Singapore and China lead the world in education scores for 15 year olds

 

Singapore and mainland China top global studentassessment as OECD scores hit record lows

Latest survey of 15-year-old students across 91 countries and economies included new computational problem-solving module for AI era

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Carol Yangin Beijing

Published: 7:00pm, 11 Sep 2026

Singaporean and Chinese students led the world in educational performance in 2025, according to an assessment by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, as average scores across OECD countries reached a record low.

The 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment comprised 760,000 15-year-old students across 91 countries and economies, including OECD members and partners.

This edition of the survey was the largest since the OECD first administered the triennial assessment in 2000.

In the report that OECD released on Tuesday, Singapore outpaced mainland China in reading with 535 points against China’s 527.

The city state also posted strong results in mathematics and science with 563 and 560 points, respectively – second only to China.

China’s ‘sky school bus’ lifts pupils to mountain-top classrooms and a brighter future

Students from mainland China led globally in maths with 612 points and science with 597 points, vastly outperforming the OECD averages of 463 and 482 points, respectively.

The surveyed students from mainland China hailed from the country’s four eastern education powerhouses: the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

Mainland China is not an OECD member and did not take part in the OECD’s previous assessment because of coronavirus pandemic-related disruptions.

The 2025 edition expanded beyond reading, maths and science to debut a computational problem-solving module. It tested students’ ability to use programming tools, run experiments and design digital products.

Macau, a special administrative region of China, topped the new digital module with a score of 572. Singapore came second at 563, edging out mainland China’s 560 and well above the OECD average of 500.

Traditionally, Singapore and mainland China place a premium on strong school discipline, academic achievement and perseverance. Both are relatively strict in controlling digital distractions in the classroom compared with many Western systems.

Other top-performing education systems included Macau, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Estonia, Hong Kong and Britain.

In contrast, American students posted mixed results. They scored 490 in reading – down 14 points from 2022 – and 463 in maths, similar to the 465 tallied three years ago. US science scores rose modestly to 502, with computational skills at 513.

At a global level, the results looked bleak. Compared with 2022, average OECD scores slid across the three mainstay subjects to varying degrees.

“The overall performance of OECD countries declined, with the lowest average levels of performance ever observed,” the report said.

Across the OECD, one in five 15-year-old students is now a low performer in science, maths and reading, up from 16 per cent in 2022, according to the report.

Long-term data showed reading had declined since peaking around 2012, while maths fell sharply after 2018. Science performance has dipped more gradually over the past decade.

The report also highlighted a drop in skills critical for the artificial intelligence (AI) era, such as evaluating information, synthesising multiple sources and thinking critically.

And the proportion of “hasty readers” – students who rush through texts and give quick but incorrect answers – nearly doubled between 2018 and 2025.

Digital distraction in classrooms was identified as a major driver of the slump, with more than a quarter of OECD students reporting that peers were distracted by electronic devices during science lessons.

Meanwhile, the link between AI usage and academic performance was nuanced.

The 2025 data revealed that students who used AI for specific tasks such as drafting, summarising or research performed worse in science than non-users.

However, those who used AI for general learning and received AI literacy training at school scored slightly higher.

Mathias Cormann, OECD’s secretary general, said the data showed that “reversing declines in student performance is urgent”.

Technology and AI must be used purposefully rather than as “a substitute for attention, effort and understanding”, he added.

Woke Madness in Calgary schools > Lunch room closed during Ramadam

 

Most schools have a problem with children not being fed enough to be able to learn effectively. Calgary, however, has decided to make it more difficult for students to eat. How absurd!

Canada: Woke school bans kids from eating in cafeteria and lunch room to not offend Muslims during Ramadan

Mar 17, 2026 1:00 pm By Christine Douglass-Williams

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In an alarming report about a Calgary school in Canada, parents received notices that their children were relegated to “No Food” zones, as they were banned from the cafeteria and lunch room during the Islamic month of Ramadan. 

Woke Canadian school bans children from eating in its cafeteria and lunch room to avoid offending Muslim students during Ramadan

by Anna Wright, Daily Mail, March 16, 2026:

A Canadian school has sparked outrage after it designated ‘No Food’ zones at certain times inside its cafeteria in order to be inclusive to Muslim children who are fasting for Ramadan.

Lunch areas at Fairview School in Calgary have been named ‘food free’ to support students undertaking the religious fast, according to an email sent by administrators.

The email informed parents that the cafeteria was a ‘No Food Space’ during the first half of lunch for younger pupils in grades 4 to 6.

Children in grades 7 to 9 would be banned from eating food inside their lunch room for the full hour-long break, according to the email.

It’s unclear where the non-fasting students would be able to eat as an alternative. As of 2024, Fairview School has 911 students enrolled, up to the ninth grade.

Ramadan started on February 17, and will end on March 18. Practicing Muslims do not eat food or drink water during sunlight hours for the month, and celebrate the end with the festival of Eid.

Calgary’s education board snapped back at the criticism online, and confusingly put out a statement saying that the school had made ‘no changes to these designated lunch areas,’ despite acknowledging the email with the new restrictions was sent out.

The email, dated February 18, stated: ‘To support students who may be fasting, we will be providing designated No Food Spaces during lunch…

Photo: Google Maps

Parents everywhere need to wake up and closely pay attention to what is being taught to their children in schools. Once children are indoctrinated, the indoctrination can remain with them for life. Wokeness presents itself as noble to youngsters, as it appears to teach them the importance of tolerance, opposition to racism, and consideration of others. But what it really does is divide Western society into two: Westerners who are deemed to be oppressors and “privileged,” who must practice self-deprecation and make sacrifices for those who are “foreign” and/or “oppressed,” with no real understanding about who or what they are serving. Schools should be educating, not indoctrinating. The administrators of Fairview School in Calgary and the Calgary School Board are proving themselves to be unfit and unsafe to execute their duties to educate children.

Likely without even realizing it, Fairview School is teaching its children to sacrifice their spaces to adherents of a supremacist religion. Islam is a religion of conquest. Ramadan is the month of jihad in Islamic history and tradition, rooted in violent conquests. Muhammad commanded his followers to fast, but also to wage bloody jihad. Islam divides the world in two: dar al harb (the House of War) and dar al Islam (the House of Islam). In this view, the West is dar al harb, and must be conquered using stealth or violent means, or a combination. The Muslim Brotherhood, in its strategic goal for North America, revealed the plan:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Proecess” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.

Are Catholics catered to as they fast for Lent? Is any other religion catered to for their traditions? The woke bow to only one religion: Islam. Mainstream Islam already teaches supremacy to its own children, so when Muslim children see the infidel bow to their traditions, it reinforces the dhimmitude (the state of inferiority and second-class status for non-Muslims) taught and established in the Islamic Sharia. This video discusses Sharia supremacy and dhimmitude in Islam.

Fairview School and the Calgary School Board likely did not expect to be challenged and exposed for its ignorance:

Without pushback, Sharia supremacy will continue to spread through DEI programs, which have become infamous for bringing disunity and leading to the erosion of Western civilization everywhere they are implemented.