The good news is that the overall performance of 15-year-old Australian students in reading, maths and science has stopped falling. The bad news is that the average is still woeful and remains well behind where it was for the same age group around two decades ago.

It’s true the OECD’s latest program for international assessment (PISA) of student results across 81 countries shows Australia has moved up the rankings to be back in the top 10. Unfortunately, that’s more due to a fall in reading and mathematics skills among many other countries over COVID years rather than noticeable improvement among Australia’s students.