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Education Systems Around the World: A Look at 4 Top School Systems

November 16, 2022 · Countries and Regions , Professional Development

Education Systems Around the World

Every year, the OECD ranks education systems around the world from best to worst. With these findings, we are confronted with how schools are succeeding and failing to educate our country’s young people. Our education system, made up of policymakers, school leaders, and especially educators, is raising the future talent of the country. As teachers, our role in shaping young lives directly impacts the next generation.

We can learn from other countries how to best design an education system from the bottom up. As an educator, I sometimes feel powerless in the greater tapestry of the American education system, but over time, I learned that teachers are the critical drivers of student outcomes. The lessons we deliver, the skills we focus on, and the learning opportunities we provide affect a generation of students. So, what lessons can we learn from other countries to better prepare our students to thrive in the twenty-first century?

The OECD uses the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to assess the critical thinking of 15-year-old students in math, science, and reading in 85 countries. Explore how the top-ranking education systems around the world prepare young people for life in the 21st century and what lessons we can learn from them.

1. Finland’s Education System

Finland has long held first and second place, as one of the best education systems around the world. Although in recent years, it has lost ground to other countries, it still is a high performer, particularly with the Western style of education. In Finland, schooling does not begin for children until age 7. Homework and standardized testing are delayed until high school. In fact, there are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. 

“Whatever it takes” describes the attitude of most Finnish educators, who are selected from the top 10 percent of the nation’s graduates to earn a required master’s degree in education. The transformation of Finland’s education system began about 40 years ago as a part of the country’s economic recovery plan. What is most striking about Finland’s education system is that the people running it, from the national to the local level, are educators. Equality is of the utmost importance, and students receive an equal education regardless of their backgrounds. Their children-first approach seems to be working well for this extraordinary education system.

Finland Tip: Prioritize play and outdoor time. One Finnish educator incorporates time outdoors with math by having students measure various objects they find outside.

2. Canada’s Education System

Canada is a newcomer to the top ten best education systems around the world. They don’t truly have a national education system, since education is divided by their autonomous provinces. The Canadian education system focuses on literacy, math, and high school graduation. Administrators, teachers, and their unions have created a curriculum that is successful across the country. Canada’s education system focuses on providing continued teacher training, transparent results, and a culture of sharing best practices. Students have many opportunities to prepare and practice for their future careers. Teacher morale is also high due to trust in teachers as professionals.

3. The Education System of Singapore

Singapore has risen to second place in the PISA rankings. This city-state has a technology-based education system, similar to Japan and Hong Kong. In 2004, Singapore’s government built a pedagogical framework called Teach Less, Learn More , which encouraged teachers to focus on the quality of learning and asked them to incorporate technology into classrooms. The purpose was to shift focus away from the high-stakes testing environment that Singaporean classrooms traditionally valued.

Educational technology sets Singapore apart from many other countries. In classrooms, digital devices are viewed as a means to bring students together in collaboration, rather than using devices in isolation from other students.

Singapore Tip: Use technology to have students collaborate. Send them on technology missions in groups, then pull students away from their devices to debrief the exercise.

4. South Korea’s Education System

In the past fifty years, South Korea has transformed its education system into one of the best in the world. South Korean students have six years of primary school, three years of middle school, and three years of high school. Coeducation schools are still rare in South Korea, with most students attending single-sex schools. Primary subjects include moral education, Korean language, social studies, mathematics, science, physical education, music, fine arts, and practical arts.

South Korea is known for having a rigorous, high-stress educational system, where families invest enormous time and money into providing the best education for their children. Public schools are free, but private schools and tutoring are available. Being a teacher in South Korea is a coveted position because of the high pay and high level of respect that teachers have. One remarkable achievement of their educational system? South Korea has accomplished a 100 percent literacy rate.

South Korea Tip: Emphasize grit and a growth mindset. In South Korea, talent isn’t important. The culture believes that grit and determination will ultimately lead to success. Frame any challenge as one that simply needs practice.

How Does the United States Compare?

According to PISA –

‘Students in the United States have particular weaknesses in performing mathematical tasks with higher cognitive demands, such as taking real-world situations, translating them into mathematical terms, and interpreting mathematical aspects in real-world problems. An alignment study between the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and PISA suggests that a successful implementation of the Common Core Standards would yield significant performance gains also in PISA.’ PISA

The United States has been steadily improving its PISA scores over the past few decades. According to PISA’s analysis, implementing Common Core Standards with fidelity will yield significant performance gains. Socioeconomic status still divides test results, with students from higher socioeconomic statuses performing better. There is also a persistent gender gap, with boys performing better on the math portion of the test and girls performing better on the reading portion.

What is Next for the American Education System?

Fifty years ago, both South Korea and Finland had poor education systems. Over the past half-century, both South Korea and Finland have turned their schools around — and now both countries are hailed internationally for their extremely high educational outcomes. But these two models of education are polar opposites. South Korea’s rigorous, test-centric approach is so different from Finland, where students spend less time in the classroom and more time outside and in extracurricular activities. In Korea, school is about creating your future; in Finland, it is about creating your identity.

What do these polar opposite education systems have in common? A deep admiration and respect for teachers. In Finland, only 10 percent of applicants are accepted to teaching programs. It’s equally as difficult to become a teacher in Korea. Teachers are paid well and given enormous respect by the community.

One reason for the success of these education systems is that they were a product of economic and social change within the country. It has not historically been necessary for American students to need high-level problem-solving skills to live nice lives. This is no longer the case. According to author Amanda Ripley, “There’s a lag for cultures to catch up with economic realities, and right now we’re living in that lag.” The good news is that teachers are working hard to close the global achievement gap by teaching 21st-century skills , implementing the Common Core, and teaching the knowledge students need to be successful in a global world .

Interested in learning how to improve your learning outcomes with global education? Join our email list, and get our free Mainstream to Multicultural checklist.

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Choi, Amy S. “What the Best Education Systems Are Doing Right.” Ideas.ted.com , 4 Sept. 2014, https://ideas.ted.com/what-the-best-education-systems-are-doing-right/.

“Data – Pisa.” OECD , https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/.

“Education.” OECD Better Life Index , https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/.

Gundala, Sashi. “Education Systems around the World: A Comparison.” LinkedIn , 30 July 2018, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/education-systems-around-world-comparison-sashi-gundala/.

