PISA 2025: What the New Results Mean for Primary School Children

It's a Wednesday afternoon. Your child is sitting at the kitchen table, reading a word problem aloud. "On the farm there are … uh … 47 … uh … chickens …" You notice it straight away: the words come out, but the understanding doesn't. After three sentences your child looks up and asks: "What am I supposed to do?" You rephrase the problem in plain language — and suddenly your child solves it in 30 seconds. The problem wasn't the arithmetic. The problem was: the text wasn't understood.

This exact scene is why the PISA debate affects you as a parent very directly — even if your child is only in Year 2 or Year 3. In December 2026 the OECD will publish the new results of the PISA study. Data was collected during the 2024/25 school year. The previous round in 2022 was already a historic low point. And everything suggests that 2025 has not improved matters.

One thing up front, because it often gets lost: PISA tests 15-year-olds, not primary school children. But the foundations are laid in primary school. A child who is not a fluent reader by Year 4 carries that deficit all the way to Year 9. What will be published as a national finding in December 2026 begins in families like yours — at the kitchen table, during homework, in Year 2.

The Unvarnished Numbers

Let's start with what is already on the table — PISA 2022. The results were the weakest since countries began participating in PISA.

What does "below the minimum benchmark" mean? The OECD defines this as proficiency level 2. Students below that level cannot reliably understand a simple text with two or three arguments. They cannot safely interpret a table from a newspaper. They cannot reliably solve a two-step word problem. These are not academic gold standards — they are everyday competencies.

And it is not only the low end that is struggling. High performers are also fewer than in most OECD countries, and their share is shrinking.

Those who think "that's 15-year-olds, my child is only in Year 3" — national assessment studies show the same picture one level lower. Even Year 4 children have been recording weaker results in literacy and numeracy since 2011. The gap between high-achieving and low-achieving children is widening. Social background predicts educational success more strongly than in almost any comparable country.

This is not "the pandemic." The downward trend began around 2015 and has been running for ten years. Covid was an amplifier, not the cause.

What PISA Measures — and What It Means

PISA sounds like a huge knowledge test. It is not. PISA measures application, not rote learning. Three domains are assessed:

• Reading literacy: Can the child not only decode a text, but also understand, contextualise, evaluate it? Example: filtering out contradictory claims from an advertisement and a factual article on the same topic.
• Mathematical literacy: Can the child translate an everyday situation into a calculation? Not "What is 7 × 8?" but "A family pays €47 for a weekly shop. How much is that per person if there are four of them?"
• Scientific literacy: Can the child recognise a hypothesis, assess an experiment, explain a relationship?

What PISA measures is precisely what is needed in real life. Reading a lease. Understanding a medical leaflet. Checking a quote. That is why this study is politically so sensitive — and why it matters for your child in primary school far more than the stated age of "15 years" might suggest.

Because these competencies are not acquired in Year 9. They grow from Year 1.

Why Primary School Is Decisive

Education researchers call this the Matthew Effect: unto everyone that hath shall be given. A child who reads fluently in Year 2 reads more in Year 3 — because reading is enjoyable and effortless. Vocabulary grows, general knowledge expands, reading speed increases. Word problems in maths become easier because the text is no longer an obstacle. In science, the child understands the texts rather than guessing at them.

A child who is still laboriously decoding every other letter in Year 2 reads less. Vocabulary grows more slowly. Word problems stay difficult. By Year 4 the gap is open. By Year 7 it is wide open. By Year 9 — when PISA measures — it can hardly be closed.

Education researchers have stated it plainly: the erosion of core competencies is the central finding — not the performance ceiling. In plain terms: the issue is not that the top is not high enough. The issue is that the base is crumbling. And the base is laid in primary school.

The 3 Core Competencies Parents Should Check

You do not need to be a diagnostician to see whether your child is on track. Three core competencies suffice — and you can check them in 20 minutes on a normal weekday.

1. Fluent Reading with Comprehension

Take an age-appropriate text — a page from a children's book, a short non-fiction piece from a children's magazine. Ask your child to read it aloud.

What to observe:

• Does your child read in connected word groups, or word by word?
• Is the intonation correct at the end of sentences (question, statement, exclamation)?
• Can your child summarise the content in their own words after reading?

Rule of thumb for Year 3/4: approximately 100 words per minute with comprehension. A child who is clearly below this and cannot reproduce the content has a reading deficit. Full stop. This is not "a phase." It will not fix itself without targeted practice.

2. Confident Arithmetic in the Hundreds

By the end of Year 2, at the latest mid-Year 3, your child should be able to add and subtract confidently within 100 — including across the tens boundary. That means:

• 47 + 38 = ? without using fingers, without decomposing on paper, in under 10 seconds.
• 83 − 26 = ? — same.
• Times tables up to 10×10 should be solid by the end of Year 3. Not "more or less." Solid.

