PISA 2025 asks a troubling question: Are our young people truly ready for the future?

The OECD released its latest PISA results today. Across OECD countries, reading and mathematics performance has fallen to its lowest level since PISA began. One in five 15-year-olds is now a low performer in science, mathematics and reading—up from 16% only three years ago. Reading performance has fallen by the equivalent of roughly a year and a half of learning since 2015. Mathematics has declined by more than a year.

These are not simply education statistics. They are an early warning about young people’s future opportunities, and about our collective economic and social future. Young people need strong foundations in reading, mathematics and science. But foundations alone are not enough. They must also learn how to apply what they know, understand the changing world around them, explore where their abilities and interests might lead, and develop the confidence to keep learning and adapting.

They need career agency: the capacity to imagine a worthwhile future, make informed choices, navigate change and take purposeful action. This is the missing bridge between education and meaningful adult life. Too often, we wait until young people are about to leave school before helping them understand the worlds of work, learning and opportunity they are entering. By then, many have already become discouraged, disengaged or convinced that education has little connection to their lives.

My upcoming book, The Missing Bridge, argues that we must begin much earlier—connecting learning with life, bringing more adults and workplaces into young people’s education, and giving every student repeated opportunities to explore, experience and think seriously about possible futures.

The lesson I take from PISA 2025 is not that schools should narrow their mission. It is that we must become much more intentional about it. Our young people need knowledge. They also need purpose, hope and the agency to use that knowledge well.

A nation’s greatest loss is the talent its people never get to use. Read the OECD’s PISA 2025 findings.

AI Acknowledgement: This post was conceived and written by me with creative and editorial assistance from my partner, ChatGPT.