Are Australian students really falling behind? It depends which test you look at

Ask anyone about how Australian students are doing in school and they will likely tell you our results are abysmal and, more importantly, getting progressively worse.

This narrative has been reinforced by sustained reporting within academia and the media. It has only grown with the release of the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results on Tuesday evening.

But is this accurate and fair?

This year we independently both published papers looking at Australian students' results. These papers both reached the same conclusions: students' scores on the vast majority of standardised assessments were not in decline.