New Zealand remained above the OECD average in science, reading and mathematics in PISA 2025, but the 2000–2025 record shows three different paths. Reading and mathematics remain well below their early-cycle levels, while science has moved within a much narrower band over the past decade.
New Zealand’s 2025 PISA scores
Reported mean performance for 15-year-old students in the three core PISA domains.
All three reported means were above the corresponding OECD averages in 2025. The latest cycle did not, however, mark a broad rebound from 2022. OECD trend testing treats New Zealand’s 2022–2025 movements in all three subjects as too small to distinguish statistically from sampling and measurement uncertainty.
The OECD marks New Zealand with an asterisk because one or more PISA sampling standards were not met. The overall exclusion rate was 8.1%; the school response rate was 45% before replacement and 52% after replacement; and the student response rate was 76%. OECD non-response analysis indicates that the reported mean scores may be about 10 to 15 points higher than hypothetical estimates that also represented non-respondents. A similar upward bias was found for 2022, so the OECD states that comparisons between 2022 and 2025 are unlikely to be materially affected.
New Zealand PISA scores by cycle, 2000–2025
Reading has a comparable trend from 2000, mathematics from 2003 and science from 2006.
The long-run trend is steepest in mathematics
New Zealand mean scores across comparable PISA cycles.
The vertical scale is limited to 450–550 score points so cycle movements remain readable; the table provides the exact reported means. Missing early-domain values are not interpolated.
Historical mean scores
OECD-reported New Zealand mean performance for each comparable subject series.
Scroll horizontally to view all columns.
| PISA cycle | Reading | Mathematics | Science |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 529 | — | — |
| 2003 | 522 | 523 | — |
| 2006 | 521 | 522 | 530 |
| 2009 | 521 | 519 | 532 |
| 2012 | 512 | 500 | 516 |
| 2015 | 509 | 495 | 513 |
| 2018 | 506 | 494 | 508 |
| 2022 | 501 | 479 | 504 |
| 2025 | 497 | 480 | 509 |
A dash means that the domain does not yet have a comparable long-term baseline in this trend series. New Zealand participated in PISA from 2000 onward.
- Reading fell from 529 in 2000 to 497 in 2025, a 32-point decline from its first comparable cycle.
- Mathematics fell from 523 in 2003 to 480 in 2025, a 43-point decline. The two largest cycle-to-cycle drops in the displayed series were 19 points from 2009 to 2012 and 15 points from 2018 to 2022.
- Science moved from 530 in 2006 to 509 in 2025. After a 532 peak in 2009 and a drop to 516 in 2012, the subject has stayed within a narrower 504–516 range from 2012 through 2025.
Reading: a high early plateau followed by a long decline
New Zealand’s reading mean was 529 in 2000, then remained close to 521–522 through 2009. The series moved lower in every later cycle: 512 in 2012, 509 in 2015, 506 in 2018, 501 in 2022 and 497 in 2025. The four-point movement from 2022 to 2025 is not statistically detectable in the OECD trend analysis, but it sits inside a much longer downward path.
Mathematics: the clearest long-run deterioration
Mathematics changed little between 2003 and 2009, moving from 523 to 519. The larger breaks came later. The mean dropped to 500 in 2012, reached 494 in 2018 and then fell to 479 in 2022. The 2025 mean of 480 is one point higher than in 2022, which the OECD does not treat as a statistically detectable change. The latest result therefore looks more like stabilization near a historical low than a return toward the early-2000s level.
Science: an earlier decline followed by relative stability
Science peaked at 532 in 2009 after a 530 result in 2006. It then fell to 516 in 2012. Since that point, the series has been much flatter: 513 in 2015, 508 in 2018, 504 in 2022 and 509 in 2025. The OECD describes science performance as stable for more than a decade. The five-point rise from 2022 to 2025 is not statistically detectable.
The 2022–2025 movement was much smaller in New Zealand than across the OECD average
The latest-cycle change needs to be separated from the longer New Zealand trend.
Change in mean scores from PISA 2022 to PISA 2025
Published score changes for New Zealand and the OECD average.
