The Minister of Education João Costa asked the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to analyse in a thorough way the causes that led young people to show an "unprecedented" drop in performance in Maths and Reading.

The results of the largest international survey on student knowledge, the PISA - Programme for International Student Assessment – conducted in 2022 on more than 690 thousand students throughout the world show a worsening of the difficulties 15-year-olds feel to carry out basic Maths and Reading tasks.

Portugal is following this trend: the almost seven thousand students at Portuguese schools that took the PISA maths test in 2022 had 20 points less than their colleagues in 2018.

"When the results drop, we should be worried and analyse the results thoroughly", said the Minister of Education João Costa, underlining that the "drop in results happens in countries with quite different curricula".

The report disclosed today acknowledges that it is not yet possible to identify the reasons for this world trend, as a precise factor or given educational policy have not been identified.

"We have countries that are different in the way in which the teach and the curricula developed following this trend" of drop of results, João Costa said. "There is a drop that has to do with the pandemic, but this does not explain the whole picture, as there is a drop in the OECD average since 2012, which hasn’t yet been sufficiently explained", he said.

Main trends

• in 2022 the average maths score in the OECD countries dropped around 15 points compared to the precious cycle

• the national results place Portugal in the OECD average in all areas of assessment, so the country is following the OECD dropping trend without statistically significant differences

• in the case of maths, Portugal registered a drop of 21 points in 2022 when compared to 2018, and 16 points when compared to 2012, the last year in which subject was the main one under analysis

• we also note that 70.3% of Portuguese students reached at least level 2 in maths higher than that recorded in the OECD (68.9%)

• the difference in results between girls and boys has remained relatively stable in Portugal, with boys scoring on average 10 more points than girls

• In Portugal, the difference in performance in maths between students from public or private schools is not statistically significant

• Immigrant students who went up from 7% to 11% between 2018 and 2022, have lower results than Portuguese students, especially when they are first migrant generation students

• Portuguese students reported a greater feeling of belonging to their schools than the average of OECD students

• in Portugal, the Students believe they receive more family support than the OCDE average

• the heads of Portuguese schools report that the schools are better prepared for remote learning post-pandemic, unlike the OCDE average.