PISA 2025 results and implications for teacher education

Abstract

The PISA 2025 results, published by the OECD on September 8, 2026, place Mexico at 388 points in mathematics, 414 in science, and 408 in reading. The only significant change from 2022 was the decline in mathematics, where seven out of ten students do not reach the minimum level of proficiency. The test questionnaires describe Mexican classrooms in more detail than the scores do: students report teacher support, curiosity, and perseverance above the OECD average, greater distraction with devices, schools with less material and infrastructure than in 2022, and weekly use of chatbots by almost half of the students. From these data, implications follow for initial teacher education, with emphasis on mathematics; for teaching, based on studies that associate teacher-directed instruction with scores and inquiry with motivation; for assessment, based on the 2024 Evaluación Diagnóstica; and for in-service training, with three contents that could be addressed through microcredentials. In 2026, no source asks Mexican secondary school teachers about their training, their practices, or their working conditions, so producing and publishing that information remains a pending task for teacher education institutions.