Magazine, Smithsonian. “Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?” Smithsonian.com , Smithsonian Institution, 1 Sept. 2011, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/.

“Singapore Plows Ahead of U.S. with Technology in Classrooms.” NBCNews.com , NBCUniversal News Group, 27 Apr. 2014, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/singapore-plows-ahead-u-s-technology-classrooms-n90086.

United States – OECD . https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_USA.pdf.

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10 different education systems around the world

Here's an overview of 10 different education systems around the world..

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Each education system has its own strengths and challenges, reflecting the cultural, social, and economic contexts of the respective countries or communities. Education holds immense significance for both individuals and society at large. Regardless of our geographical location or cultural background, it is crucial to safeguard and nurture our education systems to ensure the preservation and enhancement of knowledge.

Here's an overview of different education systems around the world:

1. Finnish Education System

The Finnish education system is renowned for its success. It focuses on student well-being, equal opportunities, and individualised learning. There is less emphasis on standardised testing, and teachers have significant autonomy in the classroom.

2. Japanese Education System

In Japan, education is highly valued and emphasises discipline and hard work. The curriculum is rigorous, and students often attend additional tutoring or cram schools. Respect for teachers and authority is deeply ingrained in the culture.

3. German Education System

Germany offers a dual education system that combines classroom learning with practical vocational training. Students can choose academic or vocational tracks, leading to a wide range of career opportunities.

4. Montessori Education

The Montessori method emphasises self-directed learning, hands-on activities, and mixed-age classrooms. It focuses on nurturing a child's natural curiosity, independence, and love for learning.

5. International Baccalaureate (IB)

The IB programme is a globally recognised curriculum that encourages critical thinking, cultural understanding, and community engagement. It offers different programs, including the Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP), and Diploma Programme (DP).

6. American Education System

The US education system varies across states, but it generally includes primary, middle, and high school education. It emphasises a broad curriculum, extracurricular activities, and standardized testing. Higher education options include community colleges, universities, and vocational schools.

7. Nordic Education Systems

Nordic countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland prioritise equal access to education, student well-being, and practical learning. They emphasise creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.

8. Indian Education System

The Indian education system is diverse and includes both traditional methods and modern approaches. It places significant importance on rote learning, competitive exams, and STEM subjects. It has a large network of schools, including government schools and private institutions.

9. British Education System

The British education system follows a structured approach to primary, secondary, and tertiary education. It emphasises academic subjects and often includes standardised exams like GCSEs and A-levels. It is known for prestigious institutions like Oxford and Cambridge.

10. Indigenous Education Systems

Global Education

By: Hannah Ritchie , Veronika Samborska , Natasha Ahuja , Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

A good education offers individuals the opportunity to lead richer, more interesting lives. At a societal level, it creates opportunities for humanity to solve its pressing problems.

The world has gone through a dramatic transition over the last few centuries, from one where very few had any basic education to one where most people do. This is not only reflected in the inputs to education – enrollment and attendance – but also in outcomes, where literacy rates have greatly improved.

Getting children into school is also not enough. What they learn matters. There are large differences in educational outcomes : in low-income countries, most children cannot read by the end of primary school. These inequalities in education exacerbate poverty and existing inequalities in global incomes .

On this page, you can find all of our writing and data on global education.

Key insights on Global Education

The world has made substantial progress in increasing basic levels of education.

Access to education is now seen as a fundamental right – in many cases, it’s the government’s duty to provide it.

But formal education is a very recent phenomenon. In the chart, we see the share of the adult population – those older than 15 – that has received some basic education and those who haven’t.

In the early 1800s, fewer than 1 in 5 adults had some basic education. Education was a luxury; in all places, it was only available to a small elite.

But you can see that this share has grown dramatically, such that this ratio is now reversed. Less than 1 in 5 adults has not received any formal education.

This is reflected in literacy data , too: 200 years ago, very few could read and write. Now most adults have basic literacy skills.

What you should know about this data

• Basic education is defined as receiving some kind of formal primary, secondary, or tertiary (post-secondary) education.
• This indicator does not tell us how long a person received formal education. They could have received a full program of schooling, or may only have been in attendance for a short period. To account for such differences, researchers measure the mean years of schooling or the expected years of schooling .

Despite being in school, many children learn very little

International statistics often focus on attendance as the marker of educational progress.

However, being in school does not guarantee that a child receives high-quality education. In fact, in many countries, the data shows that children learn very little.

Just half – 48% – of the world’s children can read with comprehension by the end of primary school. It’s based on data collected over a 9-year period, with 2016 as the average year of collection.

This is shown in the chart, where we plot averages across countries with different income levels. 1

The situation in low-income countries is incredibly worrying, with 90% of children unable to read by that age.

This can be improved – even among high-income countries. The best-performing countries have rates as low as 2%. That’s more than four times lower than the average across high-income countries.

Making sure that every child gets to go to school is essential. But the world also needs to focus on what children learn once they’re in the classroom.

Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?

Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. What can we do to improve this?

• This data does not capture total literacy over someone’s lifetime. Many children will learn to read eventually, even if they cannot read by the end of primary school. However, this means they are in a constant state of “catching up” and will leave formal education far behind where they could be.

Children across the world receive very different amounts of quality learning

There are still significant inequalities in the amount of education children get across the world.

This can be measured as the total number of years that children spend in school. However, researchers can also adjust for the quality of education to estimate how many years of quality learning they receive. This is done using an indicator called “learning-adjusted years of schooling”.

On the map, you see vast differences across the world.

In many of the world’s poorest countries, children receive less than three years of learning-adjusted schooling. In most rich countries, this is more than 10 years.

Across most countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – where the largest share of children live – the average years of quality schooling are less than 7.

• Learning-adjusted years of schooling merge the quantity and quality of education into one metric, accounting for the fact that similar durations of schooling can yield different learning outcomes.
• Learning-adjusted years is computed by adjusting the expected years of school based on the quality of learning, as measured by the harmonized test scores from various international student achievement testing programs. The adjustment involves multiplying the expected years of school by the ratio of the most recent harmonized test score to 625. Here, 625 signifies advanced attainment on the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test, with 300 representing minimal attainment. These scores are measured in TIMSS-equivalent units.

Hundreds of millions of children worldwide do not go to school

While most children worldwide get the opportunity to go to school, hundreds of millions still don’t.

In the chart, we see the number of children who aren’t in school across primary and secondary education.

