Education is not one size fits all, so it’s hard to make any concrete claims about which education system is truly the best. A large part of why we think some countries have better education systems than others comes down to our perceptions of those countries and how well their students perform on international tests. These assessments can say a lot about how much we value certain skills or knowledge, but they aren’t necessarily great at capturing what makes an education system actually work—things like teacher training and class size, for example. Additionally, more and more studies are showing that measuring learning outcomes by test scores is actually harmful to educational achievement.
Are school systems around the world converging?
It’s tempting to believe that we’re witnessing something of an educational arms race as every nation looks to improve its performance. But you don’t have to look hard to find examples where some countries seem stuck. Worse, it can be difficult to see how national education systems are changing relative to one another over time. Are nations converging or diverging? I decided to take a look at how these school systems are moving relative to one another by calculating how far they’ve come along based on our estimates of student achievement relative to all other countries.
A look at PISA results
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international study that tests 15-year-old students on their reading, mathematics and science skills. Each country has its own PISA body which oversees testing at home. The purpose of such tests is to find out how well students will fare in today’s global economy where success depends on highly developed math and analytical skills. So which countries are considered to have the best educational systems? Well, each year since 2000, Finland has led all other countries with one of its neighbors Sweden coming a close second every time. How did these two countries manage to get it right? What can others learn from them and why are they consistently topping international rankings as having some of the best schools in the world?
Other indicators point towards convergence too
high-school attendance has climbed, as has literacy and school life expectancy. Schools are more diverse too: More than 40% of all pupils in OECD countries are either an immigrant or have at least one immigrant parent.
Progress may be slower than we think though
There’s no doubt that American students perform abysmally compared to students in other countries. According to an analysis of test scores from countries participating in PISA, not one U.S. state ranks among those with above-average scores across all three subjects (math, reading and science). All but four states rank below average in math and reading and 39 states rank below average for science. Not only that, but US students also showed minimal improvement between 2003 and 2012 on PISA scores while many other nations made gains at significantly faster rates. What exactly are we doing wrong?
Conclusion – What next?
From our data, it’s clear that, while some aspects of global education are improving, others are getting worse. While it’s tempting to ask if we really have the best education system in the world, we may want to take another look at how our quality of life is tied to such things as mental health and social well-being. Would moving away from an over-reliance on academic success be good for our long-term future as a species? Given what we know about these correlations, it seems like a good idea. We hope you find these statistics informative and that they help improve your understanding of global issues! Good luck with your own writing efforts. – The Write Your Essay Team