In the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) standings, based on tests taken by 15-year-olds from around the world, the UK failed to make the top 10 in any of the disciplines.
The study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which assessed students’ skills in 81 countries and regions, found “an unprecedented drop in performance” globally compared with 2018.
The UK has climbed the rankings in maths to joint 12th, up from joint 17th in 2018.
In reading, the UK has also risen to 13th, up from joint 14th, while in science, the nation was ranked joint 14th – the same as in 2018. Singapore topped all three categories in the 2022 Pisa assessment. The study is usually carried out every three years but the 2021 round was postponed due to the Covid pandemic.
Andreas Schleicher, OECD education director, said: “In the last four years, the drop in UK results is slightly less than across OECD countries. So the ranking has improved but the results did not.”
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said: “These results are testament to our incredible teachers, the hard work of pupils and to the Government’s unrelenting drive to raise school standards.”
Natalie Perera, chief executive of the Education Policy Institute (EPI), pointed to the number of teenagers identified in the PISA report as struggling with their wellbeing.
“As well as considerable declines in attainment, the reported life satisfaction scores of UK students fell drastically between 2015 and 2022, to the extent that the UK now has the second lowest average life satisfaction of 15-year-olds across all OECD countries,” she said.
“The government must prioritise education and address the urgent teacher recruitment and retention issues that the country is facing.
“But the challenges for young people span wider than just education. In order to thrive in school and out, children and young people need to have improved access to public health services, safe and secure housing and be without the threat of living in poverty.”
Former headmaster David Thomas, of the educational charity Mathematics Education for Social Mobility and Excellence, said: “These latest international rankings show that we’re still falling short of achieving our national potential.
“England has a shortage of 16,000 skilled mathematicians in its workforce, and our children are becoming top mathematicians at half the rate of a country like Singapore.
“Children growing up in England have just as much talent but we need to work out why too many are not reaching their potential.
“We should be doing much more to dig deeper into what seems to be preventing our talented maths pupils from becoming the mathematicians that we need for the economy of the future.”
