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.

JFK Assassination > Video buried for 48 years could show shooter on 'grassy knoll'

 

JFK assassination film held by feds could be worth $900M – and could prove 2nd shooter on ‘grassy knoll’

By 

Geoff Earle

NYPost

The grainy 8mm footage, captured by Dallas air conditioner repairman Orville Nix as bullets ripped through Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, hasn’t been seen since 1978, when it was sent away for analysis by an LA company and later fell under federal ownership — although the feds claim they don’t have it.

Nix died in 1972, and his granddaughter continued her late dad’s legal war to recover his film — which she’s convinced is worth more than $900 million as it may hold the key to exposing one of history’s biggest cover-ups.

Now a federal judge has ruled that the battle over the film can go forward — and the footage might finally see the light of day.

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The granddaughter of Orville Nix, who shot 8mm film of the Kennedy assassination, is fighting in court to force disclosures from the government and get compensation for the film, which is less known than the famous Zapruder film of the incident.

Orville Nix, Sr.
Unlike the famous Zapruder film showing the moment President John F. Kennedy was shot in the head, Nix’s camera was pointed at the infamous grassy knoll — the exact spot where many witnesses thought shots originated. Conspiracy theorists have long believed a second gunman was hiding behind a fence on the knoll.

The Nix film captured first lady Jackie Kennedy climbing on the back of the presidential limo immediately after her husband was shot — and a view of the fence.

The film could reveal evidence that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone — thanks to new optic technologies and AI, according to Scott Watnik of Wilk Auslander LLP, a lawyer for Nix’s granddaughter, Linda Gayle Nix Jackson.

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Orville Nix’s film shows the famous “grassy knoll” that Kennedy conspiracy theories say could have been where a second gunman was located.

Courtesy Nix family

“It’s really the only one that is known to have captured the grassy knoll area of Dealey Plaza right as the assassination occurs,” Watnik told The Post, noting that the film could bolster a 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations report that found Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” That panel obtained the Nix film and played a role in the legal saga over its return.

“If we subjected the camera-original film to optics technology of 2026, we can certainly capture details in the film that we never could have captured when … the committee had the film in 1978,” he said.

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Lawyers for the family say new technology would allow for more advanced analysis to pinpoint what happened.

Orville Nix, Sr.

The FBI, in its own 1980 analysis, found inaccuracies in that report, which relied on acoustic analysis to try to pinpoint the location of a potential second shooter.

During the last six decades, the Nix film has been held by the FBI, news outlet United Press International, Congress, and a private firm called the Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles, which analyzed it and says it handed it back to the National Archives.

The National Archives in 1988 said it had only a copy of it — and the legal discovery process set forth by Court of Federal Claims Judge Stephen Schwartz in a Jan. 15 order gives lawyers a chance to try to force the government to reveal information about its stewardship.

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The Warren Commission report concluded Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy.

AFP via Getty Images

The family’s case rests on the 5th Amendment, which states that the government shall not take property without providing “just compensation” in return.

But the 1992 JFK Records Act law granted the government ownership rights to JFK assassination evidence, while setting up a process for release of records to the public.

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Zapruder actually appears in the Nix film.

Orville Nix

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The grassy knoll pictured in the film is central to the “second gunman” theory.

Orville Nix

But the family’s massive monetary demand could run into trouble — given that an arbitration panel valued the Nix film’s more famous counterpart, the 8mm film shot by dress maker Abraham Zapruder, at $16 million back in 1999, calling it “a unique historical item of unprecedented worth.”

Lawyers for Nix’s granddaughter cite that value as a benchmark for what Nix’s film might have been worth back then — but want their client to get a whole lot of interest, based on the government’s longtime possession.

“If one were to say this film is worth what that one is worth as of ’92, and you apply 32 years of compound interest at a quarterly compound basis, you start to get numbers in the many, many hundred of millions,” Watnik said. One “preliminary estimate” his team reached was $930 million.

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The president’s motorcade in Dallas before the assassination.

Corbis via Getty Images

It’s not just about getting money to Nix’s heirs — Nix’s son, Orville Nix Jr., died in July, slowing proceedings.

Lawyers for Nix Jackson say they want to use the court case and potential trial that would come if no settlement is reached to force new information from the government about how and where it has stored materials, including fragments of JFK’s brain, and recordings of internal communications by Dallas cops the day of the shooting.

“This is evidence of a murder, after all, of our nation’s president,” said Watnik. “So it’s even more important that we know where these records are.” The Nix family’s lawyers aren’t willing to take the government’s responses at face value. Among the Kennedy records they say have become “unlocated” over the years: the original copy of the supplementary autopsy report of the president, up to three photos taken at the autopsy, and Kennedy’s brain.

The National Archives and Records Administration did not respond to a request for comment.

The 1964 Warren Commission report concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository as the president’s motorcade drove past, but conspiracy theorists have long dismissed its conclusions.

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