Welsh Teens Left Behind As UK Education Gap Widens

Welsh students are falling further behind their peers in the United Kingdom at school, according to the newly released 2022 results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The national averages for performance across maths, science and reading were lower in Wales than in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, highlighting a regional education gap that persists in the UK.

As Statista's Anna Fleck reports, Wales was also the only country of the four to drop below the OECD averages, which were calculated based on the test results of 690,000 students across 81 countries and economies. And it seems that this gap is getting wider: Where the national scores dropped in all three core subjects across the four UK regions, the greatest declines for each subject were in Wales.

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As this chart shows, England achieved the highest scores for maths, science and reading.

Scotland performed second-best for reading, while Northern Ireland was second runner for science.

Students performed the worst in maths in each UK country in 2022 and it was also the subject with the greatest fall in attainment per country since 2018. This mirrors a global trend, as the OECD nations analysed showed an average decline of 15 points in maths since 2018.

According to the OECD, a change of 20 points equates to approximately a full year of education. This means that since the last PISA exams in 2018, students in Wales performed on average as if they were a full year behind in maths, just under a year behind in reading and three-quarters of a year behind in science.

Plaid Cymru’s education spokesperson, Heledd Fychan MS, has cited youth poverty rates leading to high pupil absenteeism, school budget deficits and a recruitment crisis in the education sector among the reasons for the lower results.

“Despite the hard work and dedication of an overstretched workforce, the pupil attainment gap is widening and we cannot ignore the link between poverty and [Tuesday’s] disappointing results”, she said.

In the OECD report, other reasons for the observed declines across many OECD countries include interruptions from school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the longer-term issues of teaching quality and lack of resources.

Since the 2022 PISA tests were taken, Wales has already started rolling out a new Curriculum for Wales.