PISA, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, is the world’s largest comparative assessment of how well 15-year-olds can apply science, mathematics and reading knowledge to real-life problems. PISA 2025 involved around 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies, with science as its main domain.

Finland remains among the stronger education systems. Finnish students scored 504 points in science, compared with the OECD average of 482. Some 81% reached at least basic science proficiency, compared with 74% across the OECD, and 11% were top performers, compared with 7% OECD-wide. Finland’s science result is numerically slightly above that of the United States, but the OECD treats the two as statistically similar; it would therefore be misleading to claim a clear Finnish victory.

504Finland science score
482OECD average
International educators in an engaged learning conversation
Educational evidence becomes meaningful when it leads to careful professional dialogue. Photo: Satu Leinonen

What has traditionally made Finland interesting is not only performance. It has sought to combine academic achievement with equity, universal public education, highly educated teachers, professional autonomy and institutional trust—not exceptionally long school days, intensive standardised testing or a large private tutoring industry.

No system remains permanently at the top

Education develops together with society, technology, migration, families and children’s lives. Finland itself has experienced a long-term decline in PISA performance. At the same time, neighbouring Estonia—drawing on Nordic and Finnish experience while developing its own system—has emerged as one of Europe’s strongest performers. That is not simply Finland’s failure; it is also part of how educational ideas circulate and evolve.

Perhaps the more important question is what Finland does next. Since August 2025, basic education has gained additional annual weekly lessons in mother tongue and literature and mathematics, deliberately creating more time for foundational literacy and numeracy. Finland has also restricted mobile-device use during lessons, reformed learning support towards earlier and more timely intervention, and continued to strengthen the conditions in which pupils can learn and participate.

These changes suggest an approach worth watching. The ambition is not simply to push scores upward at any cost. It is to recover excellence while preserving equity: improving learning without abandoning the weakest students, strengthening fundamentals without destroying teacher autonomy, and using technology without allowing family wealth to determine access to the best learning opportunities.

Why Jyväskylä matters

There is a particular reason to come to Jyväskylä to understand these developments. Finland’s National Centre for PISA Research is located at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research at the University of Jyväskylä. JYU participates in Finland’s PISA 2025 implementation together with partners. Jyväskylä is therefore not only a place to observe Finnish schools, but also a place to encounter researchers working directly with evidence behind some of the world’s most closely watched education debates.

The question PISA cannot answer alone

Generative AI is rapidly becoming capable of tutoring students, preparing learning materials, giving feedback, supporting teachers and taking over administrative and cognitive tasks. Public education systems must consider quality, ethics, equality and children’s development at the same time as they experiment.

Can Finland preserve what made its system valuable—equity, trust, teacher professionalism and universal public education—while becoming substantially faster at experimentation and AI adoption?

Answering that will require more than another PISA ranking. It may require a new comparative research project—and perhaps the next chapter of the Finnish education story.

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