PISA 2025: Spanish pupils plummet in reading and mathematics and Spain falls below the OECD

PISA does not measure exactly what pupils have learnt in the classroom, nor does it seek to establish whether they have mastered each country’s curriculum. Its aim is different: to assess the extent to which students of around 15 years of age are able to use what they know to solve problems, interpret information, reason and deal with situations they may encounter outside the classroom. This distinction is important in understanding why its results have such a major impact. It is not merely a matter of checking knowledge, but of assessing the extent to which an education system manages to turn it into skills that can be used in real life. The 2025 edition is the ninth of the Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, and involved more than 760,000 pupils from 91 countries and economies, representing around 33 million young people.

Spain has taken part in PISA since its first edition in 2000. This time, 29,967 students from 956 schools took the tests, a sample representing approximately 459,800 Spanish young people and 88% of the population of that age. Each student took an approximately two-hour test in two different areas and subsequently completed a context questionnaire lasting around 35 minutes about their family background, attitudes, habits and educational experience. School heads also answered questions relating to school organisation, available resources and the learning environment.

PISA changes the competency it analyses in greatest depth in each edition. In 2025 this was science, while mathematics and reading were assessed as secondary areas. The edition also includes learning in the digital world and computational problem-solving, and for the first time includes an international assessment of a foreign language. Spain is also taking part in this latter test, focused on English, although its results will not be published until 2027. The National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE), which reports to the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sport, is responsible for PISA in Spain.

The results place Spain below the average of OECD countries in all three traditional competencies. In science it scores 477 points, compared with 482 for the OECD; in reading, 451 compared with 461; and in mathematics, 457 compared with 463. It also falls below the European Union average, which reaches 481 points in science, 459 in reading and 463 in mathematics. The difference is particularly clear in reading comprehension, where Spain is ten points below the OECD average.

Comparison with the previous edition provides a clearer picture of the trend. In PISA 2022, Spain scored 485 points in science, 474 in reading and 473 in mathematics. In nominal terms, therefore, this represents eight fewer points in science, 23 fewer in reading and 16 fewer in mathematics. An important qualification should be made here: the OECD considers Spain’s 2025 results in mathematics and reading to be statistically lower than those in 2022, while it describes the science result as approximately equivalent to that edition. This prevents any variation in scores from being treated as a significant difference when PISA’s sampling design itself requires work with margins of uncertainty.

The long-term perspective is not favourable either. The OECD explicitly states that Spain’s 2025 results are below those achieved in PISA 2015 and are among the lowest historically observed in Spain in all three subjects. Since 2015, the proportion of students failing to reach the basic level of competence in mathematics has risen by 11 percentage points, by 15 points in reading and by six points in science. We are therefore not simply looking at a comparison between two snapshots taken three years apart, but at a trend extending over a considerably longer period.

Spain is not, however, an exception within the international picture. PISA 2025 records the lowest average levels observed so far across the OECD in science, mathematics and reading. Between 2015 and 2025, the average score of the organisation’s countries fell by 22 points in mathematics and 28 points in reading. The latter competency is precisely the one showing the sharpest international deterioration. The OECD also warns of a decline in skills related to evaluating information, establishing connections between different sources and critically analysing what is read—skills that are particularly important in an environment where an increasing share of information is produced, selected or summarised using digital tools and artificial intelligence.

The national average alone does not explain how performance is distributed. In science, 76% of Spanish pupils reach at least level 2, considered by PISA to be the basic threshold of competence, compared with 74% across the OECD. In mathematics, 67% do so, compared with 65% across the OECD, while in reading Spain records 68%, one point below the international average. Spain’s education system therefore manages to maintain a relatively high proportion of students above the minimum level in science and mathematics. The situation changes when excellence is considered: only 4% reach levels 5 or 6 in science, compared with 7% across the OECD; another 4% do so in mathematics, compared with 8%; and in reading the figure is barely 2%, while the OECD average is 6%.

This contrast is one of the relevant characteristics of the Spanish system revealed by PISA. Spain manages to contain relatively well the proportion of students below the minimum threshold, but produces fewer high-performing pupils. It also has better equity indicators than other countries. In science, the gap between the 25% of students with the highest socioeconomic status and the 25% most disadvantaged is 71 points, compared with an OECD average of 85 points. Economic, social and cultural background explains approximately 9% of the variation in performance in Spain, while across the OECD it accounts for 12%. Moreover, 13% of socioeconomically disadvantaged Spanish students manage to rank among the 25% with the best results in their own country, slightly above the 12% international average.

PISA also allows us to examine aspects that normally fall outside a ranking based exclusively on points. Some 68% of Spanish pupils say that they increase their effort when a task becomes difficult, compared with 60% across the OECD, and only 18% believe that school has been a waste of time, compared with 24% of the international average. At the same time, these indicators have deteriorated slightly since 2022: the proportion of students who say they are curious about many things has fallen by 3.2 percentage points, while the proportion who increase their effort in the face of difficulties has fallen by 3.3 points. The OECD also finds a positive association between curiosity, perseverance, valuing school and academic performance.