This number was around 244 million in 2023.

Many children who attend primary school drop out and do not attend secondary school. That means many more children or adolescents are missing from secondary school than primary education.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school

The world has made a lot of progress in recent generations, but millions of children are still not in school.

The gender gap in school attendance has closed across most of the world

Globally, until recently, boys were more likely to attend school than girls. The world has focused on closing this gap to ensure every child gets the opportunity to go to school.

Today, these gender gaps have largely disappeared. In the chart, we see the difference in the global enrollment rates for primary, secondary, and tertiary (post-secondary) education. The share of children who complete primary school is also shown.

We see these lines converging over time, and recently they met: rates between boys and girls are the same.

For tertiary education, young women are now more likely than young men to be enrolled.

While the differences are small globally, there are some countries where the differences are still large: girls in Afghanistan, for example, are much less likely to go to school than boys.

Research & Writing

Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school, interactive charts on global education.

This data comes from a paper by João Pedro Azevedo et al.

João Pedro Azevedo, Diana Goldemberg, Silvia Montoya, Reema Nayar, Halsey Rogers, Jaime Saavedra, Brian William Stacy (2021) – “ Will Every Child Be Able to Read by 2030? Why Eliminating Learning Poverty Will Be Harder Than You Think, and What to Do About It .” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9588, March 2021.

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Module 12: Education

Education around the world, learning outcomes.

• Identify differences in educational resources around the world

Figure 1. These children are at a library in Singapore, where students are outperforming U.S. students on worldwide tests. (Photo courtesy of kodomut/flickr)

Education is a social institution through which a society’s children are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms. Every nation in the world is equipped with some form of education system, though those systems vary greatly. The major factors that affect education systems are the resources and money that are utilized to support those systems in different nations, as well as how education is organized and administered to students. As you might expect, a country’s wealth has much to do with the amount of money spent on education. Countries that do not have such basic amenities as running water are unable to support robust education systems or, in many cases, any formal schooling at all. The consequences of this worldwide educational inequality are of social concern for many countries, including the United States.

International differences in education systems are not solely a financial issue. The value placed on education, the amount of time devoted to it, and the distribution of education within a country also play a role in those differences. For example, students in South Korea spend 220 days a year in school, compared to the 180 days a year of their United States counterparts (Pellissier 2010). As of 2006, the United States ranked fifth among twenty-seven countries for college participation, but ranked sixteenth in the number of students who receive college degrees (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education 2006). These statistics may be related to how much time is spent on education in the United States.

Watch this video to see ways that education varies throughout the globe as well as the important opportunity that education provides for those hoping to improve their circumstances.

Results from the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2015, which is a test administered to 15-year-old students in participating economies every three years, showed that students in the United States lag far behind other high-income countries across different subjects, despite making the most progress in equity compared to other participating countries. [1] The same program showed that by 2018, U.S. student achievement had remained on the same level for mathematics and science, but had shown improvements in reading. In 2018, about 4,000 students from about 200 high schools in the United States took the PISA test (OECD 2019). Countries in the Asian and Nordic regions tend to outperform other countries across all subjects tested (science, mathematics, and literacy), although their educational systems are vastly different in their goals and their administrative systems, suggesting that there is not a single recipe for “success” as measured by PISA.

Link to Learning

The PISA assessment is known to be influential around the world—watch this video to understand the system better: How does PISA work?

Analysts determined that the nations and city-states at the top of the rankings had several things in common. For one, they had well-established standards for education with clear goals for all students. Although these countries have well-delineated standards, they do not necessarily outline similar goals. For example, one country may emphasize cooperation, another student growth, or yet another may focus on equality, as in Finland. [2] Another thing the high-performing nations had in common was a tendency to recruit teachers from the top 5 to 10 percent of university graduates each year, which is not the case for most countries (National Public Radio 2010).

Finally, there is the issue of social factors. One analyst from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the organization that created the test, attributed 20 percent of performance differences and the United States’ low rankings to differences in social background. Researchers noted that educational resources, including money and quality teachers, are not distributed equitably in the United States. In the top-ranking countries, limited access to resources did not necessarily predict low performance. Analysts also noted what they described as “resilient students,” or those students who achieve at a higher level than one might expect given their social background. In Shanghai and Singapore, the proportion of resilient students is about 70 percent. In the United States, it is below 30 percent. These insights suggest that the United States’ educational system may be on a descending trajectory that could detrimentally affect the country’s economy and its social landscape (National Public Radio 2010).

Recent research has found that the United States’ low overall educational achievement is in large part due to an underperformance by the middle class. The poorest students in the United States, despite being among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged around the world, perform averagely relative to other poor students. The richest students from the U.S., despite being among the wealthiest, are also average when compared to other rich students – which is also an alarming finding. However, students in the middle of the SES distribution perform half a school year behind comparable middle-SES students, despite being among the wealthiest middle-SES groups in the world. [3]

Education in Finland

With public education in the United States under such intense criticism, why is it that Singapore, South Korea, and especially Finland (which is culturally most similar to the U.S. of those three), have such excellent educational achievement levels on PISA? Over the course of thirty years, Finland has pulled itself from among the lowest rankings by the Organization of Economic Cooperation (OEDC) to first place by 2012. Contrary to the rigid curriculum and long hours demanded of students in South Korea and Singapore, Finnish education often seems paradoxical to outside observers because it appears to break a lot of the rules we take for granted. It is common there for children to enter school at seven years old, where they will have more hours in recess and fewer hours in school than U.S. children—approximately 300 fewer hours. Their homework load is light when compared to all other industrialized nations (nearly 300 fewer hours per year in elementary school). There are no gifted programs, almost no private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests (Laukkanen 2008; LynNell Hancock 2011).

Prioritization is different than in the United States. In Finland, there is an emphasis on allocating resources for those who need them most, high standards, support for special needs students, qualified teachers taken from the top 10 percent of the nation’s graduates (who must earn a Master’s degree), and frequent evaluation of education methods, with a focus on balancing decentralization and centralization to maximize administrative efficiency.

“We used to have a system which was really unequal,” stated the Finnish Education Chief in an interview. “My parents never had a real possibility to study and have a higher education. We decided in the 1960s that we would provide a free quality education to all. Even universities are free of charge. Equal means that we support everyone and we’re not going to waste anyone’s skills.” As for teachers, “We don’t test our teachers or ask them to prove their knowledge. But it’s true that we do invest in a lot of additional teacher training even after they become teachers” (Gross-Loh 2014).

