Kenya’s education system has come under fresh scrutiny after more than 6,000 learners who took the country’s first global education assessment performed below international standards in science, mathematics, reading and computational problem solving.
A total of 6,460 learners drawn from 245 schools took part in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), alongside more than 760,000 learners from 91 countries.
The results show that more than 80 per cent of Kenyan students did not attain the minimum proficiency level, Level 2, pointing to major gaps in basic literacy and numeracy skills.
PISA is designed for 15-year-old learners, who are usually in Grades 9 or 10. At the time of the assessment, participants are expected to be aged between 15 years, three months and 16 years, two months, and to have completed at least six years of formal schooling.
The learners were assessed in science, mathematics, reading and computational problem solving. The assessment also looked beyond academic performance to examine the conditions in which learners study, including bullying, absenteeism and access to learning materials and equipment.
The report found that a large share of Kenyan learners came from disadvantaged backgrounds.
"In Kenya, 42 per cent of students (the largest proportion) were in the bottom international quartile of the socio-economic scale, meaning they were among the most disadvantaged students to take the PISA test in 2025," the report states.
PISA, which was first conducted in 2000, is used to compare how well education systems prepare learners for life beyond school. It is administered every three years through a two-hour computer-based test, with learners not required to prepare specifically for it and their results having no effect on their school grades.
The assessment is organised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has 38 member countries across North America, South America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
Kenya joined the 2025 assessment to measure its education system against those of other countries and identify areas that could be improved locally.
Dr David Njengere, the CEO of the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC), told the Nation that Kenya had applied to take part in the test in order to compare its education system with the best in the world.
"It helps to see what others are doing and borrow lessons for implementation at home. The most critical point to measure whether the learners have learnt the competencies, is at the age of 15. Between 16 and 19, so much happens. If a child hasn't acquired certain abilities at fifteen, they struggle a lot," Dr Njengere said.
He said the results also support the need for learners to spend more time in secondary education to develop advanced skills.
"There's need to get the child in a longer secondary education cycle for them to develop high-order skills. It can't be done in primary school because it is not structured that way," he added, explaining why secondary education was split into two (junior and senior) under the CBE.
Kenya was among five African countries that participated in the 2025 PISA cycle. The others were Mauritius, Morocco, Zambia and Rwanda, with Mauritius recording the best results on the continent, followed by Morocco, Kenya, Zambia and Rwanda.
Dr Njengere said the Kenyan learners who participated came from both the 8-4-4 and competency-based education systems. This was because PISA selects learners based on age rather than the grade they are in or the curriculum under which they are studying.
"Our participation wasn't about performance, but about learning the system and identifying lessons for our context. What contextual issues could contribute to performance? We don't usually consider issues such as bullying and their effect on learning. Until we address these issues, children will not perform well. These are the issues that education needs to focus on," said Dr Njengere.
He also raised concerns over the use of computers during the assessment, noting that some Kenyan learners may have been disadvantaged because many schools have limited access to digital devices.
According to Dr Njengere, some learners could also have struggled with illustrations and situations they were not familiar with. He gave the example of a question that asked how turbine engines are better than fossil fuels at generating power.
He said the government would use the findings to strengthen Kenya’s education system and improve the way information about the conditions affecting learning is collected, with the aim of helping Kenyan learners compete with those in the best-performing systems.
During the assessment, each learner was tested in two subjects. The questions differed from one student to another, with combinations such as science followed by reading or mathematics followed by science.
The test included both multiple-choice questions and questions where learners had to provide their own answers.
The report said the weak science results showed that many learners struggle to read simple data or identify evidence from a graph. In reading, poor performance meant learners had difficulty understanding simple written texts.
In mathematics, the results pointed to challenges in understanding the relationship between units and prices, skills that are needed in ordinary activities such as shopping and reading utility bills.
The report also noted that the amount a country spends on each learner does not by itself determine how well students perform.
"Equally important, good policies and wise spending choices are far stronger predictors of performance in PISA tests than how much countries spend per student. At USD 288,521 per student, Luxembourg is by far the biggest spender on education, yet it posted lower average science scores than Ireland, France, and Italy, all of which invested less than half that amount per student," the report reads.
It further pointed to Singapore as an example of a high-performing education system, noting that despite its technology-rich classrooms, learners still spend considerable time using printed texts, with reading remaining a key part of early education.