Stop turning schoolchildren into crash-test dummies
AI can help in classrooms but it needs to be treated with caution
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EVERY three years, hundreds of thousands of 15-year-olds sit down to answer questions in the global Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) test, now held in more than 90 countries. They do not revise for it, nor do the results affect their grades. Yet ministers scrutinise the outcomes, newspapers splash them across their front pages and education systems are praised or questioned accordingly.
This is because those outcomes are the most reliable measure of the quality of school systems, and thus one of the most powerful predictors for the long-run success of economies. Researchers at Stanford University estimated that if all 15-year-old Americans achieved at least the Pisa baseline Level 2, this could add more than US$40 trillion – one-and-a-quarter times America’s nominal gross domestic product – to the country’s economy over their working lives.
Yet in 2025, 22 per cent of American 15-year-olds failed to reach this benchmark in science (up from 19 per cent in 2018), 35 per cent in mathematics (up from 27 per cent) and 26 per cent in reading (up from 19 per cent). These students struggle to interpret simple data, identify evidence in a graph or understand simple texts.