Finland has consistently performed among the top nations on the PISA. Despite the most recent PISA assessment showing that their scores have been declining since the 2006 assessment, Finland continues to be among the top performers and to exhibit some of the smallest achievement gaps between its richest and poorest students, a pattern that is consistent across the Nordic countries. Finland’s school children didn’t always excel. Finland built its excellent, efficient, and equitable educational system in a few decades from scratch, and the concept guiding almost every educational reform has been equity. The Finnish paradox is that by focusing on the bigger picture for all, Finland has succeeded at fostering the individual potential of most every child, a mechanism that has resulted in notable achievement on standardized international assessments.

Krista Kiuru, the Minister of Education, said “We created a school system based on equality to make sure we can develop everyone’s potential. Now we can see how well it’s been working. [In 2012] the OECD tested adults from twenty-four countries measuring the skill levels of adults aged sixteen to sixty-five on a survey called the PIAAC (Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies), which tests skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Finland scored at or near the top on all measures.”

Formal and Informal Education

Education is not solely concerned with the basic academic concepts that a student learns in the classroom. Societies also educate their children, outside of the school system, in matters of everyday practical living. These two types of learning are referred to as formal education and informal education.

Formal education describes the learning of academic facts and concepts through a structured, programmatic curriculum. Arising from the tutelage of ancient Greek thinkers, centuries of scholars have examined topics through logical, systematic methods of learning. Education in earlier times was only available to the higher classes; they had the means for access to scholarly materials, plus the luxury of leisure time that could be used for learning. The Industrial Revolution, urbanization, the development of state-sponsored, publicly-funded institutions, and other social changes made education more accessible to the general population. Later, many families in the emerging middle class found new opportunities for schooling.

Figure 2.  Parents teaching their children to cook provide an informal education. (Photo courtesy of eyeliam/flickr)

The modern U.S. educational system is the result of this progression. Today, basic education is considered a right and responsibility for all citizens. The United Nations outlines education as a basic human right in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Citation F), arguing that education must be free and universally-accessible. [4]  Expectations of this system focus on formal education, with curricula and testing designed to ensure that students learn the facts and concepts that society believes are basic knowledge.

In contrast, informal education describes learning about cultural values, norms, and expected behaviors through societal participation. This type of learning occurs in family homes, community spaces, and through the education system. Our earliest learning experiences generally happen via parents, relatives, and others in our community. Through informal education, we learn how to dress for different occasions, how to perform regular life routines like shopping for and preparing food, and how to keep our bodies clean.

Cultural transmission refers to the way people come to learn the values, beliefs, and social norms of their culture. Both informal and formal education include cultural transmission. For example, a student will learn about cultural aspects of modern history in a U.S. History classroom. In that same classroom, the student might learn the cultural norm for asking a classmate out on a date through passing notes and whispered conversations, as well as learning how to respectfully voice opinions and meet deadlines for assignments.

Think It Over

• Has there ever been a time when your formal and informal educations in the same setting were at odds? How did you overcome that disconnect?
• PISA (2015). Results in Focus. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf . ↵
• Gross-Loh, Christine (March 2014). Finnish Education Chief: 'We Created a School System Based on Equality' An interview with the country's minister of education , Krista Kiuru.  Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/finnish-education-chief-we-created-a-school-system-based-on-equality/284427/ . ↵
• Kristie J. Rowley, Florencia Silveira, Mikaela J. Dufur, and Jonathan A. Jarvis. Forthcoming in Teachers' College Record. “US Achievement Underperformance in an International Context: Are Poor Students’ PISA Scores to Blame?” ↵
• United Nations (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ . ↵
• Education around the World. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:VdqlvHGw@6/Education-around-the-World . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]
• Education around the World. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/16-1-education-around-the-world . Project : Sociology 3e. License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/16-1-education-around-the-world
• What does education mean to you?. Authored by : UNICEF. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un5msddQl6U . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

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Top performing countries

Learn about the world’s best performing education systems and what sets them apart..

NCEE provides information about and analysis of the education systems in top-performing countries around the world. With the release of the 2022 PISA results, NCEE will be identifying a new list of top-performing countries, combining the new PISA results with a set of other measures as we continue to modernize our benchmarking. Stay tuned to this space for further updates.

The list of top performers below was generated from the PISA 2018 results. We identified this group of countries by looking at achievement in all three tested subjects. We also eliminated any top performers who did not perform at or above the OECD average on at least one of two key equity measures: percent of resilient students (students from the lowest socio-economic quartile who perform at the highest levels) and percent of low performers (those who perform below level 2 on PISA).

The PISA 2018 list is: Canada, China (including the provinces of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang), Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Our objective is to learn from countries and economies and adapt those lessons for use in the United States at the national, state or district levels.

Canada turned in one of the strongest records of student ach...

Estonia emerged as a top performer on PISA 2012, ranking 11t...

Finland outperformed all other jurisdictions on the first PI...

Hong Kong emerged as a world educational leader on the first...

Japan has consistently performed well on major education sur...

The experience of Poland over the last three decades provide...

Shanghai-China

With over 1.36 billion people, China is the world’s most p...

Singapore is an extraordinary success story. In less than 50...

In the 2015 PISA assessments, South Korea ranked seventh in...

An island of 23.4 million people, Taiwan is heavily influenc...

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• Education at a Glance

Education at a Glance 2021

Characteristics of education systems, oecd indicators.

Education at a Glance is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD countries and a number of partner economies. More than 100 charts and tables in this publication – as well as links to much more available on the educational database – provide key information on the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools.

The 2021 edition includes a focus on equity, investigating how progress through education and the associated learning and labour market outcomes are impacted by dimensions such as gender, socio-economic status, country of birth and regional location. A specific chapter is dedicated to Target 4.5 of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on equity in education, providing an assessment of where OECD and partner countries stand in providing equal access to quality education at all levels. Two new indicators on the mechanisms and formulas used to allocate public funding to schools and on teacher attrition rate complement this year's edition.

