Israel's PISA Scores Plummet, Education Ministry's War Blame Questioned

Israel's performance on the PISA 2025 international student assessment has seen a significant decline across all three tested areas: reading, mathematics, and science. Scores dropped by 38, 25, and 23 points respectively compared to 2022, falling below the OECD average. The Israeli Ministry of Education, led by Minister Yoav Kisch, attributed this sharp decline to the "Swords of Iron" war, citing factors like community evacuations, extensive reserve duty mobilization, and disruptions to the learning continuum. However, data suggests this explanation may be incomplete or misleading.

Analysis of the PISA results reveals that the decline in academic achievement predates the war. A TIMSS test administered in May 2023, five months before the October 7th attacks, already indicated a significant drop of 32 points in mathematics and science. Furthermore, schools directly impacted by evacuations and fighting were excluded from the PISA 2025 sample, meaning the population most affected by the war was not measured. The OECD itself notes that PISA is a cross-sectional study, making it difficult to establish direct causality between the war and the score changes without control groups or specific measures of war exposure.

The article also points out that the decline is not unique to Israel, with many peaceful countries experiencing similar drops in reading scores according to an OECD report. Ukraine, despite being actively at war since 2022, showed a much smaller decline in the areas where measurements were possible. Data on student attendance and punctuality during the PISA 2025 testing period in Israel also remained stable compared to previous years, contradicting the idea of widespread disruption during the exam itself.

RAMA, the Israeli National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education, confirmed that schools in evacuated areas and along the confrontation line were excluded from the PISA 2025 sample. This exclusion means the national average does not reflect the performance of students most directly affected by the conflict. The article concludes that while the war undoubtedly impacted the education system, the Ministry of Education's singular focus on it as the cause for the PISA results overlooks pre-existing trends and the methodological limitations of the assessment in establishing direct causality.