Aldar Education has announced exceptional results from its owned schools in The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025, achieving scores comparable with some of the world’s highest-performing education systems while recording significant gains across all three core subjects compared with 2022.
Regarded globally as one of the world’s most widely recognised benchmarks of education system performance., PISA assesses how well 15-year-old students apply their knowledge and skills in Reading, Mathematics and Science to unfamiliar, real-world contexts. The assessment takes place every three years.
Aldar Education’s participating owned schools achieved an average score of 507 in Reading, 532 in Science, and 517 in Mathematics. Placed against the official PISA 2025 country results, these averages would rank 4th, 6th and 8th in the world respectively. Compared with PISA 2022, the results gain of 28.2 points in Reading, 33.4 points in Science and 26.4 points in Mathematics.
The performance is particularly significant against a wider international backdrop of declining results. The UAE was one of only eight of the 91 participating countries and economies to improve across all three core domains, while Aldar Education’s gains exceeded the national improvement recorded in Science, Mathematics and Reading.
H.E. Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of Aldar and Chairman of Aldar Education said: “The UAE has set an ambitious vision for education as a cornerstone of its long-term economic prosperity and global competitiveness. Realising that vision requires us to look beyond traditional measures of academic success and build an education system that develops the knowledge, capabilities and confidence of future generations to lead in an increasingly complex world.
These results reflect what can be achieved when long-term national ambition is matched by sustained investment in people and educational excellence. Education plays a central role in Abu Dhabi’s continued development, equipping future generations with the knowledge, confidence and skills to contribute to a dynamic economy and society. At Aldar Education, we are committed to raising standards, advancing innovation, and strengthening Abu Dhabi’s position as a global leader in education while preparing young people to shape the future with purpose and ambition.”
Sahar Cooper, Chief Executive Officer of Aldar Education, said: “We are immensely proud to see our students performing at levels comparable with some of the world’s strongest education systems. At Aldar Education, we consistently benchmark our schools against international standards, and these outcomes are a powerful validation of the trust families place in us to deliver high-quality, future-ready learning. As the UAE raises its education ambitions, we will continue to raise ours, scaling quality, grounding innovation in strong pedagogy and preparing every student to thrive.”
Aldar Education’s results also significantly exceeded local benchmarks. Its owned schools scored 47 points above the Abu Dhabi private-school average in Science, 44 points higher in Mathematics and 57 points higher in Reading. Against Dubai private-school averages, which themselves rank within the global Top 10 in all three core subjects, Aldar Education scored 10 points higher in Science and 6 points higher in both Mathematics and Reading. Bateen World Academy achieved an average Reading score of 555, the highest globally and exceeding the national average of 535 in PISA 2025. Cranleigh Abu Dhabi, Yasmina British Academy and Al Ain British Academy also achieved scores comparable to the national averages of the world’s Top 5 performing education systems.
The results demonstrate substantial improvement across individual schools. Yas American Academy recorded the strongest gains across the group, improving by 78 points in Science, 69 points in Mathematics and 84 points in Reading compared with PISA 2022. Yasmina British Academy also recorded significant progress, with gains of 20 points in Science, 39 points in Mathematics and 62 points in Reading, while also scoring at Top 5 levels.
In Computational Problem Solving, assessed for the first time in PISA 2025, Aldar Education’s owned schools achieved an average score of 528, equivalent to 11th in the world and just 3.2 points short of the 531 needed to enter the global Top 10. The group performed 39 points above the Abu Dhabi private-school average.
School-level results are derived from ADEK’s PISA 2025 reports using official OECD data. Aldar Education network averages are calculated using student-weighted scores across assessed domains. Global comparisons are benchmarked against published PISA 2025 country and economy averages, with ‘Top 5’ and ‘Top 10’ designations indicating comparative international performance.
