Mathematics test scores in some countries have been dropping for years, even as the subject grows in importance

The bottom line is troubling.

Scores on an international math test fell a record 15 points between 2018 and 2022 — the equivalent of students losing three-quarters of a school year of learning.

That finding may not be surprising considering the timing of the test. The world was still recovering from the disruptive effects of the global pandemic when the test, called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, was administered.

But in many countries, the slide in math scores began years before Covid-19 and was even steeper than the international average. That includes some of the world’s largest and wealthiest countries, and others acclaimed for their education systems, such as Canada, France, Germany and Finland. Only a few school systems — Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong — have been able to maintain their top results for the long haul.

Some of the scores set off another “PISA shock” — a term first used in Germany in 2000 when scores there were much lower than expected — that may change how mathematics is taught around the world.

Although there’s no single culprit behind the decline, PISA is more than a math test: It also includes a wide-ranging survey of the students who take the test, most of whom are around 15 years old and coming to the end of compulsory schooling in their countries. From their responses, and analysis by PISA researchers, several themes stand out, including disconnection from school and teachers, a lack of motivation and a sense that math does not clearly connect to their real lives.

Why motivation matters

PISA uses a series of word problems that assess how well students can use the math they’ve learned throughout their lives to solve problems they might face in the real world. For example, one question in the most recent test gives students the dimensions of a moving truck and then asks them to figure out how many boxes of a certain size can fit.

 Other problems require students to extract information from different types of data, such as a question that asks students to calculate which brand of car has the best value, taking into its price, fuel consumption, and resale value.

“Students need to have the confidence to try different things, and a level of persistence to do these kinds of problems,” said Joan Ferrini-Mundy, a mathematics educator and the president of the University of Maine. Ferrini-Mundy is also the co-chair of the PISA’s Mathematics Expert Group.

But nearly 1 in 4 students reported on the PISA survey that they gave up more than half the time when they were confronted with math that they didn’t understand. A little more than 40 percent said they never, or almost never, actively participated in group discussions in math class. And about 31 percent said they never or almost never asked questions when they didn’t understand the math they were being taught.

In Germany, where scores have dropped faster than those of many other PISA nations, researchers pointed to a collapsing interest in math as a subject that started around 2012, among other factors. Students reported less enjoyment, less interest and more anxiety around the topic, said Doris Lewalter, an educational researcher at the Technical University of Munich. They also were more likely to report that they saw fewer potential benefits from studying math.

The effects of screen time

Students who reported spending up to an hour on devices for learning purposes scored 14 points higher than students who said they spent no time on digital devices for learning. But too much use of digital devices was a distraction, even indirectly. Students who said they were distracted at least some of the time in school by their peers using devices scored 15 points lower than students who reported that they never, or almost never, were distracted.

Outside the classroom, digital device use also matters when it comes to math scores. Students who spent more than an hour on weekdays surfing the web or on social networks scored between 5 and 20 points lower than peers who spent less than an hour on devices.

Lack of real-world connection

On student surveys, only about a quarter of PISA-takers said they were asked “to think of problems from everyday life that could be solved with new mathematics knowledge we learned” for more than half or almost every lesson.

William Schmidt, a professor at Michigan State University and the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Curriculum Policy, has studied the seeming disconnect between math as it is taught, and math as it is used outside of school.

Schmidt examined the math textbooks of 19 countries, and said that about 15 percent of the computational problems in those books are word problems. But of those, only a tiny percentage — just over one-quarter of 1 percent — ask students to use math reasoning to solve a problem, in his view. An example might be determining how many items you can buy at a store for $52, given certain discounts and taking into account sales tax, he said.

Schmidt, also a member of the PISA math experts group, believes students should grapple with problems like this, which have the benefit of being more interesting as well.

“What we should be doing is exposing our children to real exercises that are real in their world and that have applications they would care about,” Schmidt said.

Good teachers are irreplaceable

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees PISA for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, said the student surveys also showed the importance of teachers’ connection to their students. Math scores were 15 percentage points higher, on average, in places where students said they had good access to teacher help. Those students also felt more confident in their ability to learn on their own, and remotely.

On the 2022 survey, about 70 percent of students reported regularly receiving extra help from teachers, but that figure represents a drop of 3 percentage points from 2012.

“That was actually a surprise to me, that we see fewer students growing up with the notion that my teacher knows who I am, my teacher knows who I want to become, my teacher supports me,” Schleicher said. “Many students perceive education to be more transactional.”

A call to action

Finland’s fall, from a top performer in 2006 to just slightly above the OECD average in 2022, has been the most dramatic among previous high achievers. In math, the proportion of low achievers rose to 25 percent in 2022, from about 7 percent in 2000.

Finnish students’ achievements have been dropping gradually for two decades, and the trend is reflected in national evaluations, said Jenna Hiltunen, a researcher in mathematical pedagogy at the University of Jyvaskyla, who was part of the team that implemented PISA in Finland. “I wouldn’t say that we were surprised by the decline, but we were a little bit surprised by how large the decline was.”

Finnish math education experts cited reduced motivation in students and a disconnect between their life goals and how young people feel about school. It plans to invest 146 million euros — about $158 million in U.S. dollars — over the next three years in schools in disadvantaged areas, and it is adding one hour per week of math lessons for students in grades three to six, which is planned to begin in August 2025. Local authorities will decide which of those grades will get the extra hour.

“We think it’s important to highlight the importance of basic skills, and learning the fundamentals,” said Tommi Karjalainen, a senior ministerial adviser to the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and a former education researcher at the University of Helsinki.

In New Zealand, where math scores on international tests in the past decade have fallen steeply, a new government campaigned on bringing a “back to basics” approach to education. The government has mandated an hour of reading, writing and mathematics in school each day and has banned cellphones. A government-created advisory group has also suggested that the country move to a more traditional, explicit form of mathematics instruction, as opposed to inquiry methods that focus more on having students create their own mathematics learning, with teachers serving as guides.

In Bavaria, one of Germany’s 16 states, leaders announced in February a plan to add additional math and German lessons in the primary years, part of a “PISA Initiative.”

France is responding to its sliding scores by introducing more tracking. Starting in September, France will start testing middle school students to track them into different mathematics and French classes, based on their scores.

And educators are looking to different countries to learn the keys to their success. The former Soviet republic of Estonia, as one example, achieved the highest mathematics scores on the PISA of any other country in Europe.

The country of 1.4 million people has not focused on international math scores as a goal in itself, said Peeter Mehisto, co-author of “Lessons from Estonia’s Education Success Story: Exploring Equity and High Performance Through PISA.”

Instead, it has stopped separating students into groups based on their academic performance, a practice called “streaming” or “tracking.” Mehisto, an honorary research associate at the University of London Institute of Education, said that research shows that “low-track” students often end up alienated from school.

In the United States, in comparison to other countries, no one is talking about widespread changes because of these math scores. No centralized government agency controls curriculum, and the U.S. actually moved up in comparison to other nations because those other nations did so poorly.

Unlike the belief in some other countries, the U.S. scores “are not cause for huge alarm,” said Ferrini-Mundy, one of the PISA experts. “We have to pay attention to this, but it’s not a catastrophe.”

Frieda Klotz contributed reporting and Sarah Butrymowicz contributed research to this story.

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

This story about dropping math scores was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.