PISA 2025: how eTwinning can support schools and teachers

How can teachers help pupils enjoy reading, understand maths and get curious about science? The PISA 2025 results show declining performance in basic skills, alongside signs of weakening pupil engagement and motivation in many education systems, including across Europe.

This article looks at what these findings mean for classrooms today: how schools and teachers can help pupils build the knowledge, skills and agency they need in a changing world, and how eTwinning can support this through engaging, collaborative and purposeful learning.

What PISA 2025 tells us about school education

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assesses what 15-year-olds know and can do in science, reading and mathematics, and newer areas like computational problem solving. The latest results show an uneven but concerning picture across OECD countries, with challenges related to declining performance, pupil engagement and learning conditions.

Key findings include:

1. Performance is declining, particularly in reading and mathematics. Across OECD countries, average reading scores fell by 28 points and mathematics by 22 between 2015 and 2025.
2. Reading is an increasing concern. Pupils are struggling more with skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources and thinking critically about what they read. Instances of ‘hasty reading’, where pupils read quickly yet inaccurately, have also nearly doubled since 2018.
3. Engaging and supportive learning environments matter. Pupil motivation, a sense of belonging, effective learning strategies and positive relationships with teachers and parents are associated with stronger engagement.
4. Purposeful use of technology can support learning. The OECD highlights that digital tools can prepare young people for the future, but they should not replace attention, effort and understanding. The same applies to AI: the key issue is not whether pupils use it, but whether they do this critically, purposefully and with sound AI literacy.

There are also signs of progress, proving that declining performance is not inevitable. Across Europe, Estonia and the United Kingdom are among the top ten performing education systems in science, maths and reading. Other countries like Slovakia and Montenegro increased their share of top performers and reduced the share of low performers in science.

Explore more findings in the full PISA 2025 report.

Strengthening basic skills and learner engagement with eTwinning

The PISA 2025 findings point to areas where schools and teachers can make a difference, for example by strengthening basic skills, supporting pupil engagement and belonging, and using technology and AI in ways that enhance rather than distract from learning.

eTwinning projects naturally create opportunities for pupils to compare information from different sources, evaluate its reliability, analyse data, solve problems, negotiate solutions and collaborate on evidence-based conclusions. A recent study involving 14 secondary schools in Italy examined eTwinning’s impact on broader key competences, including citizenship, entrepreneurship, cultural awareness and expression, and digital competence. The findings show that pupils taking part in eTwinning projects made greater progress in these areas than those in regular classes, pointing to eTwinning’s potential to help pupils apply their learning in meaningful contexts.

Through eTwinning projects, learners can

• explore science through multisensory and inquiry-based activities
• learn mathematics through play and interactive challenges
• connect reading to the real world by writing about global challenges or sending letters to their peers
• develop digital skills by using technology to create and collaborate with peers. 

PISA 2025 highlights the need to make critical literacy a priority for schools. eTwinning can put this into practice through projects such as AI Fact Hunters and Beyond Fake News, where pupils can compare sources, fact-check information, discuss conflicting evidence or evaluate AI-generated content. Explore more eTwinning projects for classroom inspiration.