[In this Economy] PISA 2025: Much better scores, but the learning crisis remains - Rappler

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After a long wait, on September 8, we now have the results of the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which measures the skills of 15-year-old students.

There’s good news all around. Philippine scores have improved in all three subjects tested: our reading score rose from 347 in 2022 to 367, math from 355 to 371, and science from 356 to 373.

All three increases were statistically significant, meaning the analysis finds evidence of improvement beyond sampling and measurement uncertainty. PISA noted that we were among eight participating education systems that exhibited significant gains in all three subjects. Great!

In addition, the share of Filipino students below baseline proficiency in science, or PISA’s minimum expected skill level, also fell by a significant 8.9-percentage points between 2022 and 2025.

All of this is welcome news, and our teachers and students deserve recognition.

What accounts for the improvement? On the one hand, such a result should be hardly surprising, given the intense preparations of the Department of Education (DepEd).

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. himself directed DepEd, as early as 2024, to improve its PISA ranking. In response, DepEd formed a “Task Force PISA” whose job was to help teachers and especially students prepare for the computerized tests. They provided computers to the hundreds of schools which would potentially be sampled at random by the PISA test administrators, and took pains to allow students to practice on “PISA-type reviewers”—so that they’re less anxious to take the PISA test in case they are chosen to take it. These were so-called “familiarization sessions.” During test day itself, DepEd also made sure to put in place a “festive” mood in the schools, to make the exam less scary for students.

In 2024, DepEd also rolled out a “special science program” which involved teachers training their students in PISA-type questions. (This raised concerns that selected students were being trained for the sake of PISA 2025, a phenomenon called “teaching to the test.”)

Meanwhile, within the DepEd hierarchy, certain regional offices proferred incentives (e.g. awarding of plaques in special events) for “PISA Participating SDOs and Schools” after the exam was administered. The idea was to “recognize the efforts and commitment of PISA-participating schools” and, prospectively, “incentivize continued improvement in learning outcomes to drive future enhancements in educational performance.”

The singular focus of the public education system on PISA 2025 seems to have paid off. The improvements are real, but that’s what you get from intense preparation. As with any student determined to ace an exam, preparation is key.

The Philippines’ improvement is especially amazing given the broader trend in rich countries showing a significant deterioration especially in reading and math scores. According to the official press release, “Average reading scores fell by 28 points across OECD countries between 2015 and 2025, equivalent to about one and a half years of learning. Mathematics scores fell by 22 points, equivalent to just over one year of learning. Among non-OECD PISA participants, reading scores fell by 16 points and mathematics scores by eight points over the same period.”

Whether this unsettling result is because of worsening digital distractions or greater use of AI, we don’t quite know yet. At least for us, we seem to be bucking this global trend—for now.

Of course, there’s much more to say about the Philippines’ PISA results beyond the headline-grabbing gains.

First, our 2025 reading score of 367 is still quite low compared to the OECD average of 461. In math, the comparison is 371 versus 463, and in science, 373 versus 482.

Our ranking in ASEAN also still leaves much to be desired (Figure 1). While we managed to overtake Indonesia in reading and math, the differences are not statistically significant. Cambodia managed to overtake us in science, so that in the region we’re now last in science. Vietnam, which became an upper-middle income country this year (like us) is also way ahead of us in terms of math and science.

While the DepEd was gleeful to list the countries that now rank below us, we cannot treat every country below us as a country we overtook. Some countries and economies below us in 2025 were absent in 2022.

More troubling, the vast majority of Filipino students are still below the baseline proficiency level called Level 2 (Figure 2). As much as 70% are below-proficiency in reading, 79% in math, and 68% in science. Meanwhile, 64.3% of Filipino students, or nearly two in three, were below baseline proficiency (Level 2) in all three subjects simultaneously.

The gains were also unequal. Between 2022 and 2025, science scores rose by 36 points among the most socioeconomically advantaged quarter of Filipino students, versus 10 points among the most disadvantaged quarter. The latter increase was not statistically significant, while the gap widened by a significant 26 points.

