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Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings.
From the BBC World Service,
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This is The Global Story.
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A good education can make us richer,
healthier and help us to thrive.
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And governments around the world
compete in global rankings
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to see which nation is deemed to have
the best school system in the world.
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Asian schools often get
the best results,
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with some Nordic countries
also highly praised.
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But in many parts of the world,
there are often huge barriers
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to getting children
into the classroom at all.
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It's cruel not to open schools
for girls.
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We have as much right to learn
as boys do.
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It would be cruel of the Taliban not
to allow us to return to our schools.
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So what does the best school system
in the world look like,
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and which country educates
its children the best?
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With me today in the Global Story
studio is Sean Coughlan,
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some of you will have heard Sean and
I talking already on The Global Story
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about the UK Royal Family as he's one
of our royal correspondents.
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But before that, Sean,
for many years you were one
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of our education correspondents
and you led BBC News coverage of
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what we're going to talk about today,
which is global education.
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So welcome.
Thank you. Good to see you again.
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Also joining us today is John Jerrim,
who is a professor at the University
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of College London's Institute
of Education.
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And John has dug deep
into the global data
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about different education systems
around the world
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and is here to reveal all.
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Hi, John. Hi.
Thanks a lot for inviting me.
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So we want to talk about what which
country has the best education system
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in the world, if we can say that.
But what evidence are there?
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What measures are there, Sean,
to judge that?
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Well, I suppose the
most commonly used measure would be
what's known as the Pisa tests.
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And these are tests taken by children
at the age of 15,
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in a number of countries around the
world, not all the countries, about 80
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in the last round and since the year
2000, results have been published,
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ranking education systems in terms
of their level of achievement
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and the tests are in key areas
of reading, maths and science.
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Um, when they
when they were introduced.
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First of all, that was a very
contentious idea because people said,
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how can you possibly compare
big countries?
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How how can you compare America
to Luxembourg or to, you know,
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or to parts of China or whatever?
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And people would say
they're very different systems,
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different cultures, um,
different levels of income.
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But the people who introduced
these tests weren't from education.
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They were from
an economics background.
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It was the OECD, the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development.
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And they approached education
the way they might look
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at GDP or look
at measuring inflation.
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And it was a very different way
of looking at it.
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And they got
people to take these tests,
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often against a great deal of local
resistance, and then compared them.
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And they have produced
for the last couple of decades,
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this huge amount of data that allows
people in one country to look
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at how they compare to others.
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And I suppose their big finding
often is that what we think of
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as being our
education system isn't inevitable.
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You can do well or you can do badly.
Some people do better
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at different things.
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Girls and boys might do differently,
different groups.
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And I think this has just cast
a big light by not letting
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education systems just look internally,
but also to look at other comparisons.
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So, John, which countries do do well
in these Pisa tests?
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So the ones that perform consistently
well over time and
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across those different studies are
the East Asian countries.
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So typical examples include, uh,
South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong.
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They always consistently do well.
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There's some
that do particularly well in Pisa,
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on top of that. Finland was, you
know, a hot topic for a long time,
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although its performance
has declined recently.
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Um, Estonia is a country
that does very well now in Pisa
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and Canada to some extent also.
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And the countries
that don't do so well, Sean?
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Well, they tend to be countries
which I suppose
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our poorer countries,
um, you find in,
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in terms of countries
that participate maybe
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in parts of South America,
Central America,
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some of the Arab world too. Countries
in sub-Saharan Africa don't take part.
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And quite a lot of Asian countries
don't take part either.
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So it's a partial test.
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But perhaps what's interesting
about doing badly is that often
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big European countries France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, and to an extent,
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the education systems within
the UK aren't that brilliant, really.
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and as John suggested, the
interesting bit is they have a lot
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of history, a lot of money,
a lot of development behind them.
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But they're being outpaced
and outperformed by
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these fast
upcoming countries, you know,
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Singapore or Estonia or, um,
Taiwan or those sort of places which,
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which we don't historically think of
as being economic rivals.
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But I suppose the argument
for the Pisa tests is if you want
to have a knowledge economy,
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an economy based on skills,
this is how you measure it.
