PISA study: declining attainment in mathematics, reading and science

The most recent edition of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study, whose findings were announced today in Berlin, shows that learners in German schools are performing significantly less well in mathematics, reading, and science than they were in 2018. Around a third of the 15-year-olds tested have very poor skills in at least one of these three areas. The performance of students at Germany’s schools in mathematics and reading now only reaches the OECD average. The sciences are the only area tested in PISA in which they continue to score above the OECD mean. The results confirm and continue the downward trend that was evident in previous PISA studies.

Fifteen-year-olds’ attainment lower now than in 2018

The PISA study, run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), entails regular assessment of learners’ attainment  in mathematics, reading, and science tests, with questions drawn from everyday situations, at the age of fifteen, toward the end of compulsory schooling. The current study, the eighth in the PISA series, took place in the spring of 2022; it was cadministered in Germany by the Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

The average math and reading skills of learners in many OECD countries have declined in comparison  to their attainment in the previous edition of PISA, which took place in 2018. This decrease in performance is also observable, to a lesser extent, in scientific literacy.

Germany: Above-average drop in attainment in all three areas tested

The only area in which Germany is now attaining above the OECD average to a statistically significant extent is the sciences, with 492 points on average by contrast with the OECD mean of 485 points. In mathematics (475 points compared to the OECD average of 472 points) and reading (480 points as opposed to 476 points on average in the OECD), the German results are now in line with average attainment across the OECD, which has likewise decreased in both areas.

After the first PISA study, carried out in 2000, Germany initially showed improvements in attainment and maintained its performance at a high level. More recent editions of the study, however, uncovered a downward trend. Germany’s results in mathematics and science are now below the levels recorded in the PISA studies of the 2000s, when attainment in mathematics (PISA 2003) and science (PISA 2006) was examined in depth for the first time. German learners’ performance in reading remains roughly in line with that of the 2000 PISA study, which centered on literacy.

Very few OECD countries were able to improve on some of their results between 2018 and 2022; Japan, for instance, saw a rise in reading and science attainment, while Italy, Ireland, and Latvia did better than previously in science. Japan and South Korea have the highest average attainment in mathematics; Ireland, Japan, South Korea, and Estonia lead the way in reading; and the highest science scores occurred in Japan, South Korea, Estonia, and Canada.

Mathematics at the center of the PISA study’s eighth edition

The eighth PISA study tested the skills of a representative sample comprising approximately 6,100 15-year-old students at around 260 secondary schools in Germany, with all types of school in the largely selective system taking part. The young people also answered questions on their situations, educational trajectories, socio-demographic characteristics, and attitudes  School principals, teachers, and parents completed surveys around the design of lessons, the resources available, and the status learning holds at home. Worldwide, the number of school student participants was around 690,000. Each PISA study places a focal emphasis on one area; in this edition it was the turn of mathematics.

The ZIB, in which the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF) and the IPN are involved alongside TUM, manages the study in Germany on behalf of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Students struggling with attainment in increasing numbers

The study classes participants in six levels of proficiency in accordance with the scores they achieved in the test. Learners whose skills do not exceed proficiency level 1 require additional support to complete vocational or further education and to take an active part in in all areas of life in society. Around a third of 15-year-olds remain at this low attainment level in at least one of the three areas tested in the study. Approximately one in six learners experiences significant deficits in all three areas. The percentage of these particularly low-attaining students has increased since 2018, and now amounts to around 30% of the sample in mathematics, approximately 26% in reading, and about 23% in science. The proportion of particularly high-performing students at the other end of the spectrum remained stable in the sciences, at approximately ten percent.

The Covid-19 factor

Data from the interviews with school principals and students suggest possible reasons for the deterioration in attainment. The researchers assume, first, that school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to have impacted learners’ acquisition of skills. Distance learning for students in Germany meant working online less frequently, and using physical materials sent to learners’ homes more frequently, than was the case on average across the OECD. "Compared with other countries internationally, Germany was not well prepared for distance learning in terms of the availability of and access to digital devices - but it did then catch up," Prof. Doris Lewalter, an education researcher at TUM and Chair of the ZIB Board, who was the study’s lead investigator. Less than half of German learners with lower attainment took advantage of support services.

Notwithstanding the potential influence of COVID-19 conditions on students’ learning, the analysis of the international data shows no systematic correlation between the duration of school closures and downward trends in attainment between 2018 and 2022. Some countries where schools were closed for relatively low numbers of days achieved significantly poorer results than they had in 2018, while others that saw comparatively high numbers of days with  school closures showed only slight reductions in their scores, or even improved somewhat on 2018’s results.

Potential issues with language

A second possible factor that might explain the results in this edition’s focal area of mathematics is the fact that, in Germany, correlations between learners' attainment and the socio-economic status of their families  remain strong. Similarly, the presence or absence of what the German language refers to as a Zuwanderungs- or Migrationshintergrund – literally “immigration background” or “migration background” – likewise appears to correlate with attainment. Today, fifteen-year-olds who live in Germany now, but were not born there, show significantly lower performance in mathematics than did the corresponding group in the 2012 study, which was the last to consider this question. German is spoken less frequently in these students’ homes now than in the corresponding subsample of the 2012 study.

"However, this finding only partially explains the overall results," emphasizes Lewalter. "The mathematical skills of learners who are not first- or second-generation immigrants have also declined  when compared to 2012 – more so than those of students whose parents were first-generation immigrants but who were born in Germany themselves."

Interest and motivation

Researchers are therefore seeking potential explanations for the sustained decline in attainment in the learners’ responses to the surveys on their motivation, their attitudes, and their experience of lessons. Compared to the 2012 cohort, participants in the current PISA study report less interest and enjoyment in mathematics and perceive less benefit in learning the subject, while “math anxiety”  has increased.

"The results also show students feel less supported by their math teacher [than did samples in previous studies] – but this support is an important component of good teaching. On top of this, students seem to be gaining only a partial sense of the relationship of math to their lifeworlds that their teachers are attempting to communicate to them. This makes it harder for them to recognize the importance of math in their lives - which in turn can affect their motivation to do well in this subject," says Lewalter.

“We need to all pull together”

The authors of the analysis set out key recommendations in response to PISA data as follows:

• systematic ascertainment of and support for children’s language literacy from preschool to secondary school
• continuous improvement of teaching, incorporating the use of digital media
• the needs-based allocation of resources to improve the facilities of schools serving large numbers of learners from socioeconomically disadvantaged and/or immigrant families

"After the first PISA study in 2000, Germany put effective support schemes in place that enabled it to significantly improve its students’ skills," says Lewalter. "If we all pull together – as policymakers, schools, and society at large –, we may be able to repeat the upward trajectory we achieved then."

Doris Lewalter, Jennifer Diedrich, Frank Goldhammer, Olaf Köller, Kristina Reiss (eds): PISA 2022. Analyse der Bildungsergebnisse in Deutschland. Münster 2023. DOI: 10.31244/9783830998488

The OECD website provides more detail on PISA: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/

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