Alberta’s 15 year olds came first in Canada in reading and first in science. The Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, put out its 2025 results on 8 September 2026. Science 520. Reading 499. Mathematics 489, second in the country behind Quebec.
Then everybody moved on.
There is a report card stuck to a fridge in a lot of houses in this province this month. Those marks get written by the same school that taught the course. A B in one building is not a B in the next one over, and every parent works that out eventually. PISA is the one test where none of that applies. Same questions. Same scale. 83 countries.
So Alberta coming back first in two subjects out of three is worth more than a line in a provincial table.
Key facts
- Alberta 15 year olds scored 520 points in science and 499 in reading on the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment, first among provinces in both, per the Government of Alberta news release, 9 September 2026.
- Alberta scored 489 points in mathematics on the same 2025 assessment, second among provinces behind Quebec, per the Government of Alberta news release, 9 September 2026.
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average for 2025 was 482 points in science, 461 in reading and 463 in mathematics, per PISA 2025 Results Volume I, published 8 September 2026.
- 83 countries and 8 economies took part in the 2025 assessment, including about 24,600 Canadian students from close to 900 schools, per the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, 8 September 2026.
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported a sharp decline in reading and mathematics performance across member countries in its PISA 2025 news release of 8 September 2026.
What a score of 520 in science actually measures
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, runs the assessment and publishes an average across its member countries. For 2025 that average landed at 482 in science, 461 in reading and 463 in mathematics.
Set Alberta against those. 38 points clear in science. Another 38 in reading. 26 in mathematics. We ran that subtraction ourselves off both sets of published scores, and anybody with a pen can check it in a minute.
That is no rounding difference. More than 760,000 students sat this thing. A 38 point gap is the space between one system and another.
The province set its results beside Singapore, Japan, Korea and Estonia, with several of the comparisons statistically tied. Those are the names people study.
Mathematics is the one that did not come first. 489, second in the country, Quebec ahead of it. That belongs in the same sentence as the rest, because a column that prints only the two wins is running the same trick in the other direction.
Why the strongest number Alberta has never reached the kitchen table
The OECD led its own release with the bad news. Reading and mathematics fell sharply across the member countries, and that was the line the release carried on 8 September 2026. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada said much the same about the long slide in Canadian scores across all three subjects.
Both things are true at once. Canada is sliding. Alberta sits on top of the pile that is sliding, and the sliding is the part that travelled.
Something gets lost when only half the file gets read. Parents here have been told for years that the schools are a wreck and that nobody comes out of them able to read a page. Then the one exam written the same way in 83 countries comes back with Alberta first in reading and first in science, and it lasts about a day.
That is the talking down, and Albertans have a long memory for it. The line on this province got set a long time ago. Too much oil, not enough thinking. When the measuring stick finally gets held up against everybody else and Alberta reads high on it, the stick goes back in the drawer.
Nobody here is asking for a trophy. A man who is up at five and pays school taxes out of a cheque he earned with his back is owed the whole file, not the slice of it that suits somebody’s opinion of where he lives.
Alberta came first. Somebody should have told the people who paid for it.
