Malaysia’s PISA 2025 Results: Looking Beyond the Scores
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), released its 2025 results on 8 September 2026.
Conducted as a survey, its primary focus is centred on mathematics, reading, and science performance (as well as computational problem solving). PISA has become the gold standard for comparing the skills and ability of countries and their students, becoming a form of ranking system in gauging the quality of education of participating countries.
For this reason, it is unsurprising the Malaysian government was keen to report on the improvement in scores, particularly in reading (with a 3-point increase) and science (with a 5-point increase). However, mathematic scores fell by 11 points since the previous PISA in 2022. While this has been heralded as an overall success by Malaysia’s Ministry of Education, its actual impact has been questioned by experts.
How does PISA work?
PISA’s target population consists of students who are aged between approximately 15 years and three months and 16 years and two months when the test begins. These students must be enrolled full-time or part-time in a public, private, vocational or other types of eligible educational institutions (home schoolers are excluded).
Schools are selected via stratified random sampling that is intended to capture various states and regions, urban and rural areas, types of schools, language of instruction, public and private institutions, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Worldwide, over 760,000 students participated in PISA 2025 from across 91 countries. The Malaysian sample comprised 7,624 students from 157 schools representing 413,400 enrolled 15-year-olds or 85% of Malaysia’s total 15-year-old population. When it comes to the selection of schools, OECD stratified the sampling groups to ensure important parts of the Malaysian education system are represented, rather than having a sample that is overly concentrated on one type of school or region.
For 2025, a supermajority of schools sampled were national secondary schools comprising 116 schools that make up 73.9% of the sample share. Other schools include other non-MOE schools (16), MOE technical schools (7), MOE religious schools (6), MOE full residential schools (3), MARA Junior Science Colleges (MRSM), Perlis schools excluding fully residential schools (2), Putrajaya schools excluding fully residential schools (2), and Labuan schools excluding fully residential schools (2). By ownership type, there are 144 public schools (91.7%), 12 private independent school (7.6%), and 1 private government-dependent school (0.56%).
A look at other indicators
There has been an abundance of comments about Malaysia’s performance in English, Mathematics, and Science. Therefore, this commentary shall not repeat what other experts have eloquently discussed, but focus on other key findings of the report. While PISA provides a reasonable indication of performance across socioeconomic groups, it is unable to prove if a country’s education policies are “better”, assuming there is a better score. The OECD itself emphasised that higher scores are a cumulative effect of learning at school, at home, and elsewhere.
This makes these findings on other aspects of education equally important in determining appropriate solutions, where corresponding data can be used in decision making. The below are some of the PISA 2025 Report highlights that are worth examining:
Socio-economic disparities: Those with the financial means and right mindset excel
PISA 2025 found that Malaysia’s socio-economically advantaged students outperformed disadvantaged students (students from wealthy backgrounds outperformed those who are less wealthy). It also found that students of other countries living in similar socio-economic conditions (Türkiye, for example) have fared significantly better than Malaysia.
Despite their socioeconomic disadvantage, PISA found that 10% of disadvantaged Malaysian students scored in the top quarter of science performance, a testament to their academic resilience.
Improved student attitude towards school and learning
Overall, there has been an improvement in student attitudes since 2022:
80% of Malaysian students appear to be more curious than others in the OECD about various things (OECD average: 73%).
79% of Malaysian students will apply addition effort when work becomes challenging (OECD average: 60%).
Only 7% agree or strongly agree that school is a waste of time (OECD average: 24%)
The OECD notes that curiosity and perseverance are often associated with higher science performance and students who feel that school is not a waste of time tend to score higher in the subject.
Attitudes towards learning: Good attitudes, but Malaysian students need a growth mindset
37% of Malaysian students have a growth mindset (OECD average: 69%)
On self-regulation and goal-setting behaviours, 46% Malaysian students often or very often plan their approach to studying (OECD average: 37%).
59% ask themselves questions about the material to determine if they understood everything (OECD average: 49%)
92% of Malaysian students will ask their teachers or classmates for support in schoolwork and 94% will ask their classmates (OECD average: 77% and 82% respectively).
School Life: Improvements in perceived human and material resource shortage, more infrastructure required
18% of Malaysian students were in schools where principals reported that instruction was hindered by a perceived lack of teaching staff (OECD average: 39%, Malaysia 2022: 24%).
6% of Malaysian students attended schools where a lack of education materials, such as textbooks, IT equipment, library, or laboratory materials has hindered learning (16% in 2022).
32% of students were in schools that lacked physical infrastructure such as buildings, air conditioning, lights, or audio-visual equipment that has been perceived to hinder learning (25% in 2022)
AI Impact
56% of Malaysian students used AI chatbots to help them learn at least once a week (OECD average: 46%)
Artificial intelligence is also frequently used to:
Do preliminary research once a week – Malaysia 36% (OECD average: 60%).
Summarise text – Malaysia 40% (OECD average: 31%)
Draft text for writing assignments – Malaysia 39% (OECD average: 29%).
