Astana (AsiaNews) – Students from Central Asian countries scored below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average in all areas of the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
However, Uzbekistan significantly improved its score in science, Kazakhstan suffered a setback in maths, and Kyrgyzstan, after a 16-year hiatus, achieved better results than in previous survey cycles.
The OECD published the results of PISA 2025 on 8 September: more than 760,000 15-year-old students from 91 countries and regions took part in the study. From Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan participated at national level; only the capital, Dushanbe, took part on behalf of Tajikistan, whilst Turkmenistan was not represented in the study.
In science, the OECD average score was 482. Uzbekistan scored 438, Kazakhstan 420, Kyrgyzstan 363 and Dushanbe 334. Uzbekistan showed the most significant improvement. According to the OECD, its science score rose from 355 in 2022 to 438 in 2025, an increase of 83 points. The proportion of pupils who did not reach the basic level fell from 81 per cent to 35 per cent.
However, the OECD did not publish Uzbekistan’s results in mathematics and reading: the organisation found inconsistencies in the data, particularly across individual schools and regions, which prevent accurate comparisons with other countries. Kazakhstan scored 420 points in science, 414 in maths and 385 in reading. Compared with 2022, its score in maths fell by 12 points, whilst the OECD does not consider the changes in the other two areas to be statistically significant.
Fifty-two per cent of Kazakh students achieved the basic level in science, 44 per cent in maths and 36 per cent in reading. Kyrgyzstan scored 363 in science, 364 in maths and 344 in reading. According to the OECD, the country’s scores in all three areas are higher than those in 2006 and 2009; the Kyrgyz Ministry of Education stated that the country ranked 80th out of 91 participants, “moving up 11 places”.
The OECD does not use this metric for comparison with 2009, comparing results primarily on the basis of scores.
Pupils in Dushanbe scored 334 in science, 382 in mathematics and 368 in reading, but these figures cannot be generalised to the whole country. In a separate digital problem-solving test, Kazakhstan scored 449, Uzbekistan 402 and Kyrgyzstan 388, compared with the OECD average of 500. PISA is an international assessment of the academic performance of 15-year-old students conducted by the OECD; the study has been carried out since 2000, generally every three years, and assesses not so much knowledge of the school curriculum as the ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, reading and science in practical situations.
The published results of the international PISA study on the quality of education showed that the average scores of 15-year-old students in mathematics and reading across OECD countries as a whole have fallen to their lowest level in the study’s history; in natural sciences, the average score remained virtually unchanged from 2022, but remains below the levels of previous decades.
