The results from the 2025 edition of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) documented a notable decline in the education levels across several Latin American nations, as several media outlets reported Tuesday.
PISA is a program run by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures the academic performance of participating 15-year-old students. The organization detailed that more than 760,000 students across 91 countries took PISA’s 2025 science, mathematics, and reading tests. OECD found an overall decline in the performance of participating countries — documenting lowest average levels of performance ever observed in science, reading, and mathematics.
The Argentine outlet Infobae reports that, in the case of Latin America, all of the region’s participating countries ended with results below the OECD averages, and with no regional country exhibiting improvements in reading when compared to 2022.
A profound decline in math levels was documented across the board, most notably in Argentina and Mexico. An overall stagnation registered in Brazil, and Colombia, among other regional nations. Costa Rica, while being the country that experienced the most improvements in some areas such as sciences, ended up with a performance below the global average thanks to poor results in other areas.
Infobae pointed out that Uruguay notably stands as the Latin American outlier in the 2025 PISA tests. Per the outlet, while Uruguayan participants achieved their best historic results since it began participating in PISA, the country has nevertheless experienced a decline in overall math and reading levels over the past decade.
At least 57 percent of participating Uruguayan students affirmed that their fellow classmates “distract themselves frequently” with electronic devices during lessons, more than double the average 28 percent documented by OECD.
The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools among the nation’s students was documented in the tests, with 53 percent of participant teenagers acknowledging the use of AI chatbots for academic use at least once per week. Almost similar levels of AI usage were reported by other countries such as Ecuador, Peru, and the Dominican Republic, among others.
Per the study’s results, only 24 percent of students in Argentina were found to have the bare minimum performance level in math, with roughly three in every four students failing to solve basic math tasks that a 15-year-old is expected to be able to solve under PISA’s standards. Additionally, only 40 percent of Argentine students managed to demonstrate a basic reading level, and 41 percent demonstrated sufficient knowledge in science, meaning that six out of every ten Argentine students that participated in PISA’s 2025 tests failed to attain the minimum qualification required.
Colombia, for its part, was described as the country that registered the “least pronounced” overall decline in its education over the past three years. In spite of that, only 29 percent of participating Colombian students managed to demonstrate basic math competency, far below the test’s 65 percent average.
In Mexico, only three out of every ten participants reached the bare minimum math requirements, marking its lowest score in the subject since 2006. Similar results were documented in Peru, while in Ecuador, only 20 percent were able to reach the test’s minimum math levels. El Salvador also exhibited efficient math results, with only 12 percent of participants reaching the bare-minimum scores. In the Dominican Republic, however, only nine percent of participants reached the minimum math requirements.
According to the Brazilian outlet Globonews, Brazil ranked among the lowest-performing countries in PISA’s tests, and behind six Latin American nations. Globonews noted that Brazil’s performance, while low, has nevertheless remained “stable” since 2015. Only 1.8 percent of Brazilian students were found to have highly performed in at least one of the test’s areas — much lower than the 11.9 percent global average.
Guatemala reportedly ended as the overall worst-performing country in Latin America, with only eight percent demonstrating the test’s minimum math levels, only 17 percent in reading, and 21 percent in sciences.
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