The picture of student performance in Europe is "really concerning", with a recent report showing young people are losing essential skills that are "particularly important for the times we live in", Andreas Schleicher, the founder of the OECD's renowned PISA tests, has told Euronews.
The results of the 2025 standardised test, taken by 15-year-olds across 91 countries, were released this week, and found that performance in reading and mathematics had reached record lows across OECD countries.
The assessment measures students’ ability to apply reading, mathematics and science skills to real-world problems.
"We see that young people not only have lower literacy skills, but we are seeing a decline in students' capacity to triangulate and to critically reflect on information, to engage with more complex texts," said Schleicher, adding that these are essential skills in the world of artificial intelligence (AI).
"This technology is not necessarily accurate and therefore that intuition to check and verify should be really present," he added.
