PISA 2025 reports results for 91 countries, economies and other reporting systems. To make continent-level comparisons possible, this page groups those OECD-reported systems into five UN M49 continental regions and calculates equal-system regional means for science, reading and mathematics. These regional values are derived from OECD-published scores; they are not official OECD regional scores or population-weighted estimates.
PISA 2025 scores and score-based order by region
Regional means give each PISA reporting system the same weight. The OECD average is included only as a benchmark and is not part of the regional order.
Derived regional mean scores
Science, reading and mathematics; PISA 2025
Scroll horizontally to view all columns.
| Region | Systems | Science mean | Science order | Reading mean | Reading order | Mathematics mean | Mathematics order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oceania | 2 | 509.0 | 1 | 494.0 | 1 | 479.0 | 1 |
| Europe | 37 | 466.7 | 2 | 443.3 | 2 | 452.4 | 2 |
| Asia | 32* | 437.8 | 3 | 409.5 | 3 | 433.5 | 3 |
| Americas | 15 | 413.6 | 4 | 402.3 | 4 | 383.8 | 4 |
| Africa | 5 | 357.0 | 5 | 334.4 | 5 | 342.8 | 5 |
| OECD average | — | 482 | — | 461 | — | 463 | — |
* Asia contains 32 PISA reporting systems in the science calculation. Reading and mathematics use 31 because Uzbekistan has no reported mean score for those two domains in OECD Table I.1. Regional values are rounded to one decimal after averaging the OECD-published system means.
- The score-based regional order is the same in all three domains: Oceania, Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa. This ordering describes the derived equal-system means, not an OECD-issued regional ranking.
- Coverage is highly uneven. Oceania has two participating systems and Africa has five, while Europe has 37 and Asia has 32. The regional means therefore should not be read as estimates for all 15-year-olds living in each continent.
How far each regional mean sits from the OECD benchmark
Each domain is compared with its own PISA 2025 OECD average: 482 in science, 461 in reading and 463 in mathematics.
Regional mean minus the corresponding OECD average
Score-point difference calculated from OECD-published mean scores
Zero marks the OECD average for the relevant domain. The OECD average is an OECD-country benchmark, not a global or continental average; the regional differences shown here are descriptive calculations.
- Europe’s derived mean is closest to the OECD benchmark in mathematics, at 10.6 points below it, compared with gaps of 15.3 points in science and 17.7 points in reading.
- Asia’s smallest benchmark gap is also in mathematics, at 29.5 points below the OECD average. In the Americas, the smallest of the three gaps is in reading, at 58.7 points.
- Oceania is above the OECD average in all three domains, but that result is based only on Australia and New Zealand and should be read as a two-system average rather than a continent-wide student estimate.
Regional means can differ from the middle system
A regional mean can be pulled upward or downward by systems near the ends of the score distribution. Comparing the equal-system mean with the median shows how much that matters within each region.
Median PISA 2025 system score within each region
Medians are calculated from the same OECD-reported system scores used in the regional means.
Scroll horizontally to view all columns.
| Region | Science median | Reading median | Mathematics median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oceania | 509 | 494 | 479 |
| Europe | 478 | 452 | 460 |
| Asia | 423 | 387 | 416 |
| Americas | 409 | 399 | 381 |
| Africa | 337 | 321 | 326 |
The medians describe the distribution of participating systems’ mean scores. They do not describe the median student within a region.
Difference between regional mean and median
Positive values mean the equal-system mean is above the region’s median system score; negative values mean it is below.
This is a distribution check across system-level means, not a measure of student-level inequality. With only two systems in Oceania, its mean and median coincide by construction.
Asia’s mean is above its median in every domain, with the largest difference in reading at 22.5 points. Europe shows the opposite pattern: its mean is below its median by 7.6 to 11.3 points across the three domains. This means the location of a region’s average can differ noticeably from the score of its middle participating system, especially when the region contains a wide spread of system means.
Which PISA 2025 systems are included in each region?
The five groups follow the UN M49 continental regions. PISA-specific reporting areas that are not stand-alone M49 entries are assigned to the continent containing the reported geography.
Europe — 37 systems
Albania*, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands*, North Macedonia, Norway*, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukrainian regions (17 of 27), United Kingdom.
Asia — 32 systems
Armenia, Azerbaijan, B-S-J-Z (China), Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Cyprus, Dushanbe (Tajikistan), Georgia, Hong Kong (China), Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kurdistan Region (Iraq), Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Macao (China), Malaysia, Mongolia, Palestinian Authority, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam.
Uzbekistan contributes to the Asian science mean but not to the reading or mathematics means because OECD Table I.1 does not report those two scores for Uzbekistan.
Americas — 15 systems
Argentina, Brazil, Canada*, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, United States*, Uruguay.
Africa — 5 systems
Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Rwanda, Zambia.
Oceania — 2 systems
Australia, New Zealand*.
PISA 2025 participation does not cover every country in every continent. A five-system African mean and a two-system Oceanian mean summarize only the PISA reporting systems shown here. They should not be interpreted as estimates for all education systems, students or countries in those regions.
How the regional calculations are made
- Base scores
- The inputs are the PISA 2025 mean science, reading and mathematics scores published by the OECD for the 91 reporting systems in Table I.1 and the related Annex B1 performance tables.
- Regional grouping
- Country and area placement follows the United Nations M49 continental regions: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. PISA-specific reporting geographies are placed in the continent containing that geography. The grouping is used only to organize the OECD results for this derived comparison.
- Regional mean
- Each reporting system receives one equal weight. The arithmetic mean is then calculated separately for science, reading and mathematics. This is a system-weighted mean, not a student-weighted or population-weighted regional estimate.
- Score-based order
- Regions are ordered by the derived mean within each domain. The order is descriptive and should not be presented as an official OECD regional rank. No regional standard errors or confidence intervals are calculated here, so no inferential comparison is made between regions.
- Missing values
- Uzbekistan has a reported science mean but no reported reading or mathematics mean in the OECD snapshot table. It is therefore included in Asia’s science calculation and excluded from the other two Asian calculations rather than being assigned a replacement value.
- OECD caution flags
- An asterisk retains the OECD notation for Albania, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and the United States. OECD states that estimates for these systems should be interpreted with caution because one or more PISA sampling standards were not met.
- Reporting geography
- Some PISA entries are not whole sovereign-state reporting areas. Examples include B-S-J-Z (China), Dushanbe (Tajikistan), Kurdistan Region (Iraq) and Ukrainian regions (17 of 27). Their OECD labels are preserved rather than silently replacing them with country-wide results.
Data sources and measurement
PISA 2025 results were published by the OECD on September 8, 2026. More than 760,000 students participated across 91 countries and economies.
The main report for PISA 2025, including student performance, participation and methodological notes.
PISA 2025 Results (Volume I): Future-Ready StudentsThe source table for the 2025 science, reading and mathematics mean scores used in the regional calculations, including the official OECD averages.
OECD executive summary and Table I.1Country and economy performance tables and supporting notes for PISA 2025.
Results for countries and economies — Annex B1The geographic classification used to assign reporting systems to Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania for this derived regional comparison.
UN Statistics Division M49 geographic regionsRegional means, medians, benchmark gaps and score-based orders on this page are calculations from OECD-published system-level mean scores. Values may differ slightly from calculations made from unrounded OECD microdata because the published input scores are rounded to whole points.