Haaretz says Israel is 31st of 35; Welt, Anadolu and UPI say "historic lows" and print no number

The study. The OECD published new PISA results on 8 September. Four reports we hold cover them. Each covers only its own country or region, and each reports a fall.

Four falls, four vocabularies.

One number between four reports. Haaretz is the only report we hold that prints a figure of any kind, and it is a rank rather than a score. Three reports reach for a superlative and none of the three says how far anything fell. Two say what was tested: basic skills. One person is quoted across all four reports — a charity spokesman in the Welt studio, who supplies causes for figures that report does not print.

Not settled. We cannot say which measure each outlet is describing, over what period, or against what baseline. No report we hold gives a proficiency threshold or says who sets it. No report names a country whose results rose, which is not the same as none rising. We hold no text from the OECD itself.

What this is about. On 8 September 2026 the OECD published a new round of PISA results, and newspapers in four places — Israel, Germany, Belgium and Latin America — each reported that their own pupils had done worse.

How it got here. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an intergovernmental body founded in 1961 and based in Paris. Most of its members are wealthy countries, and one of its standing jobs is to produce numbers about them that can be compared. In 2000 it launched the Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA tests samples of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science, and publishes every three years. Non-member countries buy in as well, which is how much of Latin America comes to be in the tables at all. Because the results are built to be compared across borders and across rounds, PISA is the instrument governments cite when they are winning an argument about schools and answer for when they are not. A publication day is therefore the same day in a dozen countries, and each one reads only its own line.

Who owns the results. The OECD runs the test; national and regional governments own what it finds. Belgium's schools are not run from the federal centre: the Flemish and the French-speaking communities each run their own system, so Belgium arrives as two results rather than one. Germany's schools are run by its 16 states, the arrangement the Welt studio guest blames.

What is at stake. A PISA round sets the terms of school politics for three years — spending, curriculum, teacher numbers, who is blamed. A rank also depends on who else is in the table, and a score and a rank can move in opposite directions.

Where it stands. The results are out. We hold four reports on them and no text from the OECD itself, so what was measured, and against what, we cannot yet say.