Israel's education system and the Education Ministry have fallen to a historic low in the international PISA assessments, posting weak scores in reading, mathematics and science. These are the lowest scores recorded by Israeli students since the country began participating in the international study 20 years ago, in 2006.
This is the steepest decline in student achievement in Israel's history, with the scale of the drop among the largest ever recorded among OECD countries in PISA.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch is completing a four-year term during which he promised ambitious programs in mathematics, science and artificial intelligence. But the reality is that Israeli students struggle to understand what they read, have difficulty solving mathematical problems such as comparing the distances of two routes or converting currencies, and demonstrate a low level of proficiency in science, including an inability to explain scientific phenomena. And all of this was measured in 2025, before the military campaigns against Iran.
The graphs show a sharp collapse across all three areas of literacy assessed: science, reading and mathematics, sending Israeli students' performance back to historic lows after a decade and a half of improvement.
The full figures
In reading, Israel recorded its sharpest decline, falling 38 points from 474 in 2022 to 436 in the current assessment. This is Israel's lowest reading score on record, even below the previous low of 439 in 2006.
Israel ranks second among the countries that recorded the sharpest declines in reading performance, with its 38-point drop surpassed only by Latvia, which fell 45 points.
In science, Israel fell 23 points, from 465 in the previous assessment to 442 in the current one. This, too, is the country's lowest score in the series of assessments dating back to 2006. Israel ranks third worldwide in the severity of its decline in science, behind only Hong Kong and Latvia.
In mathematics, Israel's score fell 25 points, from 458 in the previous PISA assessment in 2022 to 433 in the current study, returning to, and even falling below, its 2006 level. Israel shares second and third place worldwide with Slovenia for the steepest decline in mathematics, with both countries falling 25 points. Only Malta recorded a larger drop.
The figures follow a period of relative stability through 2022. The 2025 results completely erase the gains made during the 2010s, returning Israel's education system to its lowest scores since the early 2000s.
The Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is an international study that evaluates the literacy and skills of 15-year-old students, mainly in ninth and 10th grades in Israel, in mathematics, reading and science. The computerized assessment also includes a background questionnaire, allowing results to be broken down by factors including population group, socioeconomic status and gender.
The assessment in Israel was conducted in March and April 2025, before Operation Rising Lion and Operation Roaring Lion, Israel's military campaigns against Iran. In PISA comparisons, a gap of roughly 20 points is commonly treated as equivalent to about one year of schooling. On that basis, the decline would amount to roughly two years of learning in reading and about one year each in mathematics and science.
Significantly below OECD average
Israeli students scored substantially below the OECD average.
In science, Israel scored 442 points, compared with an OECD average of 482. Among the OECD's 38 member countries included in the comparison, Israel ranked 33rd, placing it near the bottom of the table.
In mathematics, Israeli students scored 433 points, compared with an OECD average of 463. Israel ranked 33rd, with only five countries scoring lower: Greece, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico and Colombia.
In reading, Israeli students scored 436 points, compared with an OECD average of 461. Israel ranked 31st out of 38 OECD countries, behind countries including Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Poland and Slovakia.
This year's assessment also included a new domain, computational problem-solving. Israel scored 444 points, compared with an OECD average of 500.