English Also available in: French , German

• The State of Global Education
• Money matters for global education
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Author(s) OECD

16 Sept 2021

Typical graduation ages, by level of education (2019)

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Typical age of entry, by level of education (2019)

School year and financial year used for the calculation of indicators, OECD countries

School year and financial year used for the calculation of indicators, partner countries

Starting and ending age for students in compulsory education and by level of education (2019)

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Visualizing Education Systems Around the World

Silvia Montoya, Director, UNESCO Institute for Statistics and Manos Antoninis, Director, Global Education Monitoring Report

The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was established in the 1970s and updated in 1997 and 2011 to categorize information on education systems in a way that facilitates cross-national comparisons of education statistics. For all countries outside of the OECD and the European Union, these systems are now available in diagram form and in multiple languages thanks to joint work by the UIS and the GEM Report. As from today, they can be accessed at a new ISCED website hosted by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) , and at the GEM Report’s PEER website of country profiles. ISCED diagrams for the OECD and the European Union countries are available on their respective websites.

The diagrams help visualize different education system characteristics, including the age of students at different education levels or the length of study required for different tertiary education degrees.

For both the UIS, which collects and produces data on SDG 4, and the GEM Report, which analyses such data in its annual publications, ICSED plays an important role. Additional resources related to ICSED sit on the UIS’ new, dedicated website , including previous reports, and the mapping of each Member State’s education systems in Excel, which form the basis of the visual diagrams.

The site also houses the recently produced UIS report, Using ISCED Diagrams to Compare Education Systems , which presents the education systems of 133 countries in visual format. The report explains each ISCED level and how the diagrams were created, along with ISCED’s governance structure, as well as challenges and recommendations. This is followed by a global analysis of ISCED, which considers how education systems compare in the context of the 2030 Agenda. More detailed analyses of the systems in the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are also provided.

It is our hope that these visualization resources will give policymakers, national statistical offices, international organizations and academia a better understanding of ISCED and its importance in monitoring the 2030 Agenda by providing a framework for organizing education systems in a way that allows for cross-national comparability.

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What the best education systems are doing right

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In South Korea and Finland, it’s not about finding the “right” school.

Fifty years ago, both South Korea and Finland had terrible education systems. Finland was at risk of becoming the economic stepchild of Europe. South Korea was ravaged by civil war. Yet over the past half century, both South Korea and Finland have turned their schools around — and now both countries are hailed internationally for their extremely high educational outcomes. What can other countries learn from these two successful, but diametrically opposed, educational models? Here’s an overview of what South Korea and Finland are doing right.

The Korean model: Grit and hard, hard, hard work.

For millennia, in some parts of Asia, the only way to climb the socioeconomic ladder and find secure work was to take an examination — in which the proctor was a proxy for the emperor , says Marc Tucker, president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Those examinations required a thorough command of knowledge, and taking them was a grueling rite of passage. Today, many in the Confucian countries still respect the kind of educational achievement that is promoted by an exam culture.

The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat: the country is 100 percent literate. But success comes with a price.

Among these countries, South Korea stands apart as the most extreme, and arguably, most successful. The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat: the country is 100 percent literate, and at the forefront of international comparative tests of achievement, including tests of critical thinking and analysis. But this success comes with a price: Students are under enormous, unrelenting pressure to perform. Talent is not a consideration — because the culture believes in hard work and diligence above all, there is no excuse for failure. Children study year-round, both in-school and with tutors. If you study hard enough, you can be smart enough.

“Koreans basically believe that I have to get through this really tough period to have a great future,” says Andreas Schleicher , director of education and skills at PISA and special advisor on education policy at the OECD. “It’s a question of short-term unhappiness and long-term happiness.” It’s not just the parents pressuring their kids. Because this culture traditionally celebrates conformity and order, pressure from other students can also heighten performance expectations. This community attitude expresses itself even in early-childhood education, says Joe Tobin, professor of early childhood education at the University of Georgia who specializes in comparative international research. In Korea, as in other Asian countries, class sizes are very large — which would be extremely undesirable for, say, an American parent. But in Korea, the goal is for the teacher to lead the class as a community, and for peer relationships to develop. In American preschools, the focus for teachers is on developing individual relationships with students, and intervening regularly in peer relationships.

“I think it is clear there are better and worse way to educate our children,” says Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way . “At the same time, if I had to choose between an average US education and an average Korean education for my own kid, I would choose, very reluctantly, the Korean model. The reality is, in the modern world the kid is going to have to know how to learn, how to work hard and how to persist after failure. The Korean model teaches that.”

The Finnish model: Extracurricular choice, intrinsic motivation.

In Finland, on the other hand, students are learning the benefits of both rigor and flexibility. The Finnish model, say educators, is utopia.

Finland has a short school day rich with school-sponsored extracurriculars, because Finns believe important learning happens outside the classroom.

In Finland, school is the center of the community, notes Schleicher. School provides not just educational services, but social services. Education is about creating identity.

Finnish culture values intrinsic motivation and the pursuit of personal interest. It has a relatively short school day rich with school-sponsored extracurriculars, because culturally, Finns believe important learning happens outside of the classroom. (An exception? Sports, which are not sponsored by schools, but by towns.) A third of the classes that students take in high school are electives, and they can even choose which matriculation exams they are going to take. It’s a low-stress culture, and it values a wide variety of learning experiences.

But that does not except it from academic rigor, motivated by the country’s history trapped between European superpowers, says Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish educator and author of Finnish Lessons: What the World Can Learn From Educational Change in Finland .

Teachers in Finland teach 600 hours a year, spending the rest of time in professional development. In the U.S., teachers are in the classroom 1,100 hours a year, with little time for feedback.

“A key to that is education. Finns do not really exist outside of Finland,” says Sahlberg. “This drives people to take education more seriously. For example, nobody speaks this funny language that we do. Finland is bilingual, and every student learns both Finnish and Swedish. And every Finn who wants to be successful has to master at least one other language, often English, but she also typically learns German, French, Russian and many others. Even the smallest children understand that nobody else speaks Finnish, and if they want to do anything else in life, they need to learn languages.”

Finns share one thing with South Koreans: a deep respect for teachers and their academic accomplishments. In Finland, only one in ten applicants to teaching programs is admitted. After a mass closure of 80 percent of teacher colleges in the 1970s, only the best university training programs remained, elevating the status of educators in the country. Teachers in Finland teach 600 hours a year, spending the rest of time in professional development, meeting with colleagues, students and families. In the U.S., teachers are in the classroom 1,100 hours a year, with little time for collaboration, feedback or professional development.

