Greece slips in scholastic PISA study rankings

The chronic problems of the Greek education system were highlighted once again by the poor standing of Greek schoolchildren in the 2018 education survey of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that was published on Tuesday.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the OECD in member and non-member-nations measuring 15-year-olds’ scholastic performance in mathematics, science and reading every three years.

Among the 37 OECD countries, Greece is stuck at the lower end of the scale, coming 34th, while it ranked 42nd among the total 79 countries (including 42 non-member-states) that participated.

Greek children performed worse in all three categories compared to the previous survey in 2015.

Greece’s score dropped from 467 points in 2015 to 457 last year in the category of reading and comprehension. The overall average of all participant countries in 2018 was 487.

In mathematics, Greece and Cyprus shared 43rd place with 451 points in 2018, against Greece’s 454 points in 2015. The overall average in 2018 was 489.

And in the sciences too, Greek pupils shed three points last year to 452, when the average came to 489.

In its overall assessment on Greek education in these three areas, the PISA study concluded that 69 percent of students aged 15 and above rank at level 2 on a scale where six is the highest, down from 72.7 percent in 2015.