Canadian teens rank 9th in science as PISA scores hit record lows

OTTAWA — Canadian 15-year-olds ranked ninth in science, 11th in mathematics and 12th in reading in the OECD’s PISA 2025 assessment — still well above the OECD average even as Canada’s scores fell to the lowest levels ever recorded in the survey.

More than 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies took part, including about 24,600 teens from 897 Canadian schools across all 10 provinces. Top systems again clustered in East Asia plus Estonia, South Korea and the United Kingdom. Canada was outperformed in science by Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Korea and several Chinese economies, and still cleared OECD benchmarks: 84% of Canadian students reached at least Level 2 in science versus a 74% OECD average.

Compared with 2022, Canada’s math and reading results slipped while science was roughly unchanged — yet all three subjects sit significantly below 2015. The OECD links long-run declines to digital distractions, less reading for enjoyment, absenteeism and systems that are “adapting” poorly to social and technological change, with COVID deepening a slide that was already underway.

For an economy chasing AI, defence and capital inflows, elite rankings that mask eroding skills are an inflation story about future productivity: weaker reading and math today means thinner wage growth and higher unit labour costs when the next boom arrives.