The performance of Hong Kong secondary school students has fallen in an international assessment focusing on three core subjects, with their grades falling out of the top 10 globally for the first time in the study’s history.
The decline in Hong Kong’s scores in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is partly due to the post-Covid impact on study habits and learning motivations, experts said on Tuesday.
Held every three years, PISA is a global study conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that tests 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. The latest study, which ranked 91 countries and economies, was conducted from May to July 2025.
Each course since 2012 has also included a “Creative Area,” which refers to a rotating exam topic that measures real-world skills.
The 2025 results, announced by the faculty of the University of Hong Kong, showed that the city’s students ranked 17th in science, with a score of 496 points, down from seventh place in 2022.
In comparison, the municipalities and provinces of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang on the Chinese mainland ranked first, scoring 597 points.
