PISA Results in the Spotlight as Denmark Calls Its Performance a Disaster

The latest PISA results have triggered alarm across the Nordic region, with Danish public broadcaster DR describing the country’s performance as “a complete disaster.” Iceland remains at the bottom of the Nordic table in reading, science and mathematics, while Finland is the only country in the region portrayed as having held its ground.

The assessment covered 15-year-old students in 91 countries and economies, including 38 OECD members. In Norway, results in reading, scientific literacy and mathematics were weaker than in most countries used for comparison. Norwegian newspaper VG reported that mathematics and reading performance had deteriorated noticeably from the previous assessment in 2022.

Norwegian Education Minister Kari Nessa Nordtun said the results painted a dark picture of the country’s school system. In Sweden, broadcaster SVT reported that students had never performed so poorly in a PISA assessment, with declines across all tested subjects, particularly reading and mathematics.

Finland also scored lower in all three areas than in 2022, with the sharpest fall in reading. Yet Helsinki Times noted that Finland remained above the OECD average in every subject, with 474 points, 16 fewer than in 2022, sharing 17th place with Italy.

The picture was more positive in England. The BBC reported that England improved in all three subjects, while Scotland and Wales declined in reading and mathematics. Science performance rose across all three. The BBC also warned that students were losing skills considered important in the age of artificial intelligence, including the ability to critically assess information from different sources. China and Singapore stood clearly above most of the nearly 100 participating countries and economies.

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a complete disaster