Reading: Australia’s quarter-century decline in proficiency
Australia’s latest PISA results show that the deterioration in educational performance extends well beyond mathematics.
Reading performance has also declined substantially.
When the OECD’s comparable reading series began in 2000, Australian 15-year-olds recorded an average PISA reading score of 528.3. By 2025, that had fallen to 490.9 — a decline of 37.4 points over a quarter of a century.
The fall has not been quite as relentless as mathematics. Reading improved slightly in 2009, for example. But the long-run direction is unmistakable. Australia scored 511.8 in 2012, 502.9 in 2015, 498.1 in 2022 and 490.9 in 2025.
The change beneath the average is equally revealing.
In 2000, only 12.5 per cent of Australian students were classified as low performers in reading, while 17.6 per cent were top performers.
Australia therefore began the century with considerably more top-performing readers than low-performing ones.
By 2025, that relationship had reversed. Low performers accounted for 23.4 per cent of students, while top performers had fallen to 11.2 per cent.
There are now more than two low-performing readers for every top-performing reader.
Yet the international comparison provides an important qualification.
Australia still performs comfortably above the OECD average. Its 2025 reading score of 490.9 was almost 30 points above the OECD average of 460.9.
More strikingly, Australia has retained most of its advantage over the OECD’s consistent group of 23 countries.
In 2000, Australia scored 28.7 points above the OECD-23 average. In 2025, the margin was still 25.0 points.
That does not mean Australia has avoided decline. Rather, it means much of the developed world has experienced a similar problem. The OECD-23 reading average itself fell from 499.5 in 2000 to 465.8 in 2025.
Australia’s reading story is therefore different from mathematics.
The absolute decline is serious: average performance is substantially lower, low performers have almost doubled, and the proportion of top readers has fallen sharply.
But Australia has not lost much ground relative to comparable countries because they have been sliding too.
That may be reassuring from a league-table perspective. It is considerably less reassuring if the objective is to ensure today’s students possess the reading skills of the generation that preceded them.