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And those other countries
are outpacing us at the moment.
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So I think
that's the interesting comparison.
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That raises the issue, though,
and I've done interviews around Pisa
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and these tests for years about what
a good education actually is, John,
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because there'll be those that say that,
you know, how do you measure that?
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How do you actually define
what a good education is?
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When you think about some
of these East Asian countries
and what the students go through,
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how hard they have to work,
how stressed they are.
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Is that really part of a good,
well rounded, holistic education?
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Yeah.
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So as Sean was saying, they've
really focused on the academic side
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in their kind of history, maths,
reading and science.
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But you're right, kind of a good
education is a much broader thing.
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And we as parents or whatever kind
of want a lot more for our children
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than just to be good at those
academic kind of side of things.
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And in fairness, the OECD in recent
years have tried to move the dial
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a little bit and measure more
of these kind of softer skills.
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So in the latest round of Pisa, they
tried to introduce a creativity test.
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Um, how well that worked or not,
uh, I think is open to debate,
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but they are kind of live
to that issue.
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And as part of Pisa,
they do kind of conduct
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this big questionnaire
exercise as well,
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where they capture things like kids'
wellbeing and how confident they are.
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So that does become part of it.
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But it doesn't often kind of,
um, become the headline.
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Sean, some countries take these Pisa
rankings incredibly seriously. Why?
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And how do they think that a better
education system is going to affect
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even the economic outcomes of the
country that, you know, they're running?
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Well, I suppose there are two ends of
that scale, the countries
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who might think they're doing well
and then get a bit of a shock.
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I mean, in Germany, people talk about Pisa
shock in Germany, because they thought
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they were very good, but there
was also an element of complacency,
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and they got the Pisa results
first time around
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and realised that in fact,
they were pretty awful.
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And that turned
into quite a political scandal.
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'Our scores aren't as good
as we thought they were,
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what are we going to do with ourselves?'
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The other end of the spectrum,
there are countries who see education
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as their way out, as some individuals
always have in their lives.
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John mentioned Singapore
in the 1960s.
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Singapore would have been one of
the poorest countries in the world,
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it would have been a country
with very low levels of literacy,
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and it deliberately invested
in education to make
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itself a high skills,
high income country.
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Our main responsibility is to nurture
the students in such a way that
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they will be ready for the future to
become productive citizens of tomorrow.
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And we all know that, uh, the future
is going to become more complex,
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much more uncertain, much more
unpredictable, much more ambiguous.
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I suppose it's back to the idea
that economists might say,
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if you want to see the economy
of the future,
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look at the classrooms of today.
And it's a massive economic driver.
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And if you look at the sort of jobs
which now are in demand
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and the jobs which are well-paid, and
where economies want to place themselves
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in the economic food chain, education,
and education skills more broadly,
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are absolutely central to that,
and that's a long-term game.
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But countries which have chosen
to invest in education and skills,
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who consciously decided to make this a
priority, will see the economic reward.
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So let's look then at what works,
because we've looked
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at which countries are considered
to have successful education systems.
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But I think we all want to know why.
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Why? Sean, does Singapore have
something in common with Estonia?
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I mean, does it? These high achieving
countries, what do they have in common?
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Well, a long time ago, I remember
trying to do an identikit picture of
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what a successful Pisa country
would look like.
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Um, and there are
sort of philosophical questions about
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equality. Countries which make sure
that all their pupils get
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through a certain level of education
to a certain standard,
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regardless
of their background, do well.
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If you are teaching them
by different level or abilities,
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then you are segregating them.
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And and we don't want
to segregate any people in the world.
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Why are we doing that
in the schools?
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That's my personal opinion.
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This is one of the main things
why Estonia is successful.
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Shanghai used to be the model
that was talked about a great deal,
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because there was
an assumption there that
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no matter if children came
from a very deprived background,
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they would still get
to a certain level of education.
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And their education system was based
around that.
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Um, teachers were expected
to make sure their pupils got there.
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But I think there are
other cultural factors, possibly.
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It's interesting.
It was a very striking how many
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of the top Pisa performers are small
and fairly new nation states,
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younger states, ambitious,
wanting to define themselves.
