Ahead of the World Education Forum next week in South Korea, a global school rankings report has been released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). These rankings are the biggest ever undertaken and a single ranking scale has been put together based on a combination of international tests completed by students in the different countries.
When it comes to Maths and Science, Australia ranks 14th in the world, behind counties such as Vietnam, Canada, Estonia and Japan while ahead of New Zealand (17th), United Kingdom (20th) and the United States of America (28th). All of the top five places were all filled by Asian countries: Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan – an interesting result when you consider Singapore had very high levels of illiteracy back in the 1960’s – which just goes to show how a dramatic increase can be made.
The five lowest ranked countries included Oman, Morocco, Hounduras, South Africa and in last position- Ghana.
The OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher has said “this is the first time we have a truly global scale of the quality of education….. the idea is to give more countries, rich and poor, access to comparing themselves against the world’s education leaders, to discover their relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see what the long-term economic gains from improved quality in schooling could be for them.”
Surprisingly, this study has shown in the UK around one in five children leave school without reaching a basic level of education, a result which if turned around would have a positive effect on not only the social and emotional health of UK residents, but also the economy.
The authors of this report – Eric Hanushek from Stanford University and Ludger Woessmann from Munich University, have stated that the standard of education is a “powerful predictor of the wealth that countries will produce in the long run” and “poor education policies and practices leave many countries in what amounts to a permanent state of economic recession.”
Does Australia’s ranking surprise you?
