Study skills statistics provide a useful picture of how students approach learning. PISA 2022 data from 15-year-olds across OECD countries cover homework, self-monitoring, questions, prior knowledge, group discussion, and perspective-taking. PISA 2025 adds evidence about digital learning environments, while the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) summarizes intervention research on metacognition and self-regulation. These figures describe reported behaviors, distributions, or associations; they do not show that one study habit automatically causes a particular result.
Contents
- Homework time and performance
- Metacognition and checking work
- Questions and help-seeking
- Connecting new learning to prior knowledge
- Discussion and critical thinking
- Digital study environments
Homework time and performance
In PISA 2022, 15-year-old students across OECD countries reported spending an average of 1.5 hours per day on homework during a typical school week. The distribution was uneven: 27% reported up to 30 minutes per day, 19% reported between 30 minutes and 1 hour, 23% reported between 1 and 2 hours, and 31% reported more than 2 hours. These are OECD averages based primarily on student self-reports.
The same PISA results show substantial differences among participating countries and economies. Students in 54 countries and economies reported spending up to 2 hours per day on homework on average. Average homework time exceeded 2.5 hours per day in Colombia, Guatemala, Morocco, Panama, and Peru, while it was below 1 hour per day in Czechia, Finland, and Switzerland. The country comparisons should be read as descriptions of the PISA 2022 participating systems, not as a universal ranking of study habits.
The relationship with mathematics performance was not simply “more homework is always better.” After socioeconomic adjustment, students who reported 30 minutes to 1 hour of homework per day scored 16 mathematics points higher on average than students reporting less than 30 minutes. Students reporting 1 to 2 hours scored 2 points higher on average than the 30-minutes-to-1-hour group. The comparison is an association in PISA 2022, not a causal estimate.
| Reported homework time | Share of OECD students | Mathematics comparison reported by PISA |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 30 minutes daily | 27% | Reference group in the cited comparison |
| 30 minutes to 1 hour | 19% | 16 points higher than the reference group, after socioeconomic adjustment |
| 1 to 2 hours | 23% | 2 points higher than the 30-minutes-to-1-hour group, after adjustment |
| More than 2 hours | 31% | No supplied adjusted comparison with the other groups |
Source: Investments in a solid foundation for learning and well-being: PISA 2022 Results (Volume II) (2022).
Metacognition and checking work
Metacognition means paying attention to how learning is happening: planning a task, monitoring understanding, and evaluating the result. The EEF’s Metacognition and self-regulation evidence review identified 355 studies. In its 2025–2026 Teaching and Learning Toolkit edition, the EEF estimates that metacognition and self-regulation approaches produce an average of 8 additional months of progress over a year.
That estimate is an evidence-review estimate for school interventions, not a survey result about individual students. The EEF also notes implementation and study-quality limitations, so the figure should be understood as an average impact estimate rather than a guaranteed outcome for every classroom or learner.
PISA 2022 provides related information about students’ reported checking habits. Across OECD countries, 64% agreed or strongly agreed that they like to make sure there are no mistakes in their schoolwork. About two-thirds described themselves as meticulous about schoolwork. The share was about 54% among low-performing mathematics students and 71% among skilled mathematics performers.
Careful checking was less common than general concern about mistakes. Forty-four percent of students across OECD countries reported carefully checking homework before submitting it. The corresponding figures were 46% for skilled mathematics performers and 42% for low-performing mathematics students. Students who checked homework before handing it in had a 4-point average mathematics advantage after socioeconomic adjustment, although the association was not significant everywhere. This is a reported association, not proof that checking alone produced the score difference.
Source: Learning strategies: Student approaches to learning: PISA 2022 Results (Volume V) (2022). For the intervention estimate, see Metacognition and self-regulation (2025–2026 toolkit edition).
Questions and help-seeking
Asking a question when a concept is unclear is another measurable study behavior. In PISA 2022, 47% of students across OECD countries reported frequently asking questions when they did not understand mathematics material. The figure was 52% among skilled mathematics performers, compared with fewer than 40% among low-performing mathematics students.
The variation was also socioeconomic. Fifty-two percent of socioeconomically advantaged students reported frequently asking mathematics questions, compared with 40% of disadvantaged students. Among low-performing students, fewer than 30% reported frequently asking questions in Czechia, Hong Kong (China), Korea, Macao (China), Poland, Chinese Taipei, and Thailand.
