Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD)'s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) evaluates 15-year-olds' reading, mathematics and science abilities through a standardised test.
The latest report, published on Tuesday, has revealed a concerning global decline in maths and reading skills in particular. Artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and social media have been cited as contributing factors.
"The bottom line is quite simple: You don't get fit by watching sports. You get fit by doing sports," Andreas Schleicher, the founder of the OECD's renowned PISA tests, told Euronews.
"And the same is true with learning. Learning doesn't come through the consumption of content; learning comes by engaging with ideas to compare and contrast. And AI can hollow out that very process. That's what we observe."
But what about the adults? Are we any better? A 2024 study by Reading Agency found that half of the adults in the United Kingdom don't read for pleasure, while a Eurostat survey from the same year found that almost half of EU citizens have not read a single book in twelve months.
