The OECD's newest analysis highlights this: teenagers reporting that they rarely, if ever, rely on AI to draft writing earned an average science score of 509, compared with 481 among those doing so daily or nearly daily. When controlling for socio-economic status, the 28-point gap amounts to about 18 months of instruction. Similar gaps show up when students use AI to do early research on new topics or to summarize assigned reading.
These results stem from the Program for International Student Assessment, which evaluates 15-year-olds in science, math, and reading and draws intense attention from policymakers. Released Tuesday, the latest results rely on a representative sample that includes more than 760,000 students from 91 countries. With the prior round conducted in 2022, this is the first snapshot since generative AI went mainstream.
AI is already woven into most students' schoolwork: just 14% report that they scarcely or never use it. There is big variation by country, though, with that figure close to 40% in Japan and just 4% in Vietnam. Using AI almost daily is still "relatively uncommon," showing up in less than 20% of students.
The report also notes that 20 points on PISA's scale is roughly equal to one year of schooling. Another notable pattern: for students using AI every day, science scores are higher by 13 points - equivalent to over half a year of instruction - when classes consistently ask them to critique AI-produced content.
Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's Director for Education and Skills, put it bluntly: "In the same way that we do not become fit by watching sports but by doing sports, learning does not occur through the consumption of content, but as a productive cognitive struggle of the mind with new material." His advice for classrooms: treat AI as support, not a substitute. "Where technology enables or enhances that cognitive struggle, students will advance. Where technology short-circuits the productive struggle of learning, it will undercut students' development."
That framing matches a key nuance in the data. Students tapping AI roughly weekly - around once or twice per week - generally beat both lighter users and heavy daily users. Among students who say they use AI "to help me learn," weekly users scored better than all other groups, including those who never use it.
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In the past week, New York City - the nation's biggest school district - barred the use of AI for elementary and middle school students for the upcoming year. In the UK, the head of the qualifications regulator warned about AI-driven cheating in assessments, especially coursework. An MIT report last month concluded the university will have to rethink how it teaches, assesses, and supports students, given that AI can now accomplish most undergraduate work.
Researchers are still sorting out the impact. A June study of 27,000 Chinese students found AI use reduced homework time and boosted scores, yet exam performance deteriorated. All of this sits inside a broader classroom tech debate, including a push in several countries to ban phones in schools, and worries about "cognitive offloading," where tough tasks get outsourced to software instead of students' brains.
Better learning generally leads to stronger skills, higher productivity and, eventually, higher earnings. If AI in school mostly replaces thinking instead of sharpening it, that could ripple into future paychecks and the talent companies are able to hire. The flip side is encouraging: when students are pushed to critique AI outputs and use the tools thoughtfully, scores improve. The long run returns depend on which of those paths schools take from here.
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