Education For Life Statement on PISA Test Results
Today, the OECD published the results of PISA 2025, which assess the literacy of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science, alongside attitudes and experiences related to learning. Israel recorded unusually sharp declines across all three domains: 38 points in reading, 25 in mathematics and 23 in science, while a high proportion of students do not reach the required baseline level.
The immediate response to a low score is often to focus on the result: how to raise the score, make up missed material and close gaps. But just as it is not enough to look only at a student’s grade without understanding the learning process behind it, the education system must ask not only how much students know, but also what enables or prevents them from learning and succeeding.
The data show that Israel’s challenge is not only academic. Around 37% of students see school as “a waste of time,” one of the highest rates in the OECD. The OECD country report for Israel also found that only 60% of students report that, in most science lessons, the teacher shows an interest in every student’s learning, compared with 69% on average across the OECD. Only 64% report receiving extra help when they need it, compared with 73% across the OECD. At the same time, students in Israel report lower levels of curiosity and slightly lower perseverance than the OECD average.
The title of the report, Future-Ready Students, reflects the OECD’s broader framing of what education needs to provide. Preparing young people for a changing world requires more than strong academic proficiency. It also requires motivation, agency, learning strategies and the ability to take responsibility for one’s own learning. This points towards a holistic approach that connects achievement with the wider conditions that support learning and well-being.
Education for Life’s approach starts from the understanding that learning gaps do not begin and end with knowledge. They are also connected to differences in students’ sense of competence, in the opportunities they have to recognize their own abilities, and in the extent to which educators are able to see their strengths and build on them.
Or Mordo, CEO of Education for Life: “Achievement is built where students feel capable, valued and seen. Our responsibility is not only to identify what is missing, but also to recognise the abilities already present in every student and create the conditions for them to grow.”.
From this perspective, our programmes : Seeing Strengths and Partners for Change focus on conditions whose importance is reinforced by these findings: strengthening educators’ ability to identify strengths, needs and potential; expanding students’ sense of competence; creating genuine partnership with children and young people; and building educational environments that connect well-being, belonging, engagement and learning.
If we want to reduce gaps, it is not enough to ask what students do not know. We must also ask what abilities they already have, whether the system recognises them, and whether it gives them the conditions to turn those abilities into success.
