PISA 2025: Finland’s Most Advantaged 15-Year-Olds Show Largest Drop in Reading and Maths

According to Yle, the OECD's 2025 PISA study shows declines across reading and math in Finland, with the surprising finding that the biggest drops are among students from socioeconomically advantaged families. Science remained Finland’s strongest area. The country ranked 12th out of 91 participating regions, above the OECD average. But reading and mathematics slipped. Finland is tied for 17th in reading with Italy and for 22nd in mathematics with Slovakia. Experts say this continues a longer-term downward trend, even though the most recent change was not statistically significant from 2022.

Arto K. Ahonen, Finland’s national study director for PISA, called the sharp fall in reading the most unexpected result. He warned that weaker reading may undermine performance across other subjects because comprehension is central to PISA tasks.

At Tesoma school in Tampere, teachers say basic knowledge among younger pupils has declined since the 2016 curriculum reform and the wider move to digital materials. They report growing variation within classes: in some schools roughly a third of pupils perform poorly in mathematics, while others score more than 100 points higher, about three to four years of learning.

Only 41 percent of Finnish students said they try harder when work becomes difficult, the smallest share among comparable countries. Finland scored above the OECD average in the study’s digital learning module. Locally, a recent city survey found nearly two-thirds of Tampere upper-secondary students use AI weekly the city survey.

More than 10,000 Finnish 15-year-olds from about 240 schools took part. The country’s first PISA results for English as a foreign language will be released next spring.