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Often countries which live
near very big neighbours.
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Estonia is near Russia. You know,
Canada's near the USA.
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Singapore has lots of bigger
geographical neighbours around it too.
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Or Taiwan is near to China.
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The superstars at Pisa are often
small, quite cohesive countries
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who have set themselves a target
of getting better,
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often places
without any great natural resource.
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They don't have oil,
they don't have big populations.
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They have to focus
on something like this.
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And I think that is the characteristic
of a top Pisa star.
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John, what about the age
in which children start school?
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I remember sending my summer-born
little four-year-old off to school
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in his uniform
and thinking how tiny he was,
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and that if he was in Finland,
it would be
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another three years
before he started school.
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I also have a summer born four-year-old
who's just started school,
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so that's a very kind
of poignant question to me.
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Um, I don't think there's any good
international evidence
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on the best time
that children start school.
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I don't think that it's clear-cut that
it's better to start them earlier
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versus later, at least coming from the
international kind of assessment data.
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What I would say is, you know,
there is a bit of a blurred line
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between school
and earlier education as well.
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So there's often a fixation
on, you know,
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we start school at this age,
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but I know I sent my four-year-old
to nursery beforehand,
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and he was definitely doing some
education stuff in the year beforehand.
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In countries where children don't
formally start school until age seven,
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it's not that they're not doing
anything beforehand, right,
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a lot of them.
A lot of them will be kind of doing
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different types
of earlier types of education.
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It's taken us this long to get to one
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of the most important things
that happens in a classroom,
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and that is the actual teaching
and the teacher, John.
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How much
does teacher quality
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or the funding of teachers play a
role in these countries that do well?
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Yeah, well, we know from
the international evidence teacher
quality matters. It matters a lot.
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You know, if you are fortunate enough
to have a very good teacher,
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you can make kind of up to three
or four months extra learning gains
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over the course of an academic year,
compared to if you have one
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of the kind of, um, lowest quality
teachers or whatever in the class.
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So it is a big, big driving factor.
How much it explains
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international differences
you can't quite put a figure on.
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I have a feeling
that it's part of the mix that goes
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into why some of these countries
do better than worse,
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but it's probably not the
major component for a lot of them.
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So I think it plays some role,
but not kind of
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like the key ingredient by itself,
as it were.
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Sean, when we've been talking
about the Pisa rankings,
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you haven't actually mentioned the UK
and the US, I don't think.
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But some of our listeners in those
two countries that are listening
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will probably be surprised to see
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how far down the rankings the UK
and the US are. Why is that?
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Well, I think in the case of the
United States, the big issue there is
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the massive divide both
in wealth, in, uh,
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in geography and also, uh, fairness,
I suppose, equity.
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If America was taken...
America's overall result,
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the United States result, is
quite mediocre.
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But if you take some of the individual
states, like Massachusetts,
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had it entered on its own
as a separate country,
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would do incredibly well, be right
at the top.
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Some of the southern states,
I think I remember people talk
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about Mississippi before, and a few
other southern states, do really badly.
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They would be, uh,
not of the Western world
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if their results were put
with other countries.
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And so what you get up is an average
and you get into another question.
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And so the average is rather middling
is the overall result.
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You also get into that sort of bigger
question then about fairness overall
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because America has lots
of elite universities,
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has lots of elite schools too.
They might say their system works.
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The money, the funding,
everything goes into an elite system,
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but doesn't serve very many people
who are struggling in other schools.
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And I suppose that's the sort
of question that's highlighted by
the international comparison.
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The UN estimates that 224 million
children need educational support,
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and that includes more than 72 million
who can't attend school at all
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because of war or conflict
in their country.
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There are also other barriers too, such as
living a very long distance from school,
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what's happening with our climate,
and poverty.
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Sean, if we look at war,
it's obviously
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a massive factor that
can stop children attending school.
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And we can see this happening in Gaza at
the moment, in Sudan and Ukraine as well.
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Just take us
through what the impact is on a child
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if they can't get access
to education.
