Huw Lewis says he is “thoroughly convinced” Wales will improve its place in education world rankings and warned that failure to do so could limit the prospects of future generations.
Mr Lewis said he was confident that measures taken to redress Wales’ slide in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tables would pay off, when results are published in December.
Conducted every three years, the exam tests the knowledge and core skills of 15-year-olds.
It uses a representative sample of students from more than 65 countries to gauge how different education systems are performing against one another.
Welsh teenagers were ranked well below those in the rest of the UK the last time country-wide results were published in 2013. In reading it was ranked in 41st place in the world and its maths ranking was even worse at 43rd place out of 65 countries.
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