Two former Portuguese education ministers expressed divergent views on the causes of the decline in Portugal's results in the PISA 2025 study, the largest OECD education study. Nuno Crato, who was education minister between 2011 and 2015, and João Costa, minister between 2022 and 2024, present different analyses to explain the performance of Portuguese students.
PISA assesses the competencies of 15-year-old students in areas such as reading, mathematics, and science, being considered a fundamental indicator of each country's educational system. Portugal has followed the trend of other OECD countries, which have also recorded declines in their results in recent editions of the study.
The different perspectives of the two former holders of the education portfolio reflect the debate on which factors contributed most to this evolution, including issues related to educational policies, investment in the sector, and social changes that may have affected school performance.
This debate comes at a time when the results of PISA 2025 are beginning to be known and allow international comparisons, highlighting the quality of the Portuguese educational system and the challenges it faces in maintaining or recovering student achievement levels.