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Well, I always think this is a scandal,
that it's not even a bigger scandal
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because, as you're saying,
tens of millions
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of children never even get to go
to any kind of education.
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And it's not just
about learning to read and write.
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It's what happens beyond that point.
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You know, if you imagine trying
to navigate a modern world
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without basic literacy skills,
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trying to navigate a digital world
increasingly, no matter where you are,
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and that's kind of implications
for your own wealth,
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your own family's wealth,
um, also your health, your chances
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of being caught up in conflicts,
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being influenced by extremism and
all kinds of bad things, criminality,
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all those are linked
to a lack of education.
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And I think it's a pernicious thing
we've allowed. It's extraordinary.
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Here we are in 2024,
and there are still tens of millions
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of children who
don't even get to start education.
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And it's not just war,
it's corruption. It's bad management.
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It's teachers not being paid.
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Um, I remember going to schools in
Africa where there were empty classrooms
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and you'd say, well,
why isn't anyone going to school?
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Teachers weren't getting paid.
They got other jobs as taxi drivers.
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And and it was awful.
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And you think there still goes on
and it shouldn't be the case.
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It should be something that
we're reading about in history books.
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And also particularly
there's been a lot of work
00:15:40
on girls missing out on education has
an impact on their families as well.
00:15:45
Um, if children, if girls leave school
early to get married too young,
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perhaps, they condemn
their own families to poverty.
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You don't learn the skills you need.
You don't get the chances you need.
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It's the most extraordinary
unfairness.
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And it's odd that we're allowing
it to happen even now.
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I have to fetch water
from the trading centre
00:16:06
and bring it to the mining site
so that we can pan for gold.
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I want to go back to school.
00:16:13
And, Sean, I think
we should take a moment to address
what's happening in Afghanistan.
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There is still this massive global
education campaign to let girls learn.
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But when the Taliban took over, it's
become the only country in the world
00:16:25
that does not allow girls and women
to attend schools and universities.
00:16:29
So if you're over 12 and you're a girl
in Afghanistan, you can't go to school.
00:16:35
It's cruel not to open schools
for girls.
00:16:40
We have as much right to learn
as boys do.
00:16:43
It would be cruel of the Taliban not
to allow us to return to our schools.
00:16:48
John, we've been reflecting
on how difficult it is for girls
00:16:51
and young women in some countries
to access education.
00:16:54
They're even denied it
in Afghanistan.
00:16:56
And there's clear discrimination that
obviously takes place in some countries.
00:17:01
But in terms of OECD countries,
isn't it the case
00:17:04
that girls are outperforming boys?
00:17:08
That's certainly true
in some specific subjects.
00:17:10
So the clearest example is reading.
00:17:13
So there's the Pisa assessment
of 15-year-olds in reading.
00:17:16
And there's another assessment called
Pals which is ten-year-olds' reading.
00:17:20
And in both of those
you do very clearly see a gender gap
00:17:24
where girls always outperform boys.
00:17:26
It holds true across pretty much
every country in the world,
00:17:29
and it holds true over time.
And we have data from England
00:17:33
and the United States where children
take very early kind of literacy
00:17:36
and verbal tests, you know, age 3A5.
00:17:39
And you can see even very early on
in kind of, um, children's lives.
00:17:43
So it's very clear
in terms of reading,
00:17:45
in terms of other subjects,
it's a bit more nuanced.
00:17:48
So mathematics,
um, it's a lot more kind of even.
00:17:51
In some countries there's definitely
kind of still an advantage to boys.
00:17:55
So it does vary
across the different subjects.
00:17:59
And Sean, how much do you think an
education system can actually change?
00:18:02
Are other countries looking
at Singapore or Estonia
00:18:06
or some of these
high-performing countries and saying,
00:18:08
we need to be more like this
and then they can make it happen.
00:18:12
I think they can change.
00:18:13
I think you often get into that thing
about people say,
00:18:16
oh, so-and-so has got a great culture
of education, the country,
00:18:19
as if it were some sort
of act of God that
00:18:21
that some countries do well
and some other countries do badly.
00:18:24
But I think the interesting thing
about the Pisa tests
00:18:26
is they actually show
that things can change.
