The biggest ever global school rankings
have been published, with Asian countries
in the top five places and African countries
at the bottom.
.
Singapore heads the table, followed by Hong
Kong, with Ghana at the bottom.
The UK is in 20th place, among higher
achieving European countries, with the US in
28th.
The OECD economic think tank says the
comparisons - based on test scores in 76
countries - show the link between education
and economic growth.
"This is the first time we have a truly global
scale of the quality of education," said the
OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher.
"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," he said.
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The top performer, Singapore, had high levels
of illiteracy into the 1960s, said Mr Schleicher,
showing how much progress could be made.
In the UK, the study shows about one in five
youngsters leave school without reaching a
basic level of education - and the OECD says
that reducing this number and improving skills
could add trillions of dollars to the UK
economy.
"I think it's partly a mindset, an expectation.
There are plenty of examples of schools that
have raised the bar dramatically," said
education minister Lord Nash.
But a leading UK head teacher, Sir Anthony
Seldon, criticised such league tables as
"arguably doing more harm than good".
"They are skewing schools and national
education systems away from real learning
towards repetitive rote learning," said Sir
Anthony, head of Wellington College in
Berkshire.
The analysis, based on test scores in maths and
science, is a much wider global map of
education standards than the OECD's Pisa tests,
which focus on more affluent industrialised
countries.Countries ranked on maths and science
1. Singapore
2. Hong Kong
3. South Korea
4. Japan (joint)
4. Taiwan (joint)
6. Finland
7. Estonia
8. Switzerland
9. Netherlands
10. Canada
11. Poland
12. Vietnam
13. Germany
14. Australia
15. Ireland
16. Belgium
17. New Zealand
18. Slovenia
19. Austria
20. United Kingdom
21. Czech Republic
22. Denmark
23. France
24. Latvia
25. Norway
26. Luxembourg
27. Spain
28. Italy (joint)
28. United States (joint)
30. Portugal
31. Lithuania
32. Hungary
33. Iceland
34. Russia
35. Sweden
36. Croatia
37. Slovak Republic
38. Ukraine
39. Israel
40. Greece
41. Turkey
42. Serbia
43. Bulgaria
44. Romania
45. UAE
46. Cyprus
47. Thailand
48. Chile
49. Kazakhstan
50. Armenia
51. Iran
52. Malaysia
53. Costa Rica
54. Mexico
55. Uruguay
56. Montenegro
57. Bahrain
58. Lebanon
59. Georgia
60. Brazil
61. Jordan
62. Argentina
63. Albania
64. Tunisia
65. Macedonia
66. Saudi Arabia
67. Colombia
68. Qatar
69. Indonesia
70. Botswana
71. Peru
72. Oman
73. Morocco
74. Honduras
75. South Africa
76. Ghana

www.bbc.com/news/business-32608772

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