The data in this domain provides information about the skills levels of students as measured by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The charts below cover data on the mean performance score of the three main skills domains as measured by PISA as well as mean performance score by sex.

For further information about definitions and sources and methodology please see below at the end of the page.

Please make use of the interactive filtering options to highlight data by country, years, age groups, and gender.

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Definitions

Reading literacy: An individual’s capacity to understand, use, evaluate, reflect on and engage with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, develop one’s knowledge and potential, and participate in society.

Mathematical literacy: An individual’s capacity to formulate, employ and interpret mathematics in a variety of contexts. It includes reasoning mathematically and using mathematical concepts, procedures, facts and tools to describe, explain and predict phenomena.

Scientific literacy: The ability to engage with science-related issues, and with the ideas of science, as a reflective citizen. A scientifically literate person is willing to engage in reasoned discourse about science and technology, which requires the competencies to explain phenomena scientifically, evaluate and design scientific enquiry, and interpret data and evidence scientifically.

For more information, refer to the PISA data and methodological information page.

Sources and methodology

The data for the charts below is sourced from these data tables:

1. “PISA: Mean performance on the reading scale”, table code “LO.PISA.REA”
2. “PISA: Mean performance on the reading scale. Female”, table code “LO.PISA.REA.FE”
3. “PISA: Mean performance on the reading scale. Male”, table code “LO.PISA.REA.MA”
4. “PISA: Mean performance on the mathematics scale”, table code “LO.PISA.MAT”
5. “PISA: Mean performance on the mathematics scale. Female”, table code “LO.PISA.MAT.FE”
6. “PISA: Mean performance on the mathematics scale. Male”, table code “LO.PISA.MAT.MA”
7. “PISA: Mean performance on the science scale”, table code “LO.PISA.SCI”
8. “PISA: Mean performance on the science scale. Female”, table code “LO.PISA.SCI.FE”
9. “PISA: Mean performance on the science scale. Male”, table code “LO.PISA.SCI.MA”

The data can be accessed here: https://data.worldbank.org/.

Warning about data quality: some of the data may be based on imputed observations. Imputed observations are not based on national data, are subject to high uncertainty and should not be used for country comparisons or rankings. For more information about the estimation and, where relevant, projection methodology, please refer to the ILOSTAT page on modelled estimates and projections.