In 2022, as countries were still dealing with the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 700 000 students from 81 OECD Member and partner economies, representing 29 million across the world, took the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test.

Up to the end of the 1990s, the OECD’s comparisons of education outcomes were mainly based on measures of years of schooling, which don’t necessarily reflect what people actually know and can do. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) changed this. The idea behind PISA lay in testing the knowledge and skills of students directly, through a metric that was internationally agreed upon; linking that with data from students, teachers, schools and systems to understand performance differences; and then harnessing the power of collaboration to act on the data, both by creating shared points of reference and by leveraging peer pressure.

This edition of PISA includes data from 81 countries and economies. The test was originally planned to take place in 2021 but was delayed by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The exceptional circumstances throughout this period, including lockdowns and school closures in many places, led to occasional difficulties in collecting some data. While the vast majority of countries and economies met PISA’s technical standards (available on line), a small number did not. In prior PISA rounds, countries and economies that failed to comply with the standards, and which the PISA Adjudication Group judged to be consequential, could face exclusion from the main part of reporting. However, given the unprecedented situation caused by the pandemic, PISA 2022 results includes data from all participating education systems, including those where there were issues such as low response rates (see Annexes A2 and A4). The next section explains the potential limitations of data from countries not meeting specific technical standards. Readers are alerted to these limitations throughout the volume wherever appropriate.

PISA 2022 assesses reading, science, and, as its main subject, mathematics. Being proficient in mathematics today is more than the mere reproduction of routine mathematical procedures. Rather, PISA considers a mathematically proficient person to be someone who can mathematically reason their way through complex real-life problems and find solutions by formulating, employing and interpreting mathematics.

What should citizens know and be able to do? In response to that question and to the need for internationally comparable evidence on student performance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 1997 and the first assessment was conducted in 2000.

This chapter summarises the major findings of PISA 2022, whose main subject was mathematics. It begins with countries’/economies’ performance results, and situates 2022 results against longer-term trends in PISA performance. The chapter discusses PISA’s definition of equity in education from the perspective of inclusiveness and fairness; how equitable education systems are in 2022; and how equity has evolved over the past decade, highlighting countries that have successfully combined strong performance with fair and inclusive systems. The chapter also comments on performance from the standpoint of students’ gender and immigrant background.

This chapter compares students’ mean scores and the variation in their performance in mathematics, reading and science across the countries and economies that participated in the PISA 2022 assessment.

This chapter presents the various levels of proficiency that students exhibited in PISA 2022 in mathematics, reading and science. It describes what students can do at each level of proficiency in each subject and how many students performed at each proficiency level. It then discusses student performance in specific aspects of mathematics.

This chapter reports on fairness in education by analysing performance differences by student socio-economic status, gender, and social and economic contexts across education systems. It also reports on educational inclusion by examining students’ acquisition of basic proficiency skills in PISA core domains and the proportion of young people enrolled in school at age 15.

This chapter discusses short-term changes in student mean performance and the performance of high- and low-achieving students between 2018 and 2022. The chapter also analyses how these changes relate to students’ gender and socio-economic advantage.

This chapter reviews trends between PISA assessment 2022 and those prior to 2018 in mean performance, performance at the various levels of proficiency measured by PISA, and equity.

This chapter examines the mathematics and reading performance of students with an immigrant background in PISA-participating countries and economies. It investigates who these students are and how their circumstances (i.e. socio-economic status and linguistic background) relate to their performance in mathematics and reading. The chapter also explores performance gap trends in terms of immigrant background.

Results from PISA offer a wealth of data points that can highlight aspects of education policy that merit further investigation and development. This chapter suggests a plan for digging deeper into PISA 2022 data to better understand how policies can be improved to meet the needs of every student.