What PISA is, and why everyone is talking about it this week
PISA is the OECD's international assessment of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. It runs every three years and is the most widely used benchmark in the world for comparing education systems. On September 8, 2026, the OECD released the results of the 2025 round, in which more than 760,000 students from 91 countries and economies took part.
If you are considering sending your child to study abroad, these results give you something you rarely have: a direct comparison, using the same test, between the system they are leaving and the system they would be joining.
The big picture: almost everyone declined
The headline finding of PISA 2025 is not good news for anyone. The OECD average fell to its lowest level since the assessment began, across all three subjects. Between 2015 and 2025, average scores dropped by 22 points in mathematics and 28 points in reading.
The OECD also measured artificial intelligence use for the first time: 46% of students use AI chatbots at least once a week for schoolwork. And it found something worth reading twice: students who use AI for specific tasks, such as summarising texts or drafting, score on average around 20 points lower in science than those who do not, roughly the equivalent of a full school year.
Canada: above average in all three subjects
Against that backdrop, Canada remains among the systems that work. These are the shares of students reaching at least the baseline level of proficiency (Level 2) in each subject, and the share of top performers (Levels 5 and 6):
- Science: 84% reach the baseline, against 74% for the OECD average. 11% are top performers, against 7%.
- Mathematics: 74% reach the baseline, against 65%. 11% are top performers, against 8%.
- Reading: 78% reach the baseline, against 69%. 9% are top performers, against 6%.
In the new computational problem-solving assessment, Canada also scored above the average.
It has to be said honestly: Canada declined too. Its 2025 results are lower than 2022 in mathematics and reading, and are the lowest it has recorded in the history of the assessment. The OECD also notes that Canadian school participation fell below the required threshold, which may slightly inflate its averages. Canada is not perfect. But even with those caveats, it remains clearly above the average of developed countries.
Canada against Latin America: the full comparison
Many of the families we work with come from Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru or Ecuador, so we extended the comparison to the whole region. The table shows the share of 15-year-olds reaching at least the baseline level of proficiency in each subject. It is the most honest indicator for a parent: it does not measure the brightest students, it measures whether an average student leaves school with the minimum needed to function.
| Country | Science | Mathematics | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | 84% | 74% | 78% |
| OECD average | 74% | 65% | 69% |
| Uruguay | 64% | 42% | 57% |
| Chile | 63% | 41% | 62% |
| Costa Rica | 56% | 30% | 53% |
| Mexico | 50% | 30% | 50% |
| Colombia | 50% | 29% | 46% |
| Brazil | 48% | 28% | 49% |
| Peru | 47% | 30% | 42% |
| Argentina | 41% | 24% | 40% |
| Ecuador | 40% | 20% | 38% |
| El Salvador | 35% | 12% | 29% |
| Dominican Republic | 26% | 9% | 23% |
| Paraguay | 24% | 10% | 24% |
| Guatemala | 21% | 8% | 17% |
Three things stand out:
- No Latin American country reaches the OECD average in any of the three subjects.
- The strongest in the region, Uruguay and Chile, are still 20 points below Canada in science and more than 30 in mathematics.
- In mathematics, across most of the region fewer than one in three students reaches the baseline. In Canada it is three in four.
And there is a figure the table does not show: across most of the region the OECD reports that there are almost no top-performing students in mathematics. In Canada they are 11%. For a talented young person, that is the difference between a system that pushes them forward and one that leaves them on their own.
What matters most to us: Canada is one of the fairest systems
This is, for us, the most important finding for a family arriving from abroad. In Canada, the gap between students from the highest and lowest socio-economic backgrounds is 59 points in science, against 85 points across the OECD. Family background explains only 6% of the variation in results, half the OECD average.
On top of that, 76% of Canadian students believe intelligence can be developed through effort, against 69% across the OECD, and 15% of economically disadvantaged students place among the top performers in their own country.
Why does this matter for your child? Because a child arriving from another country, in another language and without the support network they have at home, needs exactly that: a system built to lift every student, not only the ones who already start ahead.
What it means for your family
PISA does not say Canada is perfect. It says that at a moment when almost every system in the world is sliding backwards, Canada is holding above the average, with more top performers and less inequality. And it says the distance from what an average teenager achieves in Latin America is wide.
A school year in a Canadian school is not just about learning English. It is about placing your child, from elementary or high school, inside one of the strongest and fairest education systems in the world, at an age when everything still sinks in.
At Goldstone Education we guide Spanish-speaking families through that process, from choosing the school to the study permit and the minor's legal custodianship, as a regulated Canadian immigration consultancy. If you want to understand how it works and what it costs, register for one of our free webinars.
Source: OECD, PISA 2025 Results (Volume I), published on September 8, 2026, and the country notes for Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Guatemala.