Europe is facing a profound educational challenge, as the latest PISA 2025 results reveal a sharp decline in mathematics and reading across the OECD. Mathematics fell to 463 points, around 22 points below the level recorded in 2015, which is equivalent to more than a year of learning, while reading declined to 461 points. Science has proved more resilient, with an OECD average of 482 points. Although the extent of the decline varies considerably between countries, the overall deterioration observed across many European education systems raises serious concerns about the direction in which education is moving across the continent.
At the same time, the European picture is far from uniform, and the differences between education systems are important when interpreting these results. Estonia remains one of the strongest-performing systems, scoring 508 points in mathematics, compared with the OECD average of 463. Switzerland reached 499 points, the United Kingdom 488, Poland 484, while Ireland and Belgium both reached 480. Estonia also performs strongly in reading and science, with 83% of its students reaching at least Level 2 in mathematics, compared with 65% across the OECD. These results show that, despite the broader deterioration, some countries continue to achieve relatively high levels of educational performance.
This variation is particularly relevant because it challenges the assumption that educational decline is simply an inevitable consequence of the pressures affecting contemporary societies. Education systems across Europe are dealing with issues such as inequality, social change, digitalisation and the consequences of the post-pandemic period, yet some have managed to maintain stronger outcomes than others. This suggests that educational performance is not determined exclusively by wider social circumstances and that what happens within schools, as well as the way education systems respond to inequality and disadvantage, can have a significant impact on students’ opportunities to learn.
European scientific research provides further support for this perspective. More than a decade ago, the EU-funded INCLUD-ED project, coordinated by the University of Barcelona, investigated educational strategies capable of reducing inequality and promoting social inclusion. Rather than focusing only on identifying which children are disadvantaged, this research placed greater emphasis on understanding which educational practices can improve outcomes for students facing greater social and educational disadvantages.
More recent research by scholars including Ramón Flecha and Marta Soler-Gallart, building on the scientific legacy of INCLUD-ED, further develops this approach. Their 2025 study examines the longitudinal evolution of Successful Educational Actions and argues that scientific evidence is becoming increasingly clear about which educational practices contribute to improved learning outcomes and which do not. This research is now being extended through REVERS-ED, where researchers including Marta Soler-Gallart, Laura Ruiz and Ramón Flecha are examining how educational inequalities evolve over time and how successful interventions can contribute to reversing them.
The European Union is taking this research further through REVERS-ED, an ongoing Horizon Europe project running from 2024 to 2027, with an EU contribution of approximately €2.58 million. The project aims to analyse educational inequalities over time and investigate interventions capable not only of compensating for these inequalities but also of reversing them.
Taken together, this evidence suggests that social and educational inequalities should not be understood as deterministic forces that permanently define students’ academic trajectories. PISA 2025 provides a clear warning about the deterioration in educational performance, while INCLUD-ED demonstrates that educational trajectories can change and REVERS-ED is investigating how successful interventions can be sustained and expanded. Europe’s challenge is therefore to measure the decline honestly, identify the practices that work and ensure that they reach the students and schools that need them most. The crisis is real, but the evidence does not justify educational fatalism: decline is not inevitable, and the scientific basis for action already exists.
Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Barcelona.
Extensive experience in the participation of EU funded research projects particularly from the EC’s Framework Programme.
Co-editor of RASP: Research on Ageing and Social Policy.
Assistant Lecturer at the University of the Basque Country