OECD reading scores fell 28 points between 2015 and 2025, the sharpest slide of any subject in this cycle, while math dropped 22 points and science held roughly steady, according to the OECD's newly published PISA 2025 findings. Across 13 Latin American countries, reading scores span just 337 to 436 points, all below the OECD's 461-point average, with no country in the region posting a statistically significant gain since 2022.
In math, Argentina posted its lowest score since joining PISA in 2006, and in Mexico roughly seven in ten teenagers missed the basic math threshold, per a regional analysis from Argentinos por la Educación. Nearly 95% of adults across Latin America and the Caribbean can read and write, per World Bank data, yet more than four in five Guatemalan teenagers fall short of PISA's basic reading bar — proof that literacy and reading proficiency measure very different things.
The Largest PISA Ever Just Posted Its Worst Numbers
This year's ninth round of the Programme for International Student Assessment pulled in over 760,000 teenagers from 91 school systems worldwide, its biggest turnout yet. The results, published this week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, show reading took the hardest hit of the three core subjects: OECD-country averages sank 28 points from 2015 to 2025, while participants outside the club lost 16 points over that same window. Math slid 22 points among OECD members; science stayed closer to flat.
Both reading and math now sit at their lowest-ever recorded averages, and the OECD calculates that a fifth of teenagers across its member countries now rank as low performers across all three subjects, a jump from about one in six back in 2022. "Learning outcomes have stagnated or declined in many countries," OECD education director Andreas Schleicher wrote in the release.
Latin America's Reading Scores Stay Stuck at the Bottom
Thirteen Latin American countries sat for PISA 2025, and every one of them scored below the OECD's 461-point reading average. A regional breakdown from Argentinos por la Educación, carried by Infobae, puts Chile on top at 436 points, followed by Uruguay at 423 and Costa Rica at 416. Guatemala trailed the field at 337, with the Dominican Republic at 346 and Paraguay at 352 — a gap of 124 points between the region's strongest and weakest readers.
None of the 13 countries posted a statistically significant improvement in reading between 2022 and 2025; six — Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Guatemala, Paraguay and Peru — recorded significant declines instead. In Guatemala, 83% of 15-year-olds failed to reach even PISA's minimum reading level, the highest share anywhere in the region.
Argentina's Math Score Hits a Two-Decade Low
Argentina's math results told the starkest story in the region: 367 points, down from 378 in 2022 and 379 in 2018, its weakest showing since the country first joined PISA in 2006. Only 24% of Argentine 15-year-olds reached the OECD's baseline level of math competency, against 65% across OECD member countries, per the regional analysis. Reading and science slipped too, falling to 389 and 393 points respectively, and Argentina now trails Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Peru across the three subjects combined.
Mexico Holds the Middle, But Math Keeps Sliding
Mexico's math score fell seven points to 388, its lowest mark since 2006, leaving 69% of Mexican teenagers — roughly seven in ten — below the basic competency threshold, according to the same regional breakdown. Reading dropped seven points to 408. Science was the exception, climbing four points to 414. Even with those declines, Mexico still ranked among the region's stronger performers, trailing only Uruguay (405) and Chile (403) in math among the 13 Latin American countries tested.
Paper Literacy Doesn't Equal Reading Proficiency
Here's the tension the PISA numbers expose: nearly 95% of adults across Latin America and the Caribbean can read and write, according to World Bank figures, comfortably above the global adult literacy rate of roughly 87%, per UNESCO data compiled by Our World in Data. Sub-Saharan Africa's adult literacy rate sits closer to 68%, and low-income countries worldwide average about 63% — context that shows how far the region has come on basic literacy even as its teenagers struggle with the kind of reading PISA tests for.
That's because the adult literacy measure asks only whether someone can follow a short, everyday sentence. PISA asks whether a 15-year-old can pull meaning out of an unfamiliar text, weigh competing information and apply it — a functional skill that, judged by these results, most of the region's teenagers haven't developed.
The United States Slips Too, With a Data Caveat Attached
American 15-year-olds weren't spared: reading fell 14 points to 490, one of the sharpest declines among wealthy countries, according to an EFE wire dispatch carried by Infobae. Math dipped two points to 463, landing just below the OECD average by the wire service's account, while science ticked up two points to 502 — above the OECD's 484-point science average. In a new addition to this cycle, the U.S. also scored 513 in computational problem-solving, ahead of the OECD norm.
Those numbers carry an asterisk, though. More than 40% of American test-takers weren't given the accompanying background questionnaire, after a monthlong pause in U.S. testing operations in spring 2025 tied to federal staffing cuts at the Institute of Education Sciences, Chalkbeat reported. The OECD flagged the U.S. results for possible bias as a result — a caveat it applied to only one other country's data this cycle, Albania's.
What's Pulling Scores Down
The OECD's own analysis points to a shared culprit across wealthy and middle-income countries alike: more screen time, and less reading purely for enjoyment. In Argentina, though, the decline has an additional, homegrown driver. National education spending is projected to fall to just 0.88% of GDP in 2025 — its lowest share in a decade, down from 0.91% in 2024 and 1.48% in 2023 — according to an Argentinos por la Educación budget analysis published by Chequeado. That contraction followed the elimination of the country's federal teacher-incentive fund in January 2024 and a roughly 30% cut to university transfers the same year, a separate budget report found.
Taken together, the picture that emerges isn't one region falling behind on its own — it's a global education system under strain, with Latin America starting from further back and with far less budget room to absorb another lost generation of readers.
