Australian students are reportedly among the worst-behaved in the world, with a new global report highlighting high levels of bullying, noise, and classroom disruption. Additionally, public school students are more than two years behind their private independent counterparts.
Conducted every three years since 2000, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assesses 15-year-old students' ability to apply their science, reading, and mathematics knowledge and skills to solve real-life problems. Over 7,60,000 students took the assessment in 2025, representing about 33 million 15-year-olds in the schools of the 91 participating countries and economies.
The survey highlighted that in Australia, 23 per cent of students reported being victims of at least one form of bullying a few times per month or more in 2025. The prevalence of bullying increased between PISA 2022 and PISA 2025, as it did in a large majority of participating countries and economies, the report stated.
The Guardian reported that the latest study found Australia's year 9 students were continuing a long-term national decline in performance, particularly in mathematics and reading, despite maintaining above-average than Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) results. It also pointed to continuing gender divides in performance.
Noise and disorder in the classroom was reported by 41 per cent Australian students as occurring often, compared with the global average of 31 per cent, and 39 per cent said their peers got distracted by using digital resources compared with the OECD average of 28%.
Digital devices such as laptops and iPads were the main culprits contributing to disruptive classrooms, with 77 per cent of Australian students reporting the technology as distracting. This is 16 percentage points higher than the OECD average.
Around 39 per cent of students reported that their peers are often distracted by the use of digital devices during most or all science lessons.
One in two Australian students reported skipping at least one class or a day of school in the two weeks before taking the survey - a trend that researchers said could hinder students' academic success.
An Australian website, news.com.au, reported that Australian classrooms are more disruptive than those in Canada, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Despite the behaviour concerns, Aussie students ranked 11th in science and 17th in maths among 91 countries surveyed.