How Americans can change education culture

As TED speaker Sir Ken Robinson noted in his 2013 talk ( How to escape education’s death valley ), when it comes to current American education woes “the dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn’t count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit from it.” But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Notes Amanda Ripley, “culture is a thing that changes. It’s more malleable than we think. Culture is like this ether that has all kinds of things swirling around in it, some of which are activated and some of which are latent. Given an economic imperative or change in leadership or accident of history, those things get activated.” The good news is, “We Americans have a lot of things in our culture which would support a very strong education system, such as a longstanding rhetoric about the equality of opportunity and a strong and legitimate meritocracy,” says Ripley.

One reason we haven’t made much progress academically over the past 50 years is because it hasn’t been economically crucial for American kids to master sophisticated problem-solving and critical-thinking skills in order to survive. But that’s not true anymore. “There’s a lag for cultures to catch up with economic realities, and right now we’re living in that lag,” says Ripley. “So our kids aren’t growing up with the kind of skills or grit to make it in the global economy.”

“We are prisoners of the pictures and experiences of education that we had,” says Tony Wagner , expert-in-residence at Harvard’s educational innovation center and author of The Global Achievement Gap . “We want schools for our kids that mirror our own experience, or what we thought we wanted. That severely limits our ability to think creatively of a different kind of education. But there’s no way that tweaking that assembly line will meet the 21st-century world. We need a major overhaul.”

Indeed. Today, the American culture of choice puts the onus on parents to find the “right” schools for our kids, rather than trusting that all schools are capable of preparing our children for adulthood. Our obsession with talent puts the onus on students to be “smart,” rather than on adults’ ability to teach them. And our antiquated system for funding schools makes property values the arbiter of spending per student, not actual values.

But what will American education culture look like tomorrow? In the most successful education cultures in the world, it is the system that is responsible for the success of the student, says Schleicher — not solely the parent, not solely the student, not solely the teacher. The culture creates the system. The hope is that Americans can find the grit and will to change their own culture — one parent, student and teacher at a time.

Featured image via iStock.

About the author

Amy S. Choi is a freelance journalist, writer and editor based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is the co-founder and editorial director of The Mash-Up Americans, a media and consulting company that examines multidimensional modern life in the U.S.

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• Editor's picks
• questions worth asking
• South Korea
• What makes a good education?

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10 Differences in Education Systems Around the World

Education systems differ around the world. There are 195 countries in the world and not one shares the same education system given the complex differences in culture, geography, and national history of each country. Among such countries, there are ten that are strikingly unique and different. Knowing each will give you an idea of the different dynamics and factors that take hold in the education of an individual. 

Education Systems

What do people talk about when they talk of education systems? Well, it is public schooling simply put. Stakeholders always refer to public schooling and not private schooling when they refer to education systems. Such systems are generally handled by the government and are normally provided at no cost to citizens. When you talk of education systems, you can refer to that of a district or that of a country. Here, we will discuss unique differences in education systems around the world.

1. French Schools Do Not Allow Religious Dress

The French education system started way back during the existence of the Roman Empire. The country’s first encounter with formal education started as early as 121 BCE. Rightly so, it is highly advanced when it comes to liberty. So much so that one of its education system’s core principles is laïcité, which roughly translates to secularity. This is why students are not allowed to wear religious dress or anything resembling religious attire when in public school. The French education system highly stands by the principle that religion and public life should be kept apart at all times.

2. Most Public Schools in Ireland are Catholic

Ireland’s education system is completely opposite to that of the French. This is because over 90% of all Irish public schools are handled by the Catholic Church. Their public schools even have the choice to only employ Catholic teachers and not accept non-Catholic students. So much so that some Irish parents choose to have their children baptised not for religious purposes but for educational purposes. Such baptism will secure that their child gets to enroll in a local school.

3. Chinese Schools Zone in on Memorization

The Chinese education system is still big on memorization. Chinese public schools give much credit to children who can memorize and retain facts. So much so that its university admission examlabs.com or gaokao highly depends on what a student can memorize and repeat. Chinese schools do not test the critical thinking and analysis skills of students.

4. Patriotism in Thailand

Thailand’s education system is highly patriotic. So much so that all classes always start with the singing of the country’s national anthem. This is why Thais can easily sing their national anthem at any given moment. Thai parents who want their child to undergo an education that is not so nationalistic opt for international private schools like Bangkok Prep International School.     

5. No Uniform Rule in German Schools

Most public schools around the globe require students to wear uniforms. But such is not the case in German public schools. German public schools strongly oppose the wearing of uniforms as they strongly avoid any form or trace of militaristic associations. So much so that if there is branded school clothing that is to be worn by all, such is carefully designed to not look like military uniforms at all. This is why branded school clothing of German public schools is always brightly coloured and uniquely designed.

6. Bangladeshi Schooling on Boats

Did you know that 70% of the total land area of Bangladesh is only less than a metre above sea level? It does not help that it is situated in the Ganges Delta and receives rainfall from the Himalayas. Such geographic factors result in a fifth of the country experiencing flooding every year. This is why even the government made it a point to make their education system flood-proof. Hence, they have floating schools that are flood-proof schools on boats. Such floating schools are solar-powered and can continue in operation even if flooding is at its worst.

7. South Korean Students Have Long School Days

Schools around the world normally last for five to six hours. This is why South Korea’s school day can be considered extremely long as it lasts for 14 to 16 hours. Schooling starts at 8 am and ends at 4 pm. Students go home for dinner and then head out for another set of schooling from 6 pm to 9 pm that is dedicated to revision. This is why South Korean students are one of the most successful in international league tables.

8. Schooling in the Netherlands Starts When a Kid Turns Four

The Netherlands came up with a unifying rule to solve the age difference and age gap among students that start school. This is after acknowledging data that students born in September do better at school than students born in August. This is because such students are usually a year older than their batch mates. To solve this, the Netherlands mandated a rule that requires all students to start schooling on their 4 th birthday. This means that their schools always receive new students throughout the year. While others may still be ahead by months, this will still ensure that all students are within the same developmental level when they start schooling.

9. High School Graduation in Norway Lasts for Three Weeks

Norway is big when it comes to celebrating graduations. So much so that high school graduations are celebrated for three weeks in a unique fashion. If the US has the prom and the UK has the Leaver’s Ball, Norwegians have Russfeiring. It traditionally starts every 20 th of April and ends every 17 th of May just before school exams. In this unique celebration, students club together to buy an old vehicle that they decorate and use to go on road trips and from one party to another.

