Türkiye recorded the sharpest improvement of any OECD member across all three core subjects in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment, results released Tuesday show, a rare bright spot in a cycle marked by declining performance across most developed education systems.The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released the PISA 2025 findings simultaneously worldwide. The test, administered every three years to 15-year-old students, measured performance in science, reading and mathematics across 91 countries and economies, up from 81 in the 2022 cycle.
Around 760,000 students took part globally. In Türkiye, 7,702 students from 203 schools across 56 provinces and 12 regions sat the computer-based assessment between April 14 and May 16, 2025.Türkiye’s science score rose to 494 points, an 18-point gain over 2022 and 26 points above its 2018 result. That places it above both the OECD average of 482 and the all-participant average of 443. Reading climbed 16 points to 472, eleven points above the OECD average of 461. Mathematics rose nine points to 462, just one point below the OECD average of 463 but well ahead of the 429-point average across all participants.The gains lifted Türkiye’s global ranking to 19th in science, up from 34th among the 81 countries that took part in 2022. It rose to 18th in reading from 36th, and to 28th in mathematics from 39th.
Among OECD members alone, Türkiye climbed from 29th to 14th in science, from 30th to 13th in reading, and from 32nd to 23rd in mathematics.Officials framed the results as validating a decade-long trend. Türkiye was the only OECD member country to raise its scores in all three subjects over the past ten years, and posted the largest score increases in all three subjects compared with 2022, according to the results. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan credited students, teachers and parents for the outcome, while Education Minister Yusuf Tekin said Türkiye was the only OECD member to improve across all three fields over the 2015 to 2025 period.The share of Turkish students reaching the highest proficiency levels also grew. In science, that share rose from 4 percent in 2022 to 7.4 percent in 2025, edging past the OECD average of 7.2 percent for the first time. In reading, the top-performer share rose from 1.9 percent to 4.2 percent, and in mathematics from 5.4 percent to 7.9 percent. The Education Ministry noted that 81 percent of Turkish students reached at least minimum proficiency in science, against an OECD average of 74 percent, and 76 percent reached the reading threshold, against an OECD average of 69 percent.
Measured against its first PISA cycle in 2003, Türkiye’s long-term progress is more pronounced. Its science score has climbed from 434 to 494, reading from 441 to 472, and mathematics from 423 to 462. Because the pool of participating countries has grown from 41 in 2003 to 91 in 2025, the Education Ministry measured Türkiye’s progress in relative ranking terms: its position improved 64 percent in science, 60 percent in reading and 52 percent in mathematics over that period.Türkiye’s results stand out against a broader downturn. OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said the results reveal an uneven picture, with the bloc recording its lowest average performance levels ever observed in science, reading and mathematics. Reading scores fell in three-quarters of education systems with comparable data since 2018, dropping 25 points across the OECD on average, roughly a year’s worth of learning.
Among OECD countries, only Costa Rica, the Slovak Republic, Türkiye and the United Kingdom posted science score increases since 2022, and none matched Türkiye’s simultaneous gains across all three domains.The top-performing systems in the 2025 cycle remained concentrated in East Asia. The Chinese jurisdictions grouped as B-S-J-Z, comprising Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, led in science and mathematics, with Singapore close behind. Estonia, Japan, Korea, Macao, Chinese Taipei and the United Kingdom rounded out the top ten performing systems overall.