00:18:28
Things aren't inevitable.
Um, some countries can show
00:18:32
that children from very deprived
backgrounds can do very well.
00:18:35
And that raises the question, well, why
can't that happen elsewhere?
00:18:38
And John, what about the way
that kids are taught?
00:18:41
Is there a magic formula there
now that we know that works?
00:18:46
No, is the short answer there, putting
it bluntly. You know, teasing out,
00:18:51
I think, as Sean said very nicely,
the very specific factor
00:18:54
that's driving these country-level
differences is really, really tricky.
00:18:58
So people will often want to point
to a teaching method or a thing
00:19:03
or a policy and try to export it
from one country to another.
00:19:07
It doesn't really work like that,
and it's not that simple.
00:19:11
Anecdotally,
I live in a part of London
00:19:13
which the schools are considered
low decile,
00:19:16
so there's a lot of kids from
poorer backgrounds in those schools.
00:19:20
And the schools were underperforming
for years.
00:19:22
Then the government came in and spent a
lot of money in our borough on schools.
00:19:27
And it might not come as
any surprise, Sean, that it worked.
00:19:31
Standards went up. Is there just not
a fundamental here, that in order
00:19:35
for kids to get the best education,
quite a lot of money needs to be spent?
00:19:39
It does come down to money
and resourcing.
00:19:42
I think money is vital
as a starting point,
00:19:45
but it is also how you spend it and
there is a basic level of funding.
00:19:49
You need the right number of teachers,
you need the right equipment, you need
to be warm, you need to make sure
00:19:53
the children are well fed
and comfortable and able to learn.
00:19:55
And they're well supported
in that sense.
00:19:57
But then it's often that I suppose
you look to the evidence again.
00:20:01
I remember, for a while, class size was
the big thing.
00:20:05
Let's cut down class sizes. The
Pisa test suggests that that has,
00:20:09
beyond a certain point,
not that much of an impact, really,
00:20:11
because often some
of the most successful countries
00:20:14
in East Asia had huge classes,
didn't seem to trouble them,
00:20:17
and other factors
must have been going on.
00:20:20
So I think, yes, certainly,
you can't shirk responsibility
00:20:24
for funding schools
properly, allowing
00:20:27
people from all backgrounds to have
a fair chance and support them.
00:20:31
But I do think often what this raises
is how much this is a choice.
00:20:35
You can choose to spend on education
or choose not to.
00:20:37
You can choose by policy to ensure
that people from,
00:20:41
no matter where their starting point
is, get a fair chance to catch up.
00:20:45
They might not catch up
right all the way, but you can,
00:20:47
you can decide whether
00:20:49
or not you're going to have
an education system that is based
00:20:53
around getting as many people as
possible to do well. Or historically,
00:20:58
I think, one of the weaknesses of
the education system in England was
00:21:02
that there's a great resistance to
the idea that everyone could do well
00:21:06
if you had a test
in our culture in Britain that said,
00:21:09
here's a test and everyone's going
to pass it. People would think...
00:21:12
People would be outraged.
00:21:13
They'd say, this is a rubbishy test
because it's not, you know,
00:21:15
because we build our systems based on
a sort of filtering, sorting mechanism.
00:21:20
I know Shanghai was hailed
for a while as being a great example.
00:21:23
And there they had a policy
of expecting children,
00:21:27
regardless of their background,
regardless of the deprivation
00:21:30
of reaching a certain level
of education.
00:21:33
The sort of education system you
end up with isn't an act of nature.
00:21:37
There's a series of things. There may
be, it suits the people who run places.
00:21:41
It might be how they like it.
But I think they're not accidents.
00:21:44
They are products of how we run
our society and they can be changed.
00:21:49
John, thank you so much
for being with us.
00:21:51
No thank you. Enjoyed it.
Sean, lovely to have you here.
00:21:54
Pleasure. If you want more episodes
of The Global Story,
00:21:58
you can find us
wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:01
Each day we dive deep
into a single story,
00:22:03
bringing you
in-depth analysis of world events.
00:22:06
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00:22:09
Thanks so much for watching! Goodbye.
