The Best Education on Earth - Part I: The PISA Test

So what country has the best education? What country should we look to while examining the educational standards of our perspective countries?

The following table is the ranked results of a PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) survey. The surveys purpose was to measure the scholastic performance of various countries, as well as their practical applications. The test was administered by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) to 15 year olds around the globe in most of the educated countries. The only major exception to this would be mainland China who did not take the test (though Hong Kong did).

Ranking	Mathematics	Science	Reading
1	Taiwan	Finland	South Korea
2	Finland	Hong Kong	Finland
3	Hong Kong	Canada	Hong Kong
4	South Korea	Taiwan	Canada
5	Netherlands	Estonia	New Zealand
6	Switzerland	Japan	Ireland
7	Canada	New Zealand	Australia
8	Macau	Australia	Liechtenstein
9	Liechtenstein	Netherlands	Poland
10	Japan	Liechtenstein	Sweden
11	New Zealand	South Korea	Netherlands
12	Belgium	Slovenia	Belgium
13	Australia	Germany	Estonia
14	Estonia	United Kingdom	Switzerland
15	Denmark	Czech Republic	Japan
16	Czech Republic	Switzerland	Taiwan
17	Iceland	Macau	United Kingdom
18	Austria	Austria	Germany
19	Slovenia	Belgium	Denmark
20	Germany	Ireland	Slovenia

Now who is conspicuously absent from the scores? I have already told you that the only significant absentee was mainland China which statement still stands. Our world leader in economics though, seems to have not made an entrance yet; perhaps it is due to the fact that their scores were too low to merit a ranking? No! That can`t be... There must be a mistake... There is no mistake in the test... We must accept it, the United States of America failed to merit a ranking in either mathematics or science. The only consolation is that we will never know how the American children would have done on the reading portion of the survey as the United States children were so confused about a misprint in the test that it and invalidated the results of the test.

If we arrange theses results to see which country has the best overall education according to the ranks (not the scores), we get the following.

Ranking	Country	Sum of Rankings
1	Finland	5
2	Hong Kong	8
3	Canada	14
4	South Korea	16
5	Taiwan	21
6	New Zealand	23
7	Netherlands	25
8	Liechtenstein	27
9	Australia	28
10	Japan	31
11	Estonia	32
12	Switzerland	36
13	Belgium	43
14	Slovenia	51
15	Germany	51
16	Ireland	45+
17	Macau	47+
18	Poland	49+
19	Sweden	50+
20	Czech Republic	51+
21	United Kingdom	25+
22	Denmark	54+
23	Austria	56+
24	Iceland	57+

*The Countries in the red are a lowest estimate. Meaning that they did not qualify in all three categories so I (not wanting to go the extra mile) decided instead of trying to figure out what exactly their ranking is, I would just assume the best possible and then put a plus sign next to it. This is why they are ranked lower than the countries in the black, as although it is hopeful and merciful to assume this, it is also unrealistic.

So there you have it! There is a good representation from Asia there, also from Europe. Some notable surprises to me where in the USA, in Russia(see Article from Moscow News), Germany and the UK, all of who got lower marks then I expected, and honestly I was surprised about Canada ranking so high among the world. Interesting....

Although this graph does not rate the entire education system or have explicit outset to do so, it is interesting to see how the countries children have absorbed these three testes areas.

Comments? Arguments? Leave a message I’ve spent way too much time making graphs and fooling with numbers.

P.S. I have figured out why Canada has such high numbers.... Canada is 11% Asian!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - March 22, 2010 Update - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I just came across a Wikipedia article on this PISA test. The test was designed to test all the catagories for all the countried ever 3 years but for each test period they would particularity focus on one of the three categories. On the year 2000 they preformed their first test with their focus on reading, in 2003 on math, in 2006 on science. It takes over a year to mark these tests. In 2009 they were to test reading again thus making a four year cycle.

Here is the graph of the focus years for the perceptive categories as provided by Wikipedia.

2000	2003	2006
Reading literacy	Mathematics	Scienc
1. Finland 546 2. Canada 534 3. New Zealand 529 4. Australia 528 5. Ireland 527 6. South Korea 525 7. United Kingdom 523 8. Japan 522 9. Sweden 516 10. Austria 507 11. Belgium 507 12. Iceland 507 13. Norway 505 14. France 505 15. United States 504 16. Denmark 497 17. Switzerland 494 18. Spain 493 19. Czech Republic 492 20. Italy 487 21. Germany 484 22. Hungary 480 23. Poland 479 24. Greece 474 25. Portugal 470 26. Luxembourg 441 27. Mexico 422	1. Finland 544 2. South Korea 542 3. Netherlands 538 4. Japan 534 5. Canada 532 6. Belgium 529 7. Switzerland 527 8. Australia 524 9. New Zealand 523 10. Czech Republic 516 11. Iceland 515 12. Denmark 514 13. France 511 14. Sweden 503 15. Austria 506 16. Germany 503 17. Ireland 503 18. Slovakia 498 19. Norway 495 20. Luxembourg 493 21. Poland 490 22. Hungary 490 23. Spain 485 24. United States 483 25. Italy 466 26. Portugal 466 27. Greece 445 28. Turkey 423 29. Mexico 385	1. Finland 563 2. Canada 534 3. Japan 531 4. New Zealand 530 5. Australia 527 6. Netherlands 525 7. South Korea 522 8. Germany 516 9. United Kingdom 515 10. Czech Republic 513 11. Switzerland 512 12. Austria 511 13. Belgium 510 14. Ireland 508 15. Hungary 504 16. Sweden 503 17. Poland 498 18. Denmark 496 19. France 495 20. Iceland 491 21. United States 489 22. Slovakia 488 23. Spain 488 24. Norway 487 25. Luxembourg 486 26. Italy 475 27. Portugal 474 28. Greece 473 29. Turkey 424 30. Mexico 410

- - - - - - - - - - - - - April 6, 2010 Update - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Best Education on Earth - Part II : The Education Index is now complete.