The governor of the Bank of Portugal, Álvaro Santos Pereira, alerted to the concerning deterioration of the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), considering that the trend constitutes a warning sign for governments and those responsible for educational policies. In a post on the social network LinkedIn, the also former chief economist of the OECD and former minister of Economy and Employment highlighted that, after a sharp drop in student performance in 2022, there is now a new significant decline in scores in most countries.
The warning coincides with the release of the latest results of the OECD assessment, which show a worsening of student performance, including Portuguese students, especially in Mathematics and Reading. According to Álvaro Santos Pereira, the greatest deterioration was recorded in Reading skills, a trend he associates with the growing influence of the so-called "digital distractions", citing Andreas Schleicher, director of the Education area at the OECD.
The official stressed that the problem cannot be explained solely by the effects of the pandemic or the recent emergence of artificial intelligence, as it is a trend that had been manifesting for several years and precedes both phenomena. Still, he warned that the growing use of artificial intelligence tools could worsen the problem if adequate measures are not adopted.
Faced with this scenario, Álvaro Santos Pereira left an appeal to policymakers to intervene in a timely manner, considering that the coming years will be crucial to reverse these trends. The new PISA results reignite the debate about the quality of education systems, at a time when several countries face difficulties in recovering the learning levels recorded before the pandemic.
