A test administered in hundreds of schools across Canada last year is showing a disturbing drop in math, reading, science and other comprehensions compared to previous years, suggesting a failure of our education system.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Programme for International Student Assessment focuses on 15-year-olds in dozens of countries, with a test every three years to determine how well kids in the same cohort around the globe are learning and developing.

While Canadian students performed better than the OECD average in the three basic subject areas covered in the 2022 test — reading, math and science — Canada's scores have generally fallen quite significantly each year of the test.

In 2000, Canadians achieved a grade of 533-534 in each of the three segments of the assessment. This plateaued around 526-528 around 2010 before falling to 512-518 in 2018. This year, the results were 507 in reading, 515 in science and 497 in math, showing a gradual but fairly steady decline.

And, so have the rest of the developed world's figures, though at various paces.

As noted in the PISA results for Canada, "in mathematics and reading, average performance was lower in 2022 than in any previous assessment; in science, it was lower than in all assessments prior to 2018. But the recent drop did, in fact, mostly reinforce and confirm a negative trend that began earlier."

The OECD has also identified a widening gap between the highest- and lowest-achieving students in the country in reading and science, and a growing number of students operating at a lower level than they should be at this age.

"Compared to 2012, the proportion of students scoring below a baseline level of proficiency (Level 2) increased by seven percentage points in mathematics; by seven percentage points in reading; and by four percentage points in science," the report says.

While more teens tested in Canada were top performers than the OECD average in at least one of the three disciplines, the summary points out that "a larger proportion of students than on average across OECD countries achieved a minimum level of proficiency (Level 2 or higher) in all three subjects" on the 2022 test.

In Ontario specifically, kids hardly performed above the national average in reading and science, and worse than the national average in math. Nationwide, only Alberta had results above the national average across the board.

Canadian high schoolers ranked fourth in science of the students of 81 countries tested, fifth in reading and fifth in math, putting us well in the top 10 — which means less this last year than in others, given how much poorer everyone seemed to do.

This edition of the examination was moved to 2022 from 2021 due to the pandemic, which the OECD does suggest had a drastic effect on children's learning.

Canada had longer school closures than other countries, with more students — 42 per cent in Canada versus 34 per cent, on average, across other OECD nations — citing "problems at least once a week with understanding school assignments" during remote learning.