And crucially: understanding of place value. Ask your child: "What does the 4 in 247 stand for?" If the answer is "four" rather than "forty," there is a gap in place value understanding that affects everything that follows in mathematics.

3. Ability to Formulate Text Independently

Ask your child to write something. What they did at the weekend. What they remember from the last school trip. Half a page is enough.

What to look for:

• Are these complete sentences or just bullet points and fragments?
• Are there connective words — because, then, first, afterwards — or does everything hang together unconnected?
• Is there a logical sequence?

Spelling is secondary here. The focus is text production: can your child translate a thought into a readable sentence? A child who cannot do this in Year 4 will have a problem in Year 7, at the latest when the first essay of more than three sentences is due.

If these three points are solid, your child is robustly positioned — regardless of what the next PISA wave reveals.

Practical Exercises That Help at Home

Now the solution-oriented part. What genuinely works is fairly clear from the research — and it does not cost €50 per week in tutoring.

Read-Along Reading

This is the most effective lever for reading fluency that research knows. Not "your child reads to you." Not "you read to your child." Instead: both at the same time — you read at pace and with expression, your child follows the text with their eyes or finger and reads silently along. This method is known in reading research as "paired reading" and is considered the single most effective measure for improving reading speed.

Tech variant: the Gennady App reads tasks and texts aloud in a child-friendly voice and highlights every word at the exact moment it is spoken. This is precisely the "Reading while Listening" principle — without you having to find the time every day. Particularly useful when your child has homework in front of them while you are in a meeting.

Embed Word Problems in Everyday Life

Maths in primary school rarely fails because of calculation ability. It fails at translation: word problem → calculation. Children practise this translation best where maths is real — at the shops, cooking, setting the table.

• At the supermarket: "A pack of biscuits costs £1.89. We're buying three. Is £6 enough?"
• Cooking: "The recipe is for 4 people, but there are 6 of us. How much more flour do we need?"
• In the car: "We've driven 142 km, the sat-nav shows 380 km range. How far can we still go?"

These tasks beat any worksheet — because the child wants to know the answer. It's not about the right answer in the book; it's about whether the biscuits are coming home.

Free Writing — Low Threshold, Regular

Three sentences a day is enough. A diary, a note to parents, a story for the soft toys, a shopping list with personal annotations alongside. What counts is: the child formulates independently. Do not correct spelling on the first pass. Praise, then fix one thing on the second read. Two corrections per text. No more. Otherwise the joy dies.

Why Classic Homework Is Not Enough

This is a claim that surprises many parents: homework research for primary school is rather sobering. Classic homework in Years 1–4 has very small or no measurable effects on learning outcomes in meta-analyses. Hours of practice at the kitchen table correlates in many studies negatively with motivation — and motivation is everything at that age.

What works is something else:

• Understood tasks rather than ticked off ones.
• Individually appropriate tasks — not "the same worksheet for 25 children."
• Immediate, friendly feedback — not "wrong, try again," but "look, here's where you went wrong — what if you tried it this way?"

This is exactly why digital learning assistants can work — when built correctly. Scan a task, hear an explanation in plain language, say the answer aloud, get immediate feedback — this covers all three points at once. The Gennady App is built precisely for this use case: explanation rather than solution, child-friendly language rather than textbook phrasing, instant feedback without an impatient tone. It is not a substitute for the teacher — or for you. But it is considerably better than a child struggling alone with a worksheet while Mum is on a call.

What Must Change by 2026

If the trend continues, the next generation of 15-year-olds will have reading literacy at the level measured in the late 1990s. Three decades back. That is not pessimism — it is the straightforward extrapolation of OECD data series.

The good news: parents are not powerless. Education research knows fairly precisely what works. It is not expensive, not exotic, not digital alone, not analogue alone. It is 15 minutes a day. It is read-along reading. It is maths in everyday life. It is writing without immediate correction. It is child-friendly explanation rather than dictating answers. It is feedback without frustration — whether from you, a teacher, an aunt, or a patient app.

If you have these routines in your family's daily life, it is fairly irrelevant what headline runs on the news in December 2026. Your child will still belong to the group that reads, calculates, and understands — in real life, not only in a test.

And that is ultimately the real goal. Not a good PISA score. But a child who understands a lease, can navigate a doctor's appointment, doesn't leave their tax return anxiously in a pile — and can actually help a teenager with an essay.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you take two things away from this article, let them be these: PISA measures at a lower level than the headlines suggest — the foundations are laid in primary school. And you do not need to be an education expert to strengthen them. 15 minutes a day. Three core competencies. Consistency over intensity. That is all it takes to make the difference.

Want to try it once in peace? With the Gennady App your child can photograph a task, listen to an explanation, say the answer aloud and get instant feedback — without anyone sighing impatiently. Seven days free. Available in 32 languages.