PISA 2025: Why it pays to make comparisons to England

Share After another round of international assessments showed Scottish pupils trailing their English counterparts, a Scottish policy expert explained that looking south for comparison is useful for more than bragging rights. Lindsay Paterson, emeritus professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh, said that England provides a useful resource for anyone looking to improve education policy by holding up a mirror to Scottish society. 'Despite a lot of political rhetoric, England and Scotland have very similar societies. They've got the same social structure. So what we mean by socio‑economic inequality means something very similar in Scotland and in England. 'Scotland and England also have a far more similar educational history than much of the rhetoric in Scotland would ever suggest. 'They have a similar attitude to the relationship between schools and employment – they have this slightly ambiguous attitude to vocational education, for example. 'Most recently, during COVID, the pattern of closing schools and then of reopening schools was very similar in Scotland and England.' Reacting to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores, which saw global performance in reading, maths, and science decline once again, Prof Paterson said that PISA offers an opportunity to assess what is and is not working in the curriculum. Although Scotland bucked the general trend, with results not significantly different from PISA 2022, Scottish pupils' mean scores were still below England's in every subject. The mean reading score in Scotland in PISA 2025 was 488, compared with 459 in Wales, 482 in Northern Ireland, and 497 in England. The mean maths score in Scotland was 467, compared with 456 in Wales, 473 in Northern Ireland, and 492 in England. The mean science score in Scotland in PISA 2025 was 491, compared with 476 in Wales, 492 in Northern Ireland, and 516 in England. Read more Although Scotland's scores were not significantly worse than in 2022, they are still far below the levels reported in 2000, 2003, and 2006, the first years that reading, maths, and science were assessed, respectively. Since the introduction of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) in 2010, there has been a desire to use PISA scores as an external measurement of how well the new curriculum has been working. Prof Paterson said that it would not be fair to lay blame for declining PISA performance at the feet of CfE, since the trajectory before and since its rollout has been steadily downward. But that does not mean that PISA results cannot be useful for critiquing CfE, he said. As the top-performing UK nation, England provides an obvious target for others to emulate, and this dovetails with a natural tendency in Scottish society and politics to compare what is happening south of the border. In Prof Paterson's analysis, that comparison provides fruitful grounds for insights, because it allows an opportunity to measure similar societies against one another. It also, he believes, offers something like a glimpse into an alternate reality and suggests what Scotland's performance might have looked like without CfE. 'We've got as close as we ever get to a controlled experiment in social science between Scotland and England. The curriculum and associated assessment changed, with one country going in one direction and the other in a somewhat different direction. 'If you look at Britain from outside, what people tend to see, at least among Scotland, Wales and England, is a remarkably similar set of educational institutions and educational policies, until the last 20 years.' This glimpse is useful not only for providing insights into the particular effects of CfE, but also because, as above, England provides a high standard to pursue. 'England has almost uniquely, amongst developed countries, resisted the decline in reading,' Prof Paterson said, referencing the most recent results in which the OECD, which manages PISA, reported a "widespread collapse in reading scores". Prof Paterson continued: 'To not have a decline in reading at a time when globally reading is falling off a cliff is an amazing achievement, actually, for England.' Although Prof Paterson is a long-standing advocate for a knowledge-based curriculum, which he said 'has to be the core of any well‑run school system, any effective school system', he does not believe that the solution for Scotland is to simply start mimicking what happens in England. He pointed to ongoing Scottish Government efforts in the Curriculum Improvement Cycle, which have so far generated new guidelines for maths and work on other subjects. 'They are very, very helpful. It's something maths teachers tell me is a lot more helpful. And I would expect that by the time of the next PISA round, because of these new guidelines, the maths results will probably improve a bit.' 'The key thing will be this: Will the new documents in all the other curricular areas have the same degree of detail and of progressive detail as has now been produced for maths?' He is also hopeful about the fact that Scotland has opted to re-enter two other international comparative assessments – PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) – which he believes that help build a more comprehensive picture of how the curriculum is serving pupils at different ages in different subjects. Any action taken off the back of the results will signal to Prof Paterson and other commentators that policymakers are following through on PISA's original mission: to take the raw materials and recommendations the report provides and translate them into improvements at home.Share Get involved with the news