Education standards around the world.

Education is, in my opinion, one of the most important things we can do for the world. To give someone education can set them for life. As the saying goes catch a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. Education is the building block of society, but it varies greatly from country to country due to wealth, culture, history, geographical location and many other factors.

in 2015/16 it was the east Asian countries that performed the best. With South Korea coming first, followed by Japan (2nd), Singapore (3rd) and Hong Kong (4th). So what are these countries doing differently? For one nearly all children go to school 7 days a week compared to the western average of 5. Homework is assigned at a much younger age. However many countries have attempted to replicate the Asian systems to very little effect. The key difference is the culture and mentality of education in these areas. For example, in Asian countries, a teacher is treated with respect equal to how a lawyer or a doctor would be in the west.

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A study was done by Dr John Jerrim for the Guardian newspaper, in Australia of children taking the 'Pisa maths test' an internationally taken test. The results showed that there was a 102 point gap between East Asian and Native Australian immigrants. They found that family background factors such as parental education make up almost 20% of the 102-point achievement gap between East Asians and native Australians –  almost 50% of the 276 second-generation east Asian children had at least 1 graduate parent , compared with only a 25% of the 6,837 Australian-born children. A further 40% of the gap between east Asian and native Australian children was accounted for by a number of school-based factors. For one on average more East Asian children were sent to higher performing schools then Native Australians. While the exact reason cannot be determined it was suggested this is down to the East Asian mentality of placing a higher value on education than some of the Native Australian descent. A further combination of out of school and personal factors account for 25% of the score difference. For example in regards to studying East Asian children spent an average 6 hours longer studying each week compared to the Native Australian children. They also had a stronger work ethic again this is believed to be due to the culture and emphasis put on education by East Asian parents –although the results showed that there was no evidence to suggest that east Asian children put more effort into the Pisa Test. They all also had far higher aspirations with over 94% expecting to go onto third level education compared to 54% of the Native Australian children.

Photo by Tania Malott.
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However something  I observed whilst researching this and from my own interest was that these top four countries who are the best for primary and secondary education are much lower for tertiary education. It was here that countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America excelled. With the top 5 overall universities being M.I.T (1st), Harvard (2nd) ,Oxford (3rd),  Stanford (4th), Cambridge (5th) according to the QS World University rankings 2015/16.

Now that we have covered the best education systems around the world lets talk about the worst. According to the UNESCO World education ranking the world's worst education systems in the world are 10. Algeria, 9. Gambia, 8. Pakistan, 7. Guinea, 6. Eritrea, 5. Ethiopia, 4. The Central African Republic, 3. Mali, 2. Burkina Faso, 1. Niger.  This list is made analysing countries Adult Literacy Rate, Education Development Index, and Human Development Index and comparing it to the other countries. In this list, Niger is rated to have the worst national education system in the world. It is tied with Burkina Faso for the lowest adult literacy rate in the world at 28.7%, Only 5.1% of the population have secondary education and its gross enrolment ratio is only 1.5%. However, it is hardly surprising to see these African countries on this list as they are all full of much larger problems, such as civil wars, genocide, corruption, tribal conflict, extreme poverty, widespread

disease, desertification etc, many of which are due to a lack of education and resources. A movie which highlights this lack of education in Pakistan is the movie "He named me Malala" which chronologies this girl's struggle for equal education.<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NKckKStggSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Sources: www.guardian.com www.irishtimes.com www.mbctimes.com www.topuniversities.com www.globalgoals.org http://en.unesco.org/