These results point to a practical distinction between having access to help and using it. The PISA measures capture whether students reported asking questions; they do not establish why some students ask less often. Confidence, classroom norms, the perceived difficulty of the material, and other factors may matter, but no additional explanation should be inferred from these figures alone.
PISA 2025 offers a broader school-support measure: around 60% of students across OECD countries participated in at least one type of additional school science instruction. This result concerns the PISA 2025 participating systems and additional science instruction, rather than every form of tutoring or help-seeking.
Source: Learning strategies: Student approaches to learning: PISA 2022 Results (Volume V) (2022), and Student school life and beyond: PISA 2025 Results (Volume I) (2025).
Connecting new learning to prior knowledge
Study skills often involve making a new idea meaningful by linking it to something already learned. In PISA 2022, 46% of students across OECD countries reported trying to relate new mathematics material to what they had learned previously more than half of the time. A similar 46% reported often starting mathematics assignments right away.
The prior-knowledge behavior differed by performance group. About half of skilled mathematics performers reported frequently connecting new and previously learned material, while less than 40% of low-performing mathematics students reported doing so frequently. PISA does not establish whether making these connections caused stronger performance; it records a pattern associated with mathematics results.
Group discussion was reported less often. Thirty-three percent of students said they frequently participated in mathematics group discussions when given the opportunity. The rate was 38% among skilled mathematics performers and 26% among low-performing mathematics students.
Taken together, the supplied PISA indicators show several behaviors that can be monitored during study: begin an assignment, recall a related idea, explain the connection, and use discussion when an opportunity is available. The statistics quantify how often students reported these behaviors; they do not prescribe a single best study schedule.
Source: Learning strategies: Student approaches to learning: PISA 2022 Results (Volume V) (2022).
Discussion and critical thinking
PISA 2022 also measured perspective-taking. Across OECD countries, 59% of students agreed that they try to consider everybody’s perspective before taking a position, and 57% agreed that they can view almost all things from different angles. At the same time, 54% did not disagree with the statement that there is only one correct position in a disagreement.
Performance-group differences were visible. More than 60% of skilled mathematics performers reported considering everybody’s perspective before taking a position, compared with about half of low-performing mathematics students. Fifty-seven percent of skilled performers disagreed that there is only one correct position in a disagreement, compared with 31% of low-performing mathematics students.
The two attitudes did not always appear together. Among low-performing students who considered everybody’s perspective, 67% still believed there was only one correct position in a disagreement. Among skilled performers who considered everybody’s perspective, 38% still held that view. Only 27% of top mathematics performers both considered everybody’s perspective and still believed there was only one correct position in a disagreement.
These figures suggest why critical-thinking practice involves more than hearing several viewpoints. A student may report considering perspectives while still treating a disagreement as having one correct position. The data describe these combinations; they do not measure the quality of any student’s reasoning in a particular assignment.
Source: Learning strategies: Student approaches to learning: PISA 2022 Results (Volume V) (2022).
Digital study environments
PISA 2025 reported that students across OECD countries used digital devices for academic and leisure purposes for about 6 hours per weekday on average and about 5 hours per weekend day. Leisure use accounted for about 3.4 hours per day on both weekdays and weekends. Students reported close to 3 hours per weekday using digital devices for learning, including before and after school.
At school, students reported an average of 1.7 hours per day using digital devices for learning and 1.1 hours for leisure. School-based digital learning-device use ranged from 0.9 hours per day in Guatemala to 3.2 hours in Denmark, Iceland, and Rwanda. These are PISA 2025 results, not universal 2026 measurements.
Digital access can coexist with distraction. Twenty-eight percent of students across OECD countries reported that peers were distracted by digital devices during most or every science lesson. The share was 31% in disadvantaged schools and 26% in advantaged schools.
Some reported patterns changed between PISA 2022 and 2025. The share of students spending more than 2 hours per day on digital leisure activities outside school fell by 6 percentage points across OECD countries. The share spending more than 7 hours per day on weekend digital leisure fell by 3.6 percentage points. Nearly half of students attended schools where cell-phone use was not allowed on school premises, up from 34% in 2022. In addition, 71% attended schools with formal subject-specific guidelines for pedagogical digital-device use, up 4 percentage points from 2022.
The school context matters when interpreting digital study statistics. In PISA 2025, students reported both learning use and leisure use, and the report also measured peer distraction and school rules. The figures therefore describe a mixed learning environment rather than treating all screen time as either beneficial study or harmful distraction.
Source: Student school life and beyond: PISA 2025 Results (Volume I) (2025).