Student performance in reading, mathematics, and science has fallen to the lowest levels ever recorded across OECD countries, according to the PISA 2025 report released Monday by the OECD. The assessment, which measures how 15-year-olds apply skills to real-world problems, reveals a marked deterioration in education systems once regarded as exemplary. While public discussion has focused on blaming AI and social media, the decline began long before those technologies became widespread, the report notes.
The scale of the damage to teaching capacity is stark. Between 2018 and 2022, the share of students attending schools where principals reported that teacher shortages interfere with instruction jumped from 26% to 47%, and remained around 40% in the 2025 assessment. Only 28.8% of OECD students now study in schools where principals reported no teacher shortages, with the problem concentrated in public schools serving disadvantaged populations. In 13 OECD countries and economies, primary teachers were earning less in real terms in 2024 than they did in 2015. Teacher retention has become critical: 17% of teachers plan to leave the profession within five years, a figure that rises to roughly half of young teachers in some European nations. Globally, 44 million additional teachers are needed in primary and secondary education by 2030, more than half simply to replace those exiting the workforce.
The report links the deterioration directly to austerity measures and cost-containment reforms that began after the 2008 financial crisis. These included reduced public budgets, wage restraint for teachers, recruitment freezes, staff reductions, heavier workloads, and the privatization of education. Half of OECD countries cut or froze teachers' salaries after 2010; between 2008 and 2012, teachers' real wages fell in 16 of 30 countries with available data, dropping by more than a quarter in Greece. Finland cut 1.5 billion euros from education between 2011 and 2018, closing and merging schools. In the United States, spending per pupil fell roughly 7% after the financial crisis, and rigorous research shows these cuts lowered test scores and college attendance, according to the authors.
The report argues these outcomes reflect deliberate political choices about what governments fund and what they cut. Governments mobilized $10 trillion to rescue banks in 2009, and in the four years since the invasion of Ukraine, the world has spent more than $10 trillion on the military, with NATO members each pledging to spend 5% of GDP on defense by 2035—exceeding what most devote to education. In Colombia, Costa Rica, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, and Turkey, debt-service payments now exceed education spending, meaning governments are prioritizing private creditors and banks over children. The report contends new revenues are within reach through progressive taxation, taxing windfall profits, or a 2% minimum tax on billionaire wealth that would raise $2.5 trillion over a decade.
Through sustained investment in public education, decent pay for qualified teachers, and equitable learning conditions, OECD countries could reverse the decline and expand opportunity for the next generation, the report concludes. Austerity was a policy choice, and so is investing in public services for people's prosperity. The question isn't whether countries can afford to reverse this decline, but whether governments are prepared to make education the priority it requires.