Cormann assessed Türkiye’s education performance ahead of PISA 2025, which will be released tomorrow. Stating that the pandemic exacerbated the problems seen in PISA 2022, Cormann said that reading and science results in OECD countries had begun to decline approximately 10 years before Kovid-19, while mathematics saw a learning loss of approximately 15 points between 2018 and 2022, equivalent to 3 quarters of a school year. He noted that parental support and safe, orderly classrooms stood out in more resilient systems.
Stating that Türkiye had made progress since 2003 despite ups and downs, Cormann said that its mathematics and science scores in PISA 2022 were among the highest levels, while its reading result was close to the long-term average. He noted that although one-third of students came from the most disadvantaged group, the mathematics scores of this group were among the highest in the world.
In Türkiye, 61% of students reached the basic level in mathematics, while 5% reached the highest proficiency level; the OECD rates were 69% and 9%, respectively. 12% of disadvantaged students were academically resilient, compared with the OECD average of 10%. Cormann said progress should be assessed over several PISA cycles.
Why it matters
This assessment shows that PISA results should be interpreted not only in terms of rankings, but also by examining which proficiency levels students were able to reach and the extent to which disadvantaged groups were supported within the system. For Türkiye, the picture requires educational inequality of opportunity to be assessed alongside overall performance, because students’ socioeconomic status constitutes an important dimension of achievement measurement. The long-term decline in OECD countries and the impact of the pandemic, meanwhile, limit the extent to which the data to be released can be interpreted solely as a change specific to Türkiye. The key open question is whether Türkiye will be able to maintain its current gains across different PISA cycles and, in particular, whether it can bring the share of students above the basic proficiency levels closer to the OECD level.
Background
Türkiye is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 35 news reports mentioning this name in the past 90 days; the latest is dated September 6, 2026.