10. Moral Education is Prioritized in Japanese Schools

Japan’s education system is unique in that its main goal is to produce good citizens. Its moral lessons are considered as important as Japanese and math subjects. In such classes, students learn lessons on compassion and persistence together with different life skills.

ALSO READ: 15 Motivational Exam quotes to Defeat the Exam Anxiety in you

The Educational landscape is changing dynamically. The new generation of students thus faces the daunting task to choose an institution that would guide them towards a lucrative career.

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Education Rankings by Country 2024

There is a correlation between a country's educational system quality and its economic status, with developed nations offering higher quality education.

The U.S., despite ranking high in educational system surveys, falls behind in math and science scores compared to many other countries.

Educational system adequacy varies globally, with some countries struggling due to internal conflicts, economic challenges, or underfunded programs.

While education levels vary from country to country, there is a clear correlation between the quality of a country's educational system and its general economic status and overall well-being. In general, developing nations tend to offer their citizens a higher quality of education than the least developed nations do, and fully developed nations offer the best quality of education of all. Education is clearly a vital contributor to any country's overall health.

According to the Global Partnership for Education , education is considered to be a human right and plays a crucial role in human, social, and economic development . Education promotes gender equality, fosters peace, and increases a person's chances of having more and better life and career opportunities.

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." — Nelson Mandela

The annual Best Countries Report , conducted by US News and World Report, BAV Group, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , reserves an entire section for education. The report surveys thousands of people across 78 countries, then ranks those countries based upon the survey's responses. The education portion of the survey compiles scores from three equally-weighted attributes: a well-developed public education system, would consider attending university there, and provides top-quality education. As of 2023, the top ten countries based on education rankings are:

Countries with the Best Educational Systems - 2021 Best Countries Report*

Ironically, despite the United States having the best-surveyed education system on the globe, U.S students consistently score lower in math and science than students from many other countries. According to a Business Insider report in 2018, the U.S. ranked 38th in math scores and 24th in science. Discussions about why the United States' education rankings have fallen by international standards over the past three decades frequently point out that government spending on education has failed to keep up with inflation.

It's also worthwhile to note that while the Best Countries study is certainly respectable, other studies use different methodologies or emphasize different criteria, which often leads to different results. For example, the Global Citizens for Human Rights' annual study measures ten levels of education from early childhood enrollment rates to adult literacy. Its final 2020 rankings look a bit different:

Education Rates of Children Around the World

Most findings and ranking regarding education worldwide involve adult literacy rates and levels of education completed. However, some studies look at current students and their abilities in different subjects.

One of the most-reviewed studies regarding education around the world involved 470,000 fifteen-year-old students. Each student was administered tests in math, science, and reading similar to the SAT or ACT exams (standardized tests used for college admissions in the U.S.) These exam scores were later compiled to determine each country's average score for each of the three subjects. Based on this study, China received the highest scores , followed by Korea, Finland , Hong Kong , Singapore , Canada , New Zealand , Japan , Australia and the Netherlands .

On the down side, there are many nations whose educational systems are considered inadequate. This could be due to internal conflict, economic problems, or underfunded programs. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's Education for All Global Monitoring Report ranks the following countries as having the world's worst educational systems:

Countries with the Lowest Adult Literacy Rates

• Education rankings are sourced from both the annual UN News Best Countries report and the nonprofit organization World Top 20

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Which country ranks first in education?

Which country ranks last in education, frequently asked questions.

• Best Countries for Education - 2023 - US News
• Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above) - World Bank
• World Best Education Systems - Global Citizens for Human Rights
• UNESCO - Global Education Monitoring Reports
• World’s 10 Worst Countries for Education - Global Citizen
• International Education Database - World Top 20

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International comparisons of education

International comparison studies of education including reports of England’s results in OECD PISA, and IEA TIMSS and PIRLS studies.

PISA survey reports

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international survey that evaluates education systems worldwide. It tests the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old pupils and offers insight on characteristics that influence their lives.

• 5 December 2023
• Research and analysis
• 14 January 2020
• 20 May 2021
• 21 November 2017
• 11 September 2015
• 1 April 2014
• 26 April 2012
• 12 October 2011
• 7 December 2010
• Official Statistics

TIMSS and PIRLS reports

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) compare the knowledge of pupils in maths and science at ages 10 and 14, and in reading at age 10.

• 11 April 2024
• 8 December 2020
• 5 December 2017
• 29 November 2016
• 12 November 2012

Other international education comparison studies

• 14 February 2013
• 25 November 2010

Updates to this page

Added 'PISA 2022: national report for England' to PISA survey reports section.

Added 'PIRLS 2021: reading literacy performance in England' to the TIMSS and PIRLS reports section.

Added 'PISA 2018 in England: additional analysis'.

Added 'TIMSS 2019: national report for England'.

Added PISA 2018: national report for England.

Added PIRLS 2016: reading literacy performance in England

Added 'PISA 2015: national report for England' to collection.

Added report named 'TIMSS 2015: national report for England'.

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The World Bank Group is the largest financier of education in the developing world, working in 94 countries and committed to helping them reach SDG4: access to inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion.

For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a  9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling . For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.  Education is further a powerful catalyst to climate action through widespread behavior change and skilling for green transitions.

Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed, as the  2018 World Development Report  (WDR) stressed.

Making smart and effective investments in people’s education is critical for developing the human capital that will end extreme poverty. At the core of this strategy is the need to tackle the learning crisis, put an end to  Learning Poverty , and help youth acquire the advanced cognitive, socioemotional, technical and digital skills they need to succeed in today’s world. 

In low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in  Learning Poverty  (that is, the proportion of 10-year-old children that are unable to read and understand a short age-appropriate text) increased from 57% before the pandemic to an estimated  70%  in 2022.

However, learning is in crisis. More than 70 million more people were pushed into poverty during the COVID pandemic, a billion children lost a year of school , and three years later the learning losses suffered have not been recouped .  If a child cannot read with comprehension by age 10, they are unlikely to become fluent readers. They will fail to thrive later in school and will be unable to power their careers and economies once they leave school.

The effects of the pandemic are expected to be long-lasting. Analysis has already revealed deep losses, with international reading scores declining from 2016 to 2021 by more than a year of schooling.  These losses may translate to a 0.68 percentage point in global GDP growth.  The staggering effects of school closures reach beyond learning. This generation of children could lose a combined total of  US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings  in present value or the equivalent of 17% of today’s global GDP – a sharp rise from the 2021 estimate of a US$17 trillion loss. 

