Schleicher pointed to a broader concern, saying Canadian teens are increasingly using technology for passive consumption rather than creative or academic purposes.
“You do not become fit by watching sports — you become fit by doing sports. And we see the same: learning is always about cognitive effort. Technology makes things easier for you, but doesn’t make you stronger,” he said.
That digital distraction is showing up in Canadian classrooms, with 32 per cent of students saying their peers are often distracted by digital devices, compared with the OECD average of 28 per cent.
And that’s concerning because Schleicher said cellphone use for leisure purposes in school “has probably done more damage than school closures during the pandemic.”
The fix
Improving outcomes in Canada isn’t a matter of increasing funding, said Schleicher, noting Canada already spends significantly on education. Rather, it’s about allocating resources more strategically.
High-performing education systems, he said, make deliberate choices about where to invest, and when forced to choose between hiring better teachers or reducing class sizes, they choose the former.
“They squarely put the emphasis on getting the best people to teach students, ensuring that the most talented teachers teach the most challenging students, get the best principals for the toughest schools. And they don’t care very much about the size of classes,” he said. “We don’t see much of a relationship between the size of classes and learning outcomes. We see a very robust relationship between the quality of teachers and the time teachers have for caring for students and outcomes.”
