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Literacy Scores by Country, in Reading, Math, and Science

By Nathan Yau

Among 15-year-old students, here’s how 77 countries compare in reading, math, and science. Higher scores are better.


These scores are from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). I kind of expected countries that excelled in one subject to be not as good in the other subject, but that wasn’t the case at all. If a country clusters around a certain score in reading, then they’re in the same range in the other subjects.

Note: B-S-J-Z stands for Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. PISA assessed different regions in China separately.

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