Context: The international PISA study assesses not so much students’ knowledge as their ability to apply it to real-life problems. The latest study included more than 760,000 students from 91 countries. The results showed a decline in basic skills in reading, mathematics, and science. Information literacy skills deteriorated particularly noticeably: the ability to verify information, compare multiple sources, distinguish arguments from assertions, and read texts critically.
On September 9, 2026, Yuliya Aleksiayuk and Igor Poznyak, hosts of CTV’s 24 Chasa news program, discussed the results for German students.
“It seems that Germany is laying the groundwork for a future systemic crisis right now. German students have demonstrated the lowest level of academic achievement in the history of their participation in international comparative studies. ... The country is returning to the 2000s when one in four students could not cope with the basic curriculum. Although reforms helped back then, scores have been falling nonstop since 2015. Fourteen countries have already surpassed Germany in science. France is at the same level,” said Aleksiayuk.
The study’s results for German students were indeed the worst in the country’s history. However, Germany remains near the top of the overall rankings, roughly at the average level among developed countries.
At the same time, the decline in scores is not limited to Germany, France, or Europe in general. Results have worsened in most countries that participated in PISA worldwide. The growing role of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in students’ lives is among the reasons cited. The sharpest declines were seen in working with texts and mathematics. The natural sciences, which were the focus of CTV’s news coverage, were less affected.
Only a few countries managed to avoid the overall decline. Uzbekistan, Montenegro, Thailand, and Georgia, which had previously lagged behind, improved their scores. So did the United Kingdom, Türkiye, Lithuania, and the United States, all of which were already strong performers.
Co-host Igor Poznyak went on to address the next point:
“To combat this problem, France introduced a ban on cell phones in schools starting in September. However, these localized measures are not capable of stopping a deeper process. The decline in education has become a pan-European trend. Spain — and, by extension, the countries of the Balkan Peninsula — did not even reach the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s average level, showing weak results in each of the key subjects.”
Experts are indeed speaking of a crisis in European education. Meanwhile, Asian participants — including China, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea — occupy the top positions in the study. However, only four economically developed regions of China participated, so their scores cannot be considered the average result for the entire country.
However, when we consider Europe as a whole rather than just Spain and the Balkan countries selected by CTV, the results differ. Estonia ranked sixth, and Finland came twelfth. Most Central European countries scored above or at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s average level. The OECD comprises primarily developed economies.
Like Russia, Belarus did not participate in the latest PISA study. Belarus only took part once, in 2018, when it ranked 36th out of 79 countries in reading literacy. This result was higher than the global average, but lower than the average among developed countries. At the time, Belarus’s 36th-place finish was considered respectable, whereas CTV used Germany’s current 23rd-place finish to argue that education is declining.
