PISA 2022 results show Asia’s dominance is less about top rankers and more about the deep, systemic gaps that separate education systems worldwide.
The most striking feature of the PISA 2022 mathematics rankings is not that Singapore sits at the top, but how decisively it does so. With a score of 575, Singapore stands 103 points above the OECD average. In PISA terms, this is not a marginal lead but a structural separation, placing the country in an entirely different performance bracket. It indicates a system where the median student demonstrates levels of mathematical reasoning that many countries achieve only among their highest performers.
What follows Singapore reinforces this point. Ranks two through six — Macau (China) at 552, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) at 547, Hong Kong (China) at 540, Japan at 536, and South Korea at 527 — form a tight East Asian cluster. The spread across these systems is just 48 points, yet the entire band sits comfortably above most of the world. This clustering matters because it signals systemic strength rather than exceptionalism. These education systems emphasise early numeracy, tightly sequenced curricula, and classroom cultures where difficulty is treated as a learning tool rather than a marker of failure.
PISA rewards precisely these attributes: reasoning, modelling, and interpretation. The outcome is not merely high-performing outliers but a strong and stable middle that consistently lifts national averages.
Europe’s quiet counterpoint
Europe enters the rankings at seventh place, with Estonia scoring 524, just three points behind South Korea. This is one of the table’s quieter revelations. Estonia is neither a large system nor a test-preparation-driven culture. Its performance reflects sustained investment in teacher autonomy, curricular coherence, and strong early foundations that prevent learning gaps from compounding over time.
Below Estonia, Switzerland at 508 and the Netherlands at 493 remain clearly above the OECD average. However, the step-down is evident. From Singapore’s 575 to the Netherlands’ 493 is an 82-point drop, despite both being classified within the “top ten.” This gap exposes a common misreading of global rankings: proximity in rank does not imply similarity in educational reality. Europe’s strength lies in consistency and stability, not in the system-wide intensity that characterises East Asia’s top performers.
The United States: strong at the top, weak in the middle
The United States appears near the bottom of this comparison, ranking 33rd out of 35 in the Voronoi cut, with a PISA 2022 mathematics score of 465, below the OECD average of 472. This does not suggest a lack of mathematical talent. Rather, it highlights a system that struggles to make mathematical literacy widespread. PISA assesses whether 15-year-olds can apply mathematics to real-world problems, and national averages fall when large segments of students remain at lower proficiency levels.
Recent domestic evidence aligns with this pattern. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress shows modest improvements in Grade 4 mathematics compared with 2022, but scores remain below pre-pandemic levels. Gains are concentrated among middle and higher performers, while lower-performing students show limited recovery. This long tail is precisely what depresses national PISA averages, even when top-end performance remains competitive.
Internationally, TIMSS 2023 places the United States above the global average at Grades 4 and 8, complicating any simple decline narrative. Taken together, the evidence suggests not an absence of capability, but unevenness. The ceiling is not the constraint; the floor is.
Why India is missing
India’s absence from the ranking is not an oversight but a consequence of non-participation. The country did not take part in PISA 2022, and without participation there is no score or rank. The cost of this absence is subtle but significant. Without external benchmarks, strengths are harder to locate precisely, weaknesses are more difficult to diagnose, and reform risks proceeding without a clear international reference point.
What the rankings ultimately reveal
Stripped of headline appeal, the deeper message becomes clear. Mathematics performance is not a function of innate talent but of system design. The highest-performing countries did not succeed by celebrating exceptional students alone, but by steadily lifting the average learner year after year. Systems that slip are rarely collapsing outright; they are allowing learning gaps to harden quietly into norms. Those that opt out of comparison avoid immediate judgment, but also forgo clarity.
Global assessments are uncomfortable because they challenge national self-belief. Yet they also provide something indispensable: an external mirror that shows whether education systems are building mathematical confidence at scale, or merely producing brilliance at the margins.