Action is urgently needed now – business as usual will not suffice to heal the scars of the pandemic and will not accelerate progress enough to meet the ambitions of SDG 4. We are urging governments to implement ambitious and aggressive Learning Acceleration Programs to get children back to school, recover lost learning, and advance progress by building better, more equitable and resilient education systems.

Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024

The World Bank’s global education strategy is centered on ensuring learning happens – for everyone, everywhere. Our vision is to ensure that everyone can achieve her or his full potential with access to a quality education and lifelong learning. To reach this, we are helping countries build foundational skills like literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills – the building blocks for all other learning. From early childhood to tertiary education and beyond – we help children and youth acquire the skills they need to thrive in school, the labor market and throughout their lives.

Investing in the world’s most precious resource – people – is paramount to ending poverty on a livable planet.  Our experience across more than 100 countries bears out this robust connection between human capital, quality of life, and economic growth: when countries strategically invest in people and the systems designed to protect and build human capital at scale, they unlock the wealth of nations and the potential of everyone.

Building on this, the World Bank supports resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. We do this by generating and disseminating evidence, ensuring alignment with policymaking processes, and bridging the gap between research and practice.

The World Bank is the largest source of external financing for education in developing countries, with a portfolio of about $26 billion in 94 countries including IBRD, IDA and Recipient-Executed Trust Funds. IDA operations comprise 62% of the education portfolio.

The investment in FCV settings has increased dramatically and now accounts for 26% of our portfolio.

World Bank projects reach at least 425 million students -one-third of students in low- and middle-income countries.

The World Bank’s Approach to Education

Five interrelated pillars of a well-functioning education system underpin the World Bank’s education policy approach:

• Learners are prepared and motivated to learn;
• Teachers are prepared, skilled, and motivated to facilitate learning and skills acquisition;
• Learning resources (including education technology) are available, relevant, and used to improve teaching and learning;
• Schools are safe and inclusive; and
• Education Systems are well-managed, with good implementation capacity and adequate financing.

The Bank is already helping governments design and implement cost-effective programs and tools to build these pillars.

Our Principles:

• We pursue systemic reform supported by political commitment to learning for all children. 
• We focus on equity and inclusion through a progressive path toward achieving universal access to quality education, including children and young adults in fragile or conflict affected areas , those in marginalized and rural communities,  girls and women , displaced populations,  students with disabilities , and other vulnerable groups.
• We focus on results and use evidence to keep improving policy by using metrics to guide improvements.   
• We want to ensure financial commitment commensurate with what is needed to provide basic services to all. 
• We invest wisely in technology so that education systems embrace and learn to harness technology to support their learning objectives.   

Laying the groundwork for the future

Country challenges vary, but there is a menu of options to build forward better, more resilient, and equitable education systems.

Countries are facing an education crisis that requires a two-pronged approach: first, supporting actions to recover lost time through remedial and accelerated learning; and, second, building on these investments for a more equitable, resilient, and effective system.

Recovering from the learning crisis must be a political priority, backed with adequate financing and the resolve to implement needed reforms.  Domestic financing for education over the last two years has not kept pace with the need to recover and accelerate learning. Across low- and lower-middle-income countries, the  average share of education in government budgets fell during the pandemic , and in 2022 it remained below 2019 levels.

The best chance for a better future is to invest in education and make sure each dollar is put toward improving learning.  In a time of fiscal pressure, protecting spending that yields long-run gains – like spending on education – will maximize impact.  We still need more and better funding for education.  Closing the learning gap will require increasing the level, efficiency, and equity of education spending—spending smarter is an imperative.

• Education technology  can be a powerful tool to implement these actions by supporting teachers, children, principals, and parents; expanding accessible digital learning platforms, including radio/ TV / Online learning resources; and using data to identify and help at-risk children, personalize learning, and improve service delivery.

Looking ahead

We must seize this opportunity  to reimagine education in bold ways. Together, we can build forward better more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems for the world’s children and youth.

Accelerating Improvements

Supporting countries in establishing time-bound learning targets and a focused education investment plan, outlining actions and investments geared to achieve these goals.

Launched in 2020, the  Accelerator Program  works with a set of countries to channel investments in education and to learn from each other. The program coordinates efforts across partners to ensure that the countries in the program show improvements in foundational skills at scale over the next three to five years. These investment plans build on the collective work of multiple partners, and leverage the latest evidence on what works, and how best to plan for implementation.  Countries such as Brazil (the state of Ceará) and Kenya have achieved dramatic reductions in learning poverty over the past decade at scale, providing useful lessons, even as they seek to build on their successes and address remaining and new challenges.  

Universalizing Foundational Literacy

Readying children for the future by supporting acquisition of foundational skills – which are the gateway to other skills and subjects.

The  Literacy Policy Package (LPP)   consists of interventions focused specifically on promoting acquisition of reading proficiency in primary school. These include assuring political and technical commitment to making all children literate; ensuring effective literacy instruction by supporting teachers; providing quality, age-appropriate books; teaching children first in the language they speak and understand best; and fostering children’s oral language abilities and love of books and reading.

Advancing skills through TVET and Tertiary

Ensuring that individuals have access to quality education and training opportunities and supporting links to employment.

Tertiary education and skills systems are a driver of major development agendas, including human capital, climate change, youth and women’s empowerment, and jobs and economic transformation. A comprehensive skill set to succeed in the 21st century labor market consists of foundational and higher order skills, socio-emotional skills, specialized skills, and digital skills. Yet most countries continue to struggle in delivering on the promise of skills development. 

The World Bank is supporting countries through efforts that address key challenges including improving access and completion, adaptability, quality, relevance, and efficiency of skills development programs. Our approach is via multiple channels including projects, global goods, as well as the Tertiary Education and Skills Program . Our recent reports including Building Better Formal TVET Systems and STEERing Tertiary Education provide a way forward for how to improve these critical systems.

Addressing Climate Change

Mainstreaming climate education and investing in green skills, research and innovation, and green infrastructure to spur climate action and foster better preparedness and resilience to climate shocks.

Our approach recognizes that education is critical for achieving effective, sustained climate action. At the same time, climate change is adversely impacting education outcomes. