We want high-tech investments, we talk about artificial intelligence and we advertise abroad our specialized human resources. However, as the OECD told us yesterday, the Greek school struggles to ensure for a large share of children the skills on which all this will be built. This is the real story behind the results of PISA 2025.
Because in the age of artificial intelligence, the value of the human being shifts precisely toward those things that can more difficultly be replaced by machines: critical thinking, understanding, evaluation of information, synthesis and problem-solving.
And precisely at this juncture, the OECD's PISA tells us that the Greek school is moving in the exactly opposite direction.
The figures are relentless. In the decade 2015-2025, the performance of Greek 15-year-olds declined by 21 points in Science, 33 in Mathematics and 45 in Reading.
Even worse, only 3.3% reaches high performance levels in at least one of the three core subjects, compared with 11.9% in the OECD. Almost one in three is below the basic proficiency level in all three.
So we are not simply failing to create more top-performing students. We are failing to guarantee that every child will leave school with the elementary skills demanded by the 20th century and of course required by the 21st.
These are not simply bad grades in an international exam. They are a warning.
For years Greece has advertised its human resources as a comparative advantage. Its scientists, its engineers, its specialized technical staff. Except that this is not a national characteristic. It is a product of our educational system. And human capital is not a deposit that we discovered once and will exploit forever. It must be renewed.
Educational lag is thus a mine in the foundations of the economy and ultimately of society. It may not explode today. But it will become apparent when businesses seek people capable of handling the technologies of the new era and the country struggles to provide them. Already, in computational problem solving Greek students stand at 461 points, compared with 500 in the OECD.
Public education was for decades the elevator of Greek society. “for the child to learn letters” allowed children of farmers, workers and poor families to study, get ahead and live better than their parents.
If the public school ceases to offer the skills the era requires, this elevator stops. Those who have the means will buy education and skills outside it. The rest risk remaining on the social floor where they were born.
Equality downward is not a social achievement. Nor, of course, does education produce only workers. It produces citizens.
The person who learned to understand a complex text, to cross-check a piece of information, to distinguish argument from slogan and to demand evidence, is less easily swayed by political sirens of every kind.
On the contrary, the inability of critical reading and analysis makes the citizen more vulnerable to populism, misinformation and manipulation. In the age of social media, deepfakes and artificial intelligence, this is not simply an educational problem. It is a problem of democracy.
Education Minister Sofia Zacharaki argues that the interventions that have been made “have begun to bear fruit”. Hopefully. There are indeed some individual positive indications. But when you have been falling for a decade, the fact that now you are falling a little more slowly does not constitute success.
Responsibility for the state of Greek education is certainly longstanding. The current government, however, has been in power long enough that it is now judged not by the number of reforms it announces, but by their results. In education, after all, reforms are not judged by how many new programs, books or digital tools were introduced. They are judged by what the children learned.
Because PISA ultimately concerns not only the quality of education that Greece provides. It concerns the economy we will have, the investments we will be able to attract, the opportunities for social mobility that children will have and, ultimately, the quality of our democracy itself.
PISA does not simply grade our students. It grades the future of the country. And the most worrying thing is not that we fell behind. It is that we are beginning to get used to falling behind. And the bad, indeed, starts at school.