Asia, led by Singapore, is once again at the top of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Pisa 2022 survey of education published today, but its main feature is an “unprecedented decline” in performance of students after the Covid crisis.

The Pisa survey, published every three years –but postponed this time by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic– it has become a global benchmark scrutinized by governments.

It has been examining the performance of educational systems since 2000through the science, mathematics and reading comprehension skills of 15-year-old students. Each time one of these three fields is developed thoroughly, math this time. 690,000 young people in 81 countries and regions underwent the exercises in 2022.

As in the previous survey, where four Chinese metropolises and provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, which did not take part in the survey this time) had come out on top, students in many Asian countries are among the best in math, science, and reading comprehension.

Singapore is far ahead in these three fields, as in 2016. They are followed by Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea in mathematics. “We continue to have Asian countries monopolizing the best performances, especially in mathematics,” emphasizes Eric Charbonnier, an expert on education at the OECD.

But the main distinguishing feature of this 2022 survey lies elsewhere: in a “unprecedented performance degradation” of students, underlines OECD education specialist Irene Hu.

“In mathematics, the OECD average fell by 15 points compared to 2018, while the difference between each cycle had never exceeded four units before. In text comprehension, the decline is 10 points on average across the OECD,” and science results have remained stable, he says.

That’s almost half a year of learning to read and three-quarters of a year of maths, the OECD estimates, for which 20 credits equals one year of schooling.

Covid accelerated the decline

What is the main reason that explains this “dramatic drop” in performance? The crisis of the Covid pandemic, which “certainly has an impact on what is observed” and was an “accelerator of the decline in performance”, says Eric Charbonnier.

But, he continues, “we shouldn’t attribute everything to Covid either”as “there has already been a downward trend for fifteen years” worldwide and “we have not seen a direct relationship between school closures and performance”.

As for France, it is in the average of the OECD countries “at a level comparable to that of Spain, Hungary and Lithuania in the three fields”, says Irene Hu. It ranks 22nd in mathematics, 24th in reading comprehension and 22nd in science, among the 38 OECD countries.

But its results are “among the worst ever measured” by the OECD. In mathematics, it recorded between 2018 and 2022 a “historic decline in the level of students”underlines Eric Charbonnier.

Other European countries, such as Germany –which however achieved a spectacular correction from 2000, the so-called “Pisa shock”–, Finland, where the inequalities between girls and boys are deepening, or even Norway register a more significant decline than France in mathematics.

In contrast, in Europe, Estonia, Switzerland, Ireland, Austria, Britain, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Denmark are above the OECD average, as is Canada.

“This decline in performance is no longer a universal fatesince some countries managed to limit it”, if not to “maintain” these performances, “as in Switzerland or Korea, or increase them as in Japan”notes Irene Hu.

In addition to Covid, other factors put forward by the OECD to explain the general drop in results: the attractiveness crisis of the teaching profession, which is increasingly affecting countries and affecting the quality of education, the lack of support for teachers and students or cooperation in school complexes, or even the involvement of parents in school education, which has decreased compared to 2018.

Hellas

According to the research, the average results of 2022 in Greece decreased compared to 2018 in mathematics, reading comprehension and natural sciences.

In all three fields, average performance was lower in 2022 than in any previous estimate: according to the research, the sharp decline between 2018 and 2022 confirmed and reinforced a decline that had begun much earlier.

Students in Greece performed below the OECD average in maths, reading comprehension and science.