Both feared and awaited by the countries concerned, the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) survey was unveiled this Tuesday, December 5 by the OECD. Every three years, it aims to measure the performance of education systems and constitutes a benchmark for possible government reforms. In the last edition of 2018, France was ranked between 15th and 21st place out of the 36 OECD countries evaluated, a place comparable to the previous survey.
French students just manage to exceed the OECD average with 1481 points in the three subjects taken into account (reading, mathematics and science). For comparison, Estonia then collected 1576 points, Poland 1539, the United Kingdom 1511 and Germany 1501.
The Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal, who carefully prepared this announcement, will be particularly attentive to the results of students in mathematics, among the most alarming. The tenant of rue de Grenelle even launched a major consultation at the beginning of October to anticipate a possible snub and has already announced “strong” measures for the college in reaction to the “worrying” results in French and mathematics assessments. nationals passed in fourth grade in September. In a quarter of a century, he insisted, French students have lost the equivalent of a year in terms of level.