PISA 2025 came out this morning. A look through Polish glasses.

TL;DR

• PISA 2025: Poland's teenagers score above the OECD average in all three subjects, ahead of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
• The engineers you hire today sat PISA between 2006 and 2018, when Poland peaked. The 2012 cohort also beat the UK and the US.
• Senior rates in Kraków run 30 to 40 percent lower because of cost of living, not talent.

The OECD published PISA 2025 this morning. Around 760,000 fifteen-year-olds in 91 countries and economies sat the test in spring 2025, and the headline for Poland is a rather quiet one: 495 in science, 484 in maths, 482 in reading. All three above the OECD average, which came in at 482, 463 and 461.

Here at Inuits TaaS, we read these tables the way the average farmer reads the weather report, so let’s have a look.

Where Poland lands

The countries most people in Western Europe and the US compare themselves against:

Polish teenagers scored higher than their German, Dutch, Belgian and French peers in all three subjects, and beat American teenagers in maths by no less than 21 points. The UK sits ahead of Poland across the board.

An even more interesting story is the direction of travel. Reading fell 14 points across the OECD since 2022. Germany lost 15, the Netherlands 18, France 18, Belgium 13. Poland lost 7, and the OECD marks that as not statistically significant. Maths, same pattern: France down 16, Germany 11, Belgium 10, Poland 5, again within the noise. In a cycle where most of Europe kept sliding, Poland held.

How Poland got here

Poland wasn't always in this position. In the first PISA round, in 2000, Polish fifteen-year-olds scored below the OECD average in every subject: 479 in reading, 470 in maths, 483 in science.

What happened between 2000 and 2003 was a school reform. Poland introduced the gimnazjum in 1999, a three-year lower-secondary stage that kept every child in the same general curriculum until sixteen instead of sorting them into vocational tracks at fifteen. The OECD has written about it as one of the clearest cases of a reform showing up in the data. The scores climbed for a decade and peaked in 2012, when Poland sat in the top ten OECD countries in all three subjects. Today, some 14 years later, those students are the ones writing your code, managing your data, administrating your infrastructure. World-class indeed.

Then two things hit the same year group. In 2017 the government abolished the gimnazjum and went back to an eight-year primary school. The children born in 2006 went through the new structure, to make matters worse, Covid hit. These same kids were the ones who spent their eighth and ninth school years in pandemic remote teaching. Poland kept schools in remote or hybrid mode longer than most of Western Europe. Those children sat PISA 2022, and the results were the worst drop in Poland's history: maths down 27 points, reading down 23.

PISA 2025 is the first research since. Poland is still 30 points below its 2018 level in maths and reading, but at least the fall has stopped, and it stopped while the neighbours are still falling.

Who actually sat these tests?

PISA tests fifteen-year-olds. Your Polish engineer sat the 2012 one.

PISA tests fifteen-year-olds, meaning, the teenagers in this release were born around 2009. They'll be writing production code in the early 2030s.

The engineers on your team were fifteen a long time ago. To interpret PISA correctly for the Polish developer you might hire tomorrow, you have to look at the right year of testing. A senior engineer who is 30 today was fifteen in 2012. That's the peak year.

That cohort outscored Germany, Belgium, France, the UK and the US in every subject. Only the Netherlands edged it, in maths, by five points. In science, nobody on this list came close.

A junior who is 24 sat PISA 2018: 516 in maths, 512 in reading, 511 in science. Ahead of the US, the UK, Germany, Belgium and France in all three again. The Dutch were three points ahead in maths.

And a 36-year-old tech lead sat PISA 2006, when Poland had just overtaken the OECD average in reading and was level with it in maths and science. Every cohort you can hire today came through Polish schools during the years they were climbing or at the top.

Why it matters?

Poland's school system peaked while the people now in the workforce were passing through it. An argument I have been making in sales calls for years, having the tables at hand helps.

If you've been thinking of Polish engineers as a cost decision, the data says you've been getting a quality decision at a discount. Senior rates in Kraków still run 30 to 40 percent below Western European and US levels. That gap is about cost of living, not talent.

Today's fifteen-year-olds aren't the class of 2012, claiming otherwise wouldn’t be correct. But they're above average, ahead of most of Western Europe, and the slide stopped. For anyone planning a nearshore team for the 2030s, Poland is still one of the safer bets on the continent.

The OECD country notes are public if you want the data for your own market. If you'd rather talk about the actual people, you know where to find us.