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View all search resultsReading the PISA scores and what should follow
The more useful question for Indonesia is why its students fall behind, and what can be done about it.
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Elementary school children sit on a bamboo raft as they cross the Citarum River on their way home in Saguling, Bandung, West Java, on Sept. 1, 2026. (AFP/Timur Matahari)
I
ndonesia’s results of the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) continue to perform below the average of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In science, only 37 percent of Indonesian students reached Level 2 or above, against an OECD average of 74 percent. In mathematics, the gap was starker still, with just 17 percent of students meeting that threshold, compared with 65 percent across OECD countries. In reading, only 27 percent of Indonesian students reached Level 2, against the average of 69 percent.
These numbers deserve attention, but PISA results should not be read simply as a matter of scores and rankings. The OECD uses the term "low performer" for students who fail to reach a basic level of proficiency, and in its report Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed, it makes clear that every participating country has such students. What varies is how many, and how seriously each country responds.
The more useful question for Indonesia is why its students fall behind, and what can be done about it. The OECD links low performance to several recurring factors: disadvantaged family background, limited access to early childhood education, grade repetition, and students' own attitudes and behavior. In Indonesia, all four are clearly at play, though the picture is more layered than it first appears.
PISA 2025 data show that 47 percent of Indonesian students, the largest share, fall into the lowest socioeconomic quartile, with an average science score of just 375. Students from the wealthiest quarter of families outperform those from the poorest quarter by 47 points, a gap smaller than the OECD average of 85 points.
In other words, family income in Indonesia does not determine academic outcomes as decisively as it does in many wealthier countries. Some 15 percent of disadvantaged students even reached the top quartile of science performance nationally, slightly above the OECD average of 12 percent, evidence that economic hardship is not an academic life sentence.
That said, disadvantaged students still face steeper odds. Families with means can turn to tutors or private lessons when a child struggles; for low-income households, that option is often simply out of reach. Cost also shapes whether a child attends early childhood education before primary school, a stage that matters not only for academic readiness but for building independence, curiosity and the habit of working with others.