Other data concerning the school environment also deserve attention. Some 49% of Spanish students attend schools whose heads consider that teaching is hindered, at least to some extent, by a lack of teachers, compared with 39% across the OECD. In 2022, that proportion was 41%. The difference is even greater regarding support staff: it affects 72% of Spanish pupils compared with 39% of the international average. Perceptions of problems related to material resources and infrastructure have also increased. Some 26% of pupils attend schools whose heads report shortages of educational materials affecting teaching, compared with 20% recorded three years earlier, while the proportion linked to deficiencies in buildings, facilities, lighting, heating, air conditioning or other physical elements has risen from 34% to 44%.

The 2025 report also provides a particularly interesting snapshot of the relationship between education and technology. Spanish students use digital devices at school for an average of 1.4 hours a day for learning activities and a further 0.7 hours for leisure activities. Some 29% say that their classmates are frequently distracted by devices during most or all science lessons. In Spain, those reporting this type of distraction score 16 points lower in science, a difference greater than the 11 points observed across the OECD once the socioeconomic profile of students and schools is taken into account. At the same time, 86% of Spanish pupils already study at schools where mobile phones are not allowed on the premises, compared with 49% across the OECD. In 2022, the Spanish proportion was 67%.

Artificial intelligence appears for the first time with significant weight within this educational reality. Some 54% of Spanish students say they use AI chatbots at least weekly to help them learn, eight points above the OECD average. Some 42% use them to conduct initial research on a topic, 40% to summarise texts they have to read and 33% to write assignments. Only 8% say they never or almost never use them for any of the academic tasks analysed, compared with 14% across the OECD. The international report stresses that the relationship between the use of artificial intelligence and performance is complex and varies according to the purpose, frequency and skills with which these tools are used.

There are also signs relating to attendance. Some 34% of Spanish students say they missed at least one full day of school during the two weeks before the test, compared with an OECD average of 22%. Another 34% admit to skipping a class, compared with 24% internationally. In 2022, the Spanish figures were 28% and 29%, respectively. Punctuality, by contrast, compares somewhat more favourably: 45% say they arrived late at least once during that period, compared with 50% across the OECD, although this has also increased from the 40% recorded in Spain three years earlier.

Family support is another indicator that has declined. In 2025, 69% of Spanish pupils said that their parents or guardians asked them at least once a week what they had done at school, compared with 77% in 2022. The proportion who have weekly conversations with their family about problems related to school fell from 60% to 50%. The OECD notes that this decline in reported family support has occurred in most participating countries, so it is not an exclusively Spanish phenomenon either.

There are also more positive results regarding school climate. Some 14% of Spanish students say they have experienced some form of bullying several times a month or more frequently, compared with an OECD average of 20%. The proportion is below the international figure, although it has increased since 2022. In science lessons, 74% say that the teacher shows an interest in the learning of all pupils, five points above the OECD. However, 39% report that noise and disorder hinder most or all science lessons, compared with 31% of the international average.

Finally, there is a particularly important methodological warning when interpreting the Spanish data. The overall proportion of pupils excluded from the assessment rose to 7.9% in PISA 2025. The OECD specifically identifies Catalonia, where exclusions within schools rose from 5.6% in 2022 to 23.2% in 2025, and Murcia, which rose from 4.1% to 12.7%. The organisation considers Spain’s overall results to remain internationally comparable and comparable with previous editions, but it does not publish separate results for Catalonia and warns that high levels of exclusion are likely to introduce an upward bias in scores. This is an important nuance because it means that, if the methodological problem affects the result, it would tend to improve rather than artificially worsen the figure obtained.

PISA does not offer a single explanation for why a country’s performance changes, nor should it be interpreted as a sporting league in which some systems simply win and others lose. What it does allow is the examination of trends over more than two decades using a common methodology, and comparison of the result with information about the context in which students learn. In Spain’s case, PISA 2025 combines two realities that must be analysed simultaneously. Spain retains a relatively strong ability to reduce the influence of socioeconomic background and to prevent a larger proportion of its pupils from falling below basic knowledge levels, but it has few students at the highest levels of achievement and records results below the OECD in all three core competencies. The trend in reading and mathematics compared with 2022, and the increase in low-performing students compared with 2015, also show that this is not an isolated difference within a single edition.

The question PISA 2025 leaves is not simply where Spain ranks, but what is happening to competencies that will shape much of what these students can do later. Understanding a complex text, identifying reliable information, reasoning mathematically or using scientific knowledge to interpret a problem are skills needed both within and beyond the education system. And in an environment where accessing information is becoming increasingly easy thanks to search engines, social media and artificial intelligence, the ability to understand, verify and use it correctly is probably even more important than when PISA began measuring it 25 years ago.