Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said the Nueva Escuela Mexicana raised the country's science score on the PISA test, according to La Jornada. She announced the result on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, and used the occasion to question whether PISA should be treated as the measure of educational quality.
Sheinbaum's remarks were reported by La Jornada under a headline stating that the Nueva Escuela Mexicana elevated the science grade on PISA. El Comentario also carried her comments, reporting that she questioned PISA's role in defining education quality while highlighting the science improvement.
The results have drawn responses from other parts of Mexico's education sector. The rector of the Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco proposed strengthening critical thinking and reading comprehension in light of the PISA outcomes, according to the university. Reforma reported that the SEP, the federal education ministry, attributed weak reading comprehension to screen use. MILENIO published a piece arguing the PISA results should be problematized.
The coverage points to a debate that goes beyond a single subject score: how much weight Mexico should give PISA, and which factors explain the results in science and reading. Sheinbaum's position, as reported, is that the test is not the sole definition of quality, even as she points to science as an area of progress under the Nueva Escuela Mexicana.
What to watch next is whether the SEP releases a fuller breakdown of the PISA results and how it responds to the reading comprehension findings.
