Hong Kong
Hong Kong Falls Out of PISA Science Top 10 for First Time
Results from the OECD's triennial PISA study, released this week, show Hong Kong's secondary students sliding in all three core subjects. The city's reading score has hit its lowest level on record.
Hong Kong has fallen outside the global top 10 in science for the first time since joining the Programme for International Student Assessment, according to the South China Morning Post. The PISA 2025 results, released by the OECD on September 8 and covering 91 countries and economies, tested 15-year-old students from May to July 2025.
The city's reading score fell to 499, down from 520 in 2022 and its lowest since it first participated in PISA; a peak of 554 recorded in 2012 now looks distant. Experts pointed to the post-Covid period as a contributing factor, citing lasting effects on study habits and learning motivation among secondary-age pupils.
One bright spot, and a broader pattern
Mathematics offered some consolation. Hong Kong placed in the top five globally, sitting behind B-S-J-Z China, Singapore, Macao, and Taiwan. The science slide drew the sharper scrutiny, and it arrives in the context of a wider OECD finding that reading and mathematics performance has declined to the lowest average ever recorded across member countries.
For international schools operating in Hong Kong, city-level PISA data does not measure individual school performance. Yet the trend matters to how the sector positions itself. Many British-curriculum schools in the city draw families partly on the promise of outcomes that sit above the local average; a sustained period of broader educational decline puts that argument under closer examination, and may sharpen competition for places at schools with the most demonstrable results.