Change values use OECD-published estimates. Because change calculations use unrounded underlying estimates, a published change can differ by one point from subtraction of displayed whole-number means.
Latest-cycle score movement
Reported means and OECD-published change estimates.
Scroll horizontally to view all columns.
| Subject | NZ 2022 | NZ 2025 | NZ change | OECD 2022 | OECD 2025 | OECD change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science | 504 | 509 | +5 | 485 | 482 | −3 |
| Mathematics | 479 | 480 | +1 | 472 | 463 | −9 |
| Reading | 501 | 497 | −4 | 476 | 461 | −14 |
New Zealand’s advantage over the OECD average was wider in 2025 than in 2022, especially in reading and mathematics. That change in relative position should not be read as a broad New Zealand score recovery: New Zealand’s own latest-cycle movements were small, while the OECD averages fell more sharply in mathematics and reading.
2025 proficiency shares add distribution detail to the mean scores
Level 2 is the OECD baseline proficiency threshold; Levels 5 and 6 identify top performers.
New Zealand and OECD proficiency shares
Percentage of students at or above Level 2 and at Levels 5–6 in PISA 2025.
Scroll horizontally to view all columns.
| Subject | NZ Level 2+ | NZ Levels 5–6 | OECD Level 2+ | OECD Levels 5–6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science | 81% | 13% | 74% | 7% |
| Mathematics | 71% | 11% | 65% | 8% |
| Reading | 77% | 14% | 69% | 6% |
Levels 5–6 are included within the Level 2+ share and should not be added to it. Percentages are rounded as reported by the OECD.
The proficiency data show why the long-run mathematics decline matters beyond the mean. New Zealand’s Ministry of Education reports that 29% of students were below Level 2 in mathematics in 2025, nearly twice the roughly 15% recorded in 2003–2009. The mathematics top-performer share was 11% in 2025, compared with about 19%–21% in those early cycles.
Science shows a smaller but still visible shift in its distribution. Low performers accounted for 19% in 2025, compared with 14% in 2006 and 13% in 2009, while the top-performer share was 13% in 2025 compared with 18% in the earlier science cycles.
New Zealand exceeded the OECD average in both baseline attainment and top-performer shares in all three subjects in 2025. The widest top-performer margin was in reading: 14% in New Zealand versus 6% across the OECD average.
A stable mean can still hide a changing performance spread
The OECD reports that the gap between New Zealand’s highest-scoring 10% and lowest-scoring 10% widened in reading between 2022 and 2025, even though the four-point change in the reading mean was not statistically detectable. The corresponding spread did not show a statistically detectable change in mathematics or science over the same period.
The science gap between the top and bottom national quarters of socio-economic status was broadly stable from 2015 to 2025 in New Zealand. In 2025, socio-economic status accounted for 11% of the variation in science performance, compared with 12% across OECD countries on average. These measures describe the distribution behind the national mean; they do not imply that one background characteristic alone caused the score differences.
Data basis and trend comparability
- New Zealand has participated in PISA since 2000.
- The comparable long-term subject baselines used here are reading from 2000, mathematics from 2003 and science from 2006.
- PISA 2025 focused on science as the major domain, with mathematics and reading assessed as core minor domains.
- In New Zealand, 5,004 students in 133 schools completed the 2025 assessment, representing about 61,200 15-year-old students, or an estimated 87% of the total population of 15-year-olds.
- Country mean scores are population estimates on separate PISA subject scales. They are not percentages, individual student marks or one combined “overall PISA score.”
- Historical change calculations in this page use comparable subject series only; missing early-domain values are not interpolated.
Data Sources and Measurement
Primary source for New Zealand’s 2025 mean scores, proficiency shares, performance gaps, trend interpretation and country-specific sampling note.
Source for the comparable New Zealand historical mean-score series through 2022 in reading, mathematics and science.
Source for New Zealand’s exclusion and response rates, non-response bias analysis and the guidance for interpreting the 2025 estimates.
National reporting used to cross-check the 2025 results and the longer proficiency patterns in mathematics and science.