PISA 2025: Poland’s good score is only the start of the school conversation
Krzysztof Kosman opens with the question prompted by the headlines: if Poland ranks highly in PISA 2025, does that mean its schools are doing well? Paweł Maranowski, a sociologist at Poland’s Educational Research Institute and a co-author of the national report, does not dismiss the students’ result. He asks what the ranking leaves out.
An average conceals students who read with different levels of confidence, experience school differently and receive different kinds of support. Maranowski worked on the report’s calculations. Throughout the conversation, he returns to a basic distinction: what the data show, and what we infer from them.
A result that raises questions
PISA assesses 15-year-olds across many countries. Students are selected for the study; schools do not choose their strongest pupils. Standardised tasks and calculations make comparisons across countries and survey cycles possible. That strength does not turn the result into a simple grade for an entire education system.
Maranowski stresses another limit. PISA can reveal associations, but on its own it cannot establish what caused them. If students who use phones perform differently from those who do not, the comparison does not prove that the phone caused the difference. Claims about the effects of the pandemic or changes to school structure require similar care.
That caution applies to good news, too. Maranowski considers Poland’s result strong. He will not credit one reform, teaching method or technology for all of it. With different groups of students measured over many years, that degree of certainty would be misleading.
The students beneath the average
Well-being is one point where the conversation moves beyond test scores. PISA asks students about life satisfaction, relationships and support. Maranowski draws attention to their sense of belonging at school and whether they feel able to rely on teachers and peers.
He does not turn those answers into a verdict on individual teachers. He is asking what school feels like as a place where students spend much of their day. A pupil can do well on a test and still feel disconnected from that community. Both observations matter when we discuss their future.
Persistence is another theme: staying with a task when it becomes difficult or dull. Krzysztof connects it to adult experiences such as learning a new role or finishing a demanding project. The point is not to invent another league table. It is to ask where young people practise concentration, sustained reading and finding a solution for themselves.
Phones at school: a simple slogan, less simple data
When the conversation turns to phone bans, Maranowski resists the equation “screen equals lower score”. He describes a relationship in which the amount and manner of use matter. Pupils who use devices a little can perform differently from those who never use them, and from those who use them for many hours.
This is no argument for unrestricted phone use in lessons. It is a reason to name the problem a policy is meant to solve. PISA can identify a worrying association and sharpen the questions. A correlation alone cannot prove that a particular ban will improve learning.
AI can complete the work without teaching the student
The discussion of artificial intelligence turns practical: what can a pupil still do after closing the chat window? Maranowski mentions an experiment in which assignments completed with AI looked good, but a later test of independent skills told a less reassuring story. He immediately cautions against treating one experiment as a final answer.
He sees a related distinction in his own teaching. Two students may bring in a solution produced with AI. A conversation soon shows whether they can explain and assess it. A finished passage of text or code says little by itself about what its author has learned.
Technology can help if the student works to understand the response. It can also make an assignment easier to submit while leaving understanding untouched. The interview offers no universal rule for classroom AI. It leaves us with a useful question after working with a tool: could I explain or do this without it?
A school one can belong to
Near the end, Krzysztof asks for one thing that could change tomorrow. Maranowski begins with parents: many young people in the study report feeling supported by them. Then he returns to school. In his view, schools need to give students more agency and pay closer attention to their sense of belonging, including among peers.
That conclusion does not fit easily into a headline about Poland’s rank. A score records how pupils handled a set of tasks. Whether school is a place where they can ask questions, persist through difficulty and count on other people is a separate conversation. It is where Maranowski directs attention once the numbers have been discussed.
Krzysztof Kosman’s conversation with Paweł Maranowski is an episode of the EdTech Dots podcast. The Educational Research Institute publishes Poland’s PISA 2025 materials, and the OECD publishes the international results.
