One in Four 15-Year-Old Czechs Can't Understand a Simple Text

One in four fifteen-year-old students in Czechia is unable to understand even a short text of average difficulty. That's according to the international PISA study (Programme for International Student Assessment), which every three years tests teenagers' skills in mathematics, reading and science.

According to the latest results, reading literacy among Czech students has dropped by an average of 20 points since 2022 — the sharpest decline among all three categories tested. Czech students scored an average of 468 points, with girls averaging 484 and boys only 454.

One in Four Falls Short of the Basic Level

What's especially alarming is the growing share of teenagers who fail to reach the baseline level of reading literacy, set at 407 points. Four years ago, roughly 20% of students fell into this category — now that figure has climbed to 27%. Another similar share of students remain stuck at just the basic level, meaning they can only grasp the main idea of a text of moderate length at best.

"Students below the basic level are genuinely at risk of falling behind at school — both now and in the future," said Tomáš Zatloukal, the Czech Republic's chief school inspector. According to him, reading difficulties later spill over into everyday life and employment prospects, since reading literacy directly affects the ability to keep learning.

Teachers Forced to Slow Down

Michal Kaderka, a history and media education teacher at a secondary school and head of the Teachers' Platform, told the outlet that working through texts in class now takes considerably longer. "Students read noticeably more slowly — you need to allow 50, sometimes even 70 percent more time for texts than you did ten years ago. At the same time, teachers have to devote much more attention to feedback, because there are students who genuinely don't understand what they've read," he noted. He added that vocabulary has visibly shrunk as well, a consequence of children simply reading less overall.

Czech teenagers lost the most ground on tasks requiring careful reading of long texts and further work with them — such as retaining large amounts of information or comparing data from different sources. Zatloukal pointed out that the decline in reading skills has also affected science scores, since one of the science scales involves searching for and analyzing information to make decisions.

Analysts at the Czech School Inspectorate point to several causes behind the decline, including a drop in students' ability to concentrate. "Students' attention today is split between reading, watching videos, chatting and gaming. That inevitably affects the results," Michal Kaderka added.

Source: novinky.cz