Only 6% of Malaysian students reported never or almost never using AI for their schoolwork.
Bullying remains an issue
Overall, the 2025 report found that bullying has increased among participating countries since 2022.
27% of Malaysian students report being victims of at least one form of bullying a few times per month or more in 2025. This is higher than the OECD average of 20%. In 2022, 22% of girls and 29% of boys reported being a victim of bullying acts at least a few times a month.
Cyberbullying: 5% of Malaysian students report that upsetting information about them was published online without their consent, a few times a month during the 12 months prior to the PISA test. These students scored an average of 40 points lower than their peers in science.
Improved Teacher Support
80% of Malaysian students reported that their teachers show an interest in student learning (OECD average 69%, Malaysia 2022: 70%) and 86% indicated that their teachers provide extra help when students need it (OECD average 73%, Malaysia 2022: 80%)
Improved disciplinary climate
13% of Malaysian students report that they cannot work in most or all lessons (OECD average: 19%, Malaysia 2022: 22% (for Mathematics))
21% reported noise or disorder disrupted most or every (science) lesson (OECD average 31%, 2022 comparison is based on distractions from digital devices)
15% of students reported that their classmates do not listen to their teachers (OECD average: 29%, Malaysia 2022: 21%)
Improvement in parental involvement and support
41% of Malaysian students indicated that their parents or guardians would ask them at least once a week what they did in school while 34% reported having discussions about problems they face in school (compared to the 2022 figures of 57% and 46% respectively)
Truancy and lateness – improved but remains an issue
12% of Malaysian students report having skipped at least one day of school in the two weeks before the PISA test (OECD average: 22%, Malaysia 2022: 16%)
16% skipped at least one class (OECD average: 24%; Malaysia 2022: 25%)
42% rep ort arriving late for school (OECD average: 50%, Malaysia 2022: 37%)
Malaysians more eager to meet Environmental Challenges, despite the lack of proficiency
54% of Malaysian students reached at least baseline proficiency (Level 2) in environmental science (OECD average: 74%)
87% of students believe that they can positively impact the environment (OECD average: 81%)
92% believe that collective action can address environmental problems (OECD average: 82%)
84% of Malaysian students report knowing how to work with others to positively impact the environment (OECD average: 68%).
76% of students reported that they are somewhat or very interested in contributing to protecting the environment in their future jobs (OECD average: 62%).
74% of students engaged in environment-related activities at least once over the 12 months prior to the PISA test (OECD average: 54%)
Perspective
In Malaysia, there is an overemphasis on student academic performance. This is evident as comments surrounding Malaysia's PISA performance tend to be centred on English, Mathematics, and Science. While important, stakeholders of education must not loose sight of the fact that bringing about a conducive learning environment in several other aspects would lead to positive academic performance. It is for this reason PISA is not exclusively about academic excellence alone, but also examines other factors that have an effect on student learning outcomes. the Malaysia’s education sector to opportunit
While, overall, PISA's findings on Malaysia have shown slight improvement among the various indicators since the last PISA, faring well compared to the OECD average, Malaysia has still fallen short even compared to ASEAN countries, some of which have caught up since 2022. This is a worrying development as Malaysia risks losing out from a competitive aspect to its neighbours. In ASEAN alone, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, and Thailand surpassed Malaysia in PISA 2025. From a global business perspective, this is not good news. While in the past, Malaysia has held the edge in English reading compared to Vietnam and Thailand, this gap has narrowed (Malaysia still maintains a tiny edge in English compared to Thailand and Vietnam by 1 point), but to an international investor, this is one less advantage held by Malaysia. Malaysia has also benefited from lower labour costs than Singapore, but this advantage may be offset by a more skilled workforce capable of delivering higher-quality work and substantially greater productivity.
Despite additional budgetary funding allocated to the Ministry of Education, from RM52.6 billion in 2022 to RM64.1 billion in 2025, PISA results have not drastically improved. Just as PISA examined student performance, it also provides the Malaysia's education sector with the opportunity examine itself. Perhaps spending alone does not provide the entire solution.
PISA 2025 should serve as a wake-up call to stakeholders of Malaysian education that business cannot be done as usual. Uncomfortable questions need to be asked - gaps and challenges must not remain swept under the carpet, but discussed openly with intent and conviction to enhance and improve Malaysia's education landscape.
Bibliography
OECD (2022). PISA 2022 Results: Factsheets Malaysia. Available at https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2023/11/pisa-2022-results-volume-i-and-ii-country-notes_2fca04b9/malaysia_7246995f/1dbe2061-en.pdf
OECD (2026). PISA 2025 Results (Volume I): Malaysia. Available at https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volume-i-country-notes_2d4ff9ea-en/malaysia_d5dbce0d-en.html
Bernama (2026, September 8). PISA 2025: Malaysia’s Education Foundation Solid, Shows Strength In Science, Reading Problem-solving – Fadhlina. Available at https://www.bernama.com/en/general/news.php?id=2604709
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