Overview
- The OECD's PISA 2025 finds the lowest average performance in the test's history, with a rising share of 15-year-olds scoring below basic levels across participating countries.
- Mexico scored 388 in math, 408 in reading and 414 in science, and 41.8% of Mexican students fell below the basic level in all three tested subjects.
- Peru's 2025 results mark a regression of roughly a decade with reading at about 390 and math near 382, while national household data show nearly 15% of 14–17-year-olds are not in school.
- Analysts and education leaders point to structural drivers—weak teacher preparation and career systems, unequal resources, limited instructional time and poverty—not just pandemic disruption, as causes of the decline.
- Voices across the region call for depoliticized, transexenal pacts to professionalize teaching, improve governance and target social supports because learning gains typically take a decade or more to materialize.