Where did reading proficiency improve over time?

Eighteen long-time participants in PISA saw improvements, on average, in their students’ reading performance since their first participation in PISA in the 2000s: Singapore improved over its (already) high performance in 2009; Estonia, Germany, Macao (China) and Poland moved from average or below-average performance in their first participation to above-average performance in more recent assessments; Portugal caught up to the OECD average between 2000 and 2018; and Albania, Chile, Colombia, Israel, Jordan, the Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Peru, Qatar, Romania, the Russian Federation and Serbia moved closer to the OECD average over time. Six more countries – Argentina, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovenia, Sweden and Uruguay – moved to a more positive trajectory in recent years after a period of stagnation or decline. Of the ten countries where reading performance declined over time (including Sweden, where the recent recovery did not entirely offset the decline observed between 2000 and 2012), most witnessed the steepest declines among their weakest students. In particular, mean performance declined, and performance gaps widened, in Australia, Finland, Iceland, Korea, the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic and Sweden. Over the past 20 years, the importance of becoming a good reader in order to develop one’s knowledge and potential has not diminished. But how and what people read has changed dramatically since 2000. Written information now involves not only ink on the printed page; most of the time, it involves electronic signals on screens. The good news is that in almost all countries/economies, high-performing students are expanding their repertoire of skills as the demand for more complex reading processes increases. However, trends in achievement among low-performing students, and the widening of performance disparities in many countries, are worrying. Students who need extra support and attention must be identified early on, to ensure that learning gaps observed today don’t widen into larger social and economic inequalities in the future.