Almost 50% of fifteen-year-olds in Malta and Gozo struggle to read well enough to grasp the main idea of a text. This month the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) published its PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2025 results, and they deliver a brutal verdict. PISA tests how fifteen-year-olds apply reading, maths and science skills to real-life problems. Maltese students scored 415 points in reading, thirty below their own already poor 2022 result. Maths fell twenty-seven points to 439, while science slipped thirteen points to 453. Every score sits well below the OECD average, and every trend points downward.
No one can reject this sample as unrepresentative of Maltese education. Last year, 3,680 students from 46 schools took the two-hour assessment. They make up 95% of all fifteen-year-olds in Malta and Gozo. Our country first sat PISA in 2010 and has never once reached the OECD average. Sixteen years and five assessment cycles have delivered the same message every single time. Our 2025 reading and science results, the OECD adds, undercut every assessment before 2022.
Every home on these islands will feel concerned by the reading number's details. At Level 2, readers can identify the main idea, find details, and consider the reasons behind the text's creation. Only 52% of our students reached that floor, against 69% across the OECD. A mere 2% qualify as top readers, compared with 6% elsewhere. In maths, 56% reached minimum proficiency, against an OECD average of 65%. The OECD now lists Malta among Europe's steepest decliners this cycle. In maths, only Israel, Latvia, Serbia and Slovenia matched our loss of over twenty points. In reading, only Latvia, Israel, and Guatemala fell further than our thirty-point plunge.
Three excuses will now circulate through ministerial statements, and the data demolishes each one. The pandemic reason falls short, with the 2022 cohort excelling amid recovery. The poverty excuse collapses under the OECD's own equity analysis of this cycle. Close to half of Malta's test-takers belong to the most advantaged 25% of students worldwide. Yet 17.2% of our advantaged children miss minimum maths proficiency, against 10.9 across the EU. Our advantaged students slid backwards while disadvantaged students merely stood still. The global-tide excuse fares no better, though reading and maths did decline across the OECD. Malta declined more rapidly, more deeply, and from a much lower baseline than almost all others. The European ladder shows where we stand.
Estonia, a nation of 1.4 million without oil or great natural wealth, again tops Europe. Ireland, an island economy like ours, holds 500 in reading while we manage 415. The United Kingdom joined only nineteen systems worldwide that improved on their 2022 scores. Singapore led the world in reading, while Chinese provinces dominated maths and science. These leaders share no secret beyond patient teaching and strategies that outlive electoral cycles.
Malta chose a different decade: hardware over teachers, announcements over follow-through, spending over learning. The One Tablet Per Child scheme placed a screen on every primary school desk from 2016. Two national literacy strategies came and went, and the low performers multiplied, regardless. Since 2015, low performers in maths grew by fifteen percentage points of the cohort. Reading added twelve points to the strugglers, and science four, cycle after relentless cycle. MATSEC confirmed the pipeline this summer, when 33.87% of candidates failed SEC mathematics. Labour has directed education policy without interruption since 2013, through five successive ministers. A new education strategy for 2024-2030 now promises curriculum reform, equity, and revised assessments. Its monitoring Data Warehouse covers state schools only, excluding over 40% of students. We measure half the patient and call it a diagnosis.
Beyond the scores, the report's school-life findings read like symptoms of official neglect. Only 9% of Maltese students have never touched an AI chatbot. Compared to their OECD counterparts, they rely more heavily on chatbots for research, summarising, and drafting. Thirty-seven percent use machines to summarise texts, and 36% to draft assignments. Children who cannot extract a main idea now outsource reading to software they cannot supervise. I argued in August that supervising AI demands the very literacy and numeracy we neglect. PISA has now measured that hollow foundation with uncomfortable precision. This cycle the OECD added computational problem solving and drew one sharp conclusion. Digital skills count for little without foundations in reading, maths and science.
Families also pulled back, and the OECD recorded their retreat with concrete data. In 2022, 73% of parents asked about their child's school day. The share declined to 66%, and problem discussions decreased from 58 to 46. Bullying affects 23% of our students, compared to a global average of 20%. If parents stop checking in about school, it shows that school matters less than it should. The OECD's secretary-general prescribed what resilient systems do differently. Their approach is to focus on fewer subjects, support teachers, engage with parents, and direct aid where needed. Malta did the opposite on almost every count, and responsibility carries an address.
Clifton Grima ran the education ministry from December 2021 until June this year. The 15-year-olds who sat PISA 2025 spent their entire secondary schooling under his strategies. He now serves as justice minister, while Byron Camilleri inherits the wreckage and the excuses. The government took over three years to settle the MCAST educators' collective agreement. Teacher recruitment, retention and respect belong at the centre of any honest recovery plan. Fewer initiatives, taught more deeply, would serve better than another launch event with branded folders. His successor deserves one honest warning: rectification takes a decade, not a legislature.
Estonia gained its status after twenty years of teacher freedom, strong training, and steady politics. Ireland's reading strength grew from the ten-year national literacy strategy it launched in 2011. A child entering primary school this month will sit PISA in 2036. Whether that cohort can read depends on programmes starting this scholastic year, not next. Ministers, elections, and press conferences come and go, but those programmes must persist because neglect grows faster than learning. The report card has arrived, and it names the adults, not the children.