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Alice Wu

The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results are out and unfortunately for the Education Bureau, Hong Kong’s performance looks bad. Is this the outcome of not learning from the last assessment?
In the 2022 Pisa assessment, a metric for creative thinking was introduced to measure the ability to generate, evaluate, improve and communicate ideas, as well as social and scientific problem-solving. Hong Kong scored below the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average, prompting an education expert to warn that it was “a wake-up call” revealing “our students are really not good at … thinking outside the box”.
That is not to say that this was our students’ fault, because what needs changing is what happens inside classrooms. Have our education authorities been thinking outside the box to address this?
Let the 2025 Pisa scores released last week speak for themselves: our scores have dropped across the core subjects of mathematics, reading and science.
While the Education Bureau chose to highlight the “outstanding performance” in digital learning and that mathematical, scientific and mother-tongue reading literacy remained above average, we must be alarmed that scores for the three core subjects of mathematics, reading and science are “the lowest ever measured”, according to Pisa, and “reinforce a negative trend that began after 2012”.
As much as the authorities and experts would like to chalk this up to being Covid-19-related, pointing to a global decline in domain subject scores, the steepness of the decline since the last Pisa exercise warrants deeper consideration. For the first time, Hong Kong has fallen out of the top 10 in science, sliding to 17th from 7th place in just three years.


To be precise, Hong Kong’s declining trend began in 2012. The pandemic simply amplified it.
Professor Nancy Law Wai-ying, a member of the Hong Kong Pisa study team, attributed the science score drop to a shift in the assessment framework from rote-learning knowledge to requiring students to research, evaluate and use scientific information to justify decisions in uncertain contexts.
Right. So we are still stuck in the mode of rote learning – or rather, rote teaching. And we did not quite respond to the wake-up call of the 2022 results. Our educators are dragging their feet on shifting from getting students to memorise the “right” answers to building deep conceptual understanding, equipping children with the tools needed to creatively apply this understanding in different contexts, even at the risk of being “wrong”, and to learn from their mistakes.
Blaming Covid-19 is a cop-out. Perhaps the fear of being wrong is so ingrained in our leaders, it has become detrimental to their ability to help prepare our children for the future.
Artificial intelligence can regurgitate facts, numbers and formulas faster than we can. If our students do not acquire an in-depth understanding of the concepts behind basic facts and formulas, they will only apply their knowledge superficially to problems already solved.


And yet our education authorities are patting themselves on the back for our students’ outstanding performance in digital learning, where Hong Kong ranked sixth. The Education Bureau said this “shows the tangible results of our STEAM promotion”. It seems those in charge have forgotten what the “S” and “M” in “STEAM” stand for: we have been dropping the ball on science and mathematics since 2012.
When it comes to the digital learning results, our students should share the credit. They had to adapt very quickly to learning in the digital world, after being thrown in at the deep end during the pandemic.
The 2025 Pisa study also focuses on finding out how future-ready students are. Reading is among the greatest concerns, with global scores recording “particularly steep declines”. Hong Kong dropped from 11th place in 2022 to 15th place. According to Pisa, the reading assessment consists of “skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources and thinking critically about what we read”.
Hong Kong students do not suffer from an inability to read, but they are challenged when it comes to reading for fun. We have yet to hear from our educators how they plan to nurture a love of reading – and learning – in our children. Transactional and fragmented reading, exacerbated by the online content they consume, will impede their future-readiness.
Our educators need to take the latest Pisa results seriously, face their shortcomings head on and find the courage to change, so our students can truly have a chance at being future-ready.


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With mathematics, reading and science scores at record lows in a decline going back to 2012, educators need to radically revamp their approach


With mathematics, reading and science scores at record lows in a decline going back to 2012, educators need to radically revamp their approach.


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Will Hong Kong’s educators learn from sliding Pisa results?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With mathematics, reading and science scores at record lows in a decline going back to 2012, educators need to radically revamp their approach

With mathematics, reading and science scores at record lows in a decline going back to 2012, educators need to radically revamp their approach