England Bucks Global Education Decline as PISA Rankings Put UK Top 10 in Maths, Reading and Science

England's teenagers have climbed into the top ten globally for maths, reading and science, according to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment, even as average scores across the OECD fell in every one of the three subjects tested.

More than 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies sat the 2025 assessment, representing about 33 million 15-year-olds worldwide. In the UK, 15,566 students across 515 schools took part, with England recording the highest scores among the UK's four nations in all three subjects.

England's Rankings and OECD Trends

England rose to 10th in maths, up one place from 2022, and climbed to joint 9th in reading, up from 13th. The biggest jump came in science, where England rose from 13th to 8th place.

Much of that improved standing reflects other countries falling rather than England pulling ahead. Average OECD scores dropped across the board between 2022 and 2025, from 472 to 463 in maths, from 476 to 461 in reading, and from 485 to 482 in science. England's own maths score remains 12 points below where it stood in 2018, the last assessment before the Covid pandemic.

The Department for Education acknowledged as much in its own response to the results, stating that reading and maths scores had not improved in a decade and adding that it did not want England to rise in the league tables 'solely because other countries are declining.'

Inequality and Reading Patterns

The results also point to a widening domestic divide. The gap in performance between the most and least disadvantaged pupils in England stood at 89 points in maths, 81 in science, and 66 in reading. While that gap narrowed in science and reading since 2022, it widened by four points in maths over the same period.

Separately, the data shows that the share of so-called hasty readers, pupils who rush through texts and give quick, incorrect answers, has nearly doubled since 2018. The decline in careful reading was found to be greatest among pupils from relatively well-off families, rather than the disadvantaged pupils typically flagged in such studies.

What Officials Are Saying

Professor Mary Richardson of the UCL Institute of Education, lead author of the Wales and Northern Ireland reports, said pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were reading just as well as they were in 2022, despite an international trend of declining reading performance. She said maths and science results were also strong, particularly in England and Northern Ireland, where scores sat above the international average.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, called the results an opportunity to celebrate the work happening in England's schools, saying it was achieved 'at times, seemingly against the odds.'

The Department for Education described the overall results as strong, giving the government 'a strong academic foundation to build from,' while cautioning that the figures should be interpreted cautiously, particularly when it comes to tracking genuine improvement over time rather than shifts in other countries' performance.

Officials said the same caution applies to comparisons between individual UK nations, given the differences in curriculum and school structures.