Why the UCP Will Keep Talking About Alberta’s Test Scores

September is usually when arguments about education become a reality.

Students return to classrooms and debates about teacher compensation, class sizes and complexity, and school capacity move from political talking points to everyday experience. In Alberta, those concerns are particularly acute after several years of rapid population growth and a turbulent period in labour relations.

That makes the timing of Alberta’s latest international test results politically valuable for the United Conservative government.

Results from the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA, show Alberta’s 15-year-olds continuing to perform near the top of Canada and well above international averages. Alberta recorded the highest provincial average scores in science and reading and the second-highest in mathematics, behind Quebec.

For Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, the message was straightforward: “These outstanding results show Alberta students continue to excel on the world stage.”

Expect to hear that sentence, or some variation of it, repeatedly over the next year.

Results Worth Celebrating

The numbers give the government plenty to work with.

Alberta students averaged 520 points in science, compared with an OECD average of 482. The result was the highest provincial average and statistically comparable with several leading international systems, including Estonia and Korea. In reading, Alberta scored 499 against an OECD average of 461. In mathematics, Alberta recorded 489, behind Quebec’s 500 but above the OECD average of 463.

In science, 85 per cent of Alberta students reached at least Level 2, which PISA treats as the baseline proficiency needed to participate meaningfully in modern society. Alberta and Quebec had the lowest share of students below that benchmark, at 15 per cent. At the other end of the scale, 14 per cent of Alberta students reached the two highest science proficiency levels.

Reading tells a similar story. Seventy-nine per cent of Alberta students reached the baseline level, tied with Ontario for the highest proportion nationally, while 12 per cent were classified as high achievers.

They are primarily a credit to Alberta students, teachers, families and school communities, as Nicolaides himself acknowledged. Nor can a test written in 2025 reasonably be attributed to a single government policy or budget. Fifteen-year-olds taking PISA have spent their entire academic lives moving through an education system shaped by a pandemic, different governments, curricula, teachers and local decisions.

Still, governments are judged on outcomes, and these are outcomes the UCP will understandably want Albertans to notice.

The Political Context Matters

There is a second reason the government will promote these results so aggressively. Education has become one of the UCP’s more politically vulnerable files.

The NDP opened the school year by accusing the government of presiding over an “education crisis,” arguing that nearly one million students were returning to “overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers and schools struggling to provide the supports they need.”

Alberta has added more than 80,000 students over a three-year period, placing significant pressure on rapidly growing school systems. The government’s own classroom data put the provincial average class size at approximately 25 students, and last year’s teacher strike made class size and classroom complexity central political issues.

School capacity is equally visible. New subdivisions in Calgary, Edmonton, and surrounding communities have grown faster than permanent schools can always be constructed. For parents watching children bused outside their neighbourhood or attend crowded facilities, an announcement about future capital projects does not necessarily solve today’s frustration.

The government knows that.

Budget 2026 included $722 million in additional education funding, with $355 million this year and $1.4 billion over three years directed toward hiring 3,000 teachers and 1,500 educational assistants. The province has also created a Class Size Reduction Grant, while its Schools Now program has 156 schools being built, modernized or replaced.

The PISA results therefore arrive as a useful counterweight.

They do not prove that classrooms are not crowded. They do not create train new teachers or build new schools. What they do is complicate the NDP’s attempt to characterize Alberta education as a system in decline.

There is a substantial political difference between saying, “Alberta has a failing education system,” and saying, “Alberta has one of the highest-performing education systems in the world, but it is under growing capacity pressure.”

From “Crisis” to “Pressure”

That distinction will likely become central to UCP education messaging.

The government does not need to convince parents that every classroom is operating perfectly. Attempting to do so would be politically foolish. Alberta families experiencing crowded schools and teachers managing complex classrooms will not be persuaded that their concerns are solved because of an international assessment.

Instead, the UCP can acknowledge the pressures while challenging the conclusion that the system itself is failing.

The message practically writes itself: Alberta is growing quickly. That growth has produced real pressures. Government is hiring teachers and building schools to respond. And despite those challenges, Alberta students continue to outperform most of the country and much of the developed world.

PISA gives the government something especially valuable in politics: an external benchmark.

It is much easier for an opposition party to dismiss a government news release about its own performance than an international assessment conducted through the OECD. PISA is designed to measure whether 15-year-olds can apply knowledge in science, reading and mathematics to real-world problems, rather than simply reproduce material from a particular provincial curriculum.

That makes the results harder to wave away as partisan self-congratulation.

Foundations and Early Intervention

The UCP is also attempting to connect strong outcomes with its broader emphasis on foundational learning.

Beginning this school year, reading and mathematics screening is being expanded through Grade 5. Students identified as needing additional help will receive intervention supports and be screened again to measure progress. Parents will receive the results, giving families a clearer indication of where their children are succeeding and where additional support may be required.

The government is investing $20 million in screening and related supports this year, an increase of more than 60 per cent from 2025-26. Early year-over-year reporting cited by the province suggests between 30 and 41 per cent of students previously identified as requiring additional support were no longer flagged when assessed again a year later.

Politically, the approach fits neatly alongside PISA.

The international results allow Nicolaides to argue that Alberta already possesses a strong education system. Expanded screening allows him to argue that government is not becoming complacent about that success.

It also provides an answer when critics point to students who are struggling. Rather than relying solely on provincial averages, the government can say it is attempting to identify problems earlier, disclose results to parents and require intervention before gaps become more difficult to close.

That is likely to remain an important part of the government’s education pitch heading toward 2027.

Expect to Hear About PISA Again

For the UCP, the timing could hardly be better.

Parents are paying more attention to education because school has just resumed. The Opposition is making overcrowding, staffing and infrastructure central attacks. The government is simultaneously rolling out more teachers, additional school construction, class-size funding and expanded literacy and numeracy supports.

Into that debate comes an international report saying Alberta students are among Canada’s strongest performers.

The UCP will use it.

Expect PISA to appear in Question Period, budget speeches, town halls, campaign literature and responses to NDP criticism throughout the coming year. When confronted with claims that Alberta education is in crisis, government MLAs now have a concise answer: whatever pressures exist, Alberta students remain among the best-performing students in Canada and the world.

That argument will not make overcrowded classrooms disappear.

But politically, it gives the government a much stronger place from which to discuss how to fix them.