Naturally, DepEd was in a self-congratulatory mood when the PISA 2025 results were announced. But higher scores do not, by themselves, establish which specific DepEd program worked, how much it contributed, or which specific official deserves credit.

Better instruction could have contributed, alongside greater familiarity with the computer platform and question formats. Preparation can include actual teaching, too, which means learning and test preparation are not always separable. The score increase alone cannot tell us how much came from each.

DepEd’s preparation materials warrant scrutiny. Since we joined PISA 2022, resources already included computer-based familiarization and practice materials, so these may have helped in the most recent round.

Some people allege that DepEd handpicked good students and schools. But PISA follows a prescribed sampling process, and the OECD says Philippine data met its quality standards. The 2025 sample included 8,072 students in 208 schools.

Nonetheless, since DepEd knew weeks in advance which specific schools would participate, it’s worth asking: did PISA-participating schools receive substantial extra support that comparable schools elsewhere did not?

Till now, we don’t exactly know what happens after random selection, and how much additional resources were poured to sampled schools. Maybe DepEd should publish the coverage, timing, and intensity of its preparations so that researchers can study their contribution. Establishing which measures helped would also inform whether they should reach more schools.

PISA’s coverage has limits, too. The Philippine sample represented about 82% of the country’s 15-year-old population, leaving young people outside its coverage whose learning also deserves attention.

More research needs to be done. A 2023 study published in the Economics of Education Review studied Vietnam’s exceptional PISA performance despite being an emerging economy. They found that Vietnam’s advantage persists even after adjustments for better-off students being overrepresented, adolescents outside school being excluded, and possible differences in test preparation and effort. Measured household and school characteristics explain only part of Vietnam’s exceptional performance, and much remains unexplained.

For the Philippines, that study suggests that poverty alone need not determine educational outcomes. Researchers must find out: how much of our learning gap persists after accounting for family circumstances and who gets tested? And what could explain the remainder?

Finally, by no means do the new results tell us that we have eradicated our long-standing learning crisis.

Apart from the 90% learning poverty rate that previously shocked the country, the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) also reported that proficiency rates plummet from 30% in Grade 3 (abysmal as it already is) to as low as 0.47% by Grade 12.

EDCOM 2’s executive director, Karol Mark Yee, also lamented recently on social media that the national government’s budget documents for 2027 are replete with the phrase “at least nearly proficient”—meaning that DepEd’s performance indicators are considered met if students are “at least nearly proficient” (not quite “proficient”). Karol argues that this is too low a bar, and may serve to mask systemic underperformance.

On top of this, Education Secretary Sonny Angara also divulged that for 2027 the budget proposed by the executive for the ARAL Program amounted to zero. ARAL involves remedial interventions for students lagging in reading. As things stand, there’s also no budget yet to hire teachers next year.

Worse, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) recently reported that politicians have made schools their milking cows as well. They said, “Data from the DPWH Transparency Portal reveals that contractors tied to the flood control scandal were the same ones awarded a large share of school infrastructure contracts.” Moreover, “Construction tycoons Curlee and Sarah Discaya bagged some P13.4 billion worth of school building and facility contracts from 2016 to 2026–the largest haul among all contractors.”

In sum, let’s celebrate the recent PISA gains. But that should not lull us into thinking that the education crisis is now gone. DepEd still needs to establish what caused the improvement and whether the measures behind it can help students across the country, especially those who remain below baseline proficiency.

Most importantly, the DepEd must ensure that these gains are persistent and not just one-off. – Rappler.com

Jan Carlo “JC” Punongbayan, PhD is an associate professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics (UPSE). His professional experience includes the Securities and Exchange Commission, the World Bank Office in Manila, the Far Eastern University Public Policy Center, and the National Economic and Development Authority. JC writes a weekly economics column for Rappler.com. He is also co-founder of UsapangEcon.com and co-host of Usapang Econ Podcast.

His first book, False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them, was published by Ateneo de Manila University Press in February 2023. His second book, Twin Plagues: How Duterte and Covid-19 Wrecked the Philippine Economy, was published by Penguin Random House SEA in June 2026. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan).