Students in Asia extend lead over a flagging US as AI reshapes education

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High-school students across Asia are pulling ahead of their Western peers, an annual global assessment indicates, as artificial intelligence spurs a worldwide race for talent and reshapes how young people learn .

In a troubling trend, reading, science and math performance among 15-year-olds has continued a decline globally across the board, according to the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment released this week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

But among last year’s top performers were students in the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai, Chinese provinces Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the city-state of Singapore. Japan and South Korea were also in the Asia-dominated top 10 across all three subjects, along with the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Macao, and the self-governing democracy of Taiwan.

Meanwhile, secondary students in the US saw their reading scores fall close to 25-year lows, lagging more starkly behind their counterparts in China, which have long held a lead in the exams known for short as PISA – at least in the four major Chinese jurisdictions that submitted test scores.

The exam results come amid an intensifying rivalry between the US and China to outpace the other in technological advancement and direct more funding toward innovation. China has surpassed the US in published scientific reports as well as research spending, on which both nations exceeded $1 trillion in 2024.

However, the growing adoption of AI could significantly impact secondary education, the PISA report warned.

“Most troubling is the decline in the very skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources, and thinking critically about what we read,” Andreas Schleicher, OECD director for education and skills, wrote in the report. “In a world increasingly flooded with information, our students are less likely to think deeply and separate signal from noise.”

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China’s data for the PISA tests is not without critics - in part because the test only includes students from the provinces of Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, some of the country’s wealthiest eastern coastal areas. Nonetheless, the testing has shown continued drop in US scores over the last decade, that have alarmed many educationalists.

As technology has progressed, student performance has become less linked with national or family wealth, the latest report said. While it’s difficult to determine the exact correlation between the rise of digital tools and test performance, the study identified one challenge as higher digital distraction in the classroom.

Among students from China, Japan and South Korea, fewer than 10% reported that their peers were distracted by digital devices during science lessons, compared with the global average of 28%. As one example of how educators might balance digital tools, the report said Singapore used technology in its classrooms but also emphasized reading comprehension early on.

The proportion of “hasty readers,” or students who rushed through their texts and gave incorrect answers, nearly doubled between 2018 and 2025, the report said. As the average performance among OECD countries in science, reading and math has reached record lows, that could have broader economic implications among the world’s biggest nations.

The 2025 report cited a Stanford University study that performance meeting a basic level aptitude in PISA among all 15-year-old Americans could add over $40 trillion to the US economy over their working lives. However, the percentage of OECD students below that baseline performance increased last year to 20% from 16% in 2022.

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年度全球评估显示，亚洲各地的高中生正在超越西方同龄人，人工智能正在推动全球人才争夺战，并重塑年轻人的学习方式。

根据经济合作与发展组织本周发布的《2025 年国际学生评估计划》，令人担忧的是，全球 15 岁学生的阅读、科学和数学成绩持续全面下降。

但去年表现优异的学生中，包括来自中国北京和上海、江苏和浙江等省份以及新加坡的学生。日本和韩国也跻身前十，亚洲学生占据了所有三个科目的主导地位，此外还有半自治的中国城市澳门和自治的民主政体台湾。

与此同时，美国中学生的阅读成绩跌至近 25 年来的最低点，与中国学生相比差距更大。中国学生在 PISA 测试中长期处于领先地位——至少在提交测试成绩的四个主要中国地区是如此。

此次考试结果公布之际，正值中美两国在科技进步和创新投入方面展开日益激烈的竞争。中国在已发表的科学报告数量和研发支出方面均已超越美国，两国在2024年的研发支出总额均超过1万亿美元。

然而，PISA报告警告称，人工智能的日益普及可能会对中学教育产生重大影响。

经合组织教育与技能司司长安德烈亚斯·施莱歇尔在报告中写道：“最令人担忧的是，人工智能时代最重要的技能——评估信息、建立跨信息源的联系以及批判性地思考所读内容——正在衰退。在一个信息日益泛滥的世界里，我们的学生越来越难以进行深度思考，也越来越难以从噪声中分辨出真正有价值的信息。”

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中国提交的PISA测试数据并非没有争议——部分原因是该测试仅涵盖上海、北京、江苏和浙江等省份的学生，这些省份位于中国东部沿海地区，属于较为富裕的地区。尽管如此，测试结果显示，过去十年美国学生的PISA成绩持续下降，这引起了许多教育界人士的担忧。

最新报告指出，随着科技进步，学生的学业成绩与国家或家庭财富的关联性有所降低。虽然很难确定数字工具的普及与考试成绩之间的确切关联，但该研究指出，课堂上数字干扰的增加是其中一个挑战。

在中国、日本和韩国的学生中，只有不到10%的人表示他们的同学在科学课上会被电子设备分心，而全球平均水平为28%。报告指出，新加坡就是一个例子，说明教育工作者如何平衡数字工具的使用。新加坡在课堂上使用科技的同时，也十分重视早期阅读理解能力的培养。

报告指出，2018年至2025年间，“草率阅读者”（即匆匆浏览文本并给出错误答案的学生）的比例几乎翻了一番。由于经合组织国家在科学、阅读和数学方面的平均成绩已降至历史新低，这可能会对世界主要国家的经济产生更广泛的影响。

2025年的报告援引斯坦福大学的一项研究指出，如果所有15岁的美国青少年在PISA测试中达到基本水平，那么在其职业生涯中，美国经济将增加超过40万亿美元。然而，经合组织成员国中未达到该基准水平的学生比例从2022年的16%上升至去年的20%。