Juno News - Canada’s global ranking in education falls to record lows

00:00:00.000 The results are in, but it's not great news. Canadian students have posted their lowest ever

00:00:04.980 results in science, reading, and mathematics, while several other countries pull ahead in the

00:00:09.740 global education rankings. The test is run by PISA, the Program for International Student

00:00:14.520 Assessment, which gives 15-year-olds problems in reading, math, and science to see how they use

00:00:21.380 those skills in real life. The test compares students across participating OECD countries.

00:00:26.400 It lets us compare how students are doing against one another, but it also lets us track whether or not our schools are improving.

00:00:34.680 The good news is that Canada remains above international averages.

00:00:39.080 Unfortunately, our scores have been in decline since testing started, and that decline has only worsened since 2022.

00:00:46.940 Since Canadian students took their first tests, scores have fallen by 47 points in mathematics, 44 in reading, and 24 in science.

00:00:55.100 The decline has been going on since way before the pandemic.

00:00:58.440 Between 2022 and 2025, Canada fell further than the OECD average in all three subjects.

00:01:04.780 That means today's students have substantially weaker course skills than Canadian students did a generation ago,

00:01:10.720 and the provincial results are pretty uneven.

00:01:13.480 Alberta ranked first in Canada in science and reading and second in mathematics,

00:01:18.000 while Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia also remained stronger among the provinces.

00:01:22.780 At the other end, New Brunswick recorded the lowest scores in all three subjects,

00:01:27.500 while Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador also struggled.

00:01:31.840 But even the strongest provinces have lost ground over time.

00:01:35.460 Alberta's results show that better performance is possible within Canada,

00:01:39.820 but no province has fully escaped the national decline.

00:01:43.260 For now, Canada still tops the leader charts on the global stage,

00:01:47.320 but countries like Singapore, Japan, Estonia and South Korea are pulling ahead.

00:01:51.820 So can we reverse the decline? The United Kingdom offers a little bit of hope here.

00:01:56.860 They were on a similar downward trajectory to Canada, but since 2022, their scores either rose

00:02:03.020 or held steady, meaning that they were able to climb up the ranks. Some education experts are

00:02:08.240 saying that this particular uptick is down to better education policy, for example, policies

00:02:13.980 limiting the teaching ideological topics as fact. But for students here in Canada, I don't think

00:02:20.160 they're less capable than they once were. I think this might be a wake-up call to our educators

00:02:24.980 that it's time for things to change.

Juno News - September 18, 2026