Reading, maths and science literacy at age 15
International comparisons
Across all measures, New Zealand 15 year old students performed better overall than the OECD mean.
In the case of reading literacy, only Korea and Finland achieved significantly better results. In mathematical literacy, three countries performed significantly better, and in scientific literacy, only one country (Finland) achieved a significantly higher mean score.
New Zealand’s performance is generally comparable to that of Australia and Canada, and is significantly better in terms of mean scores than that of the United Kingdom or United States.
New Zealand had the widest range of mean scores in both reading and scientific literacy of any OECD country. This suggests that there is a bigger gap between our high and low achievers in these areas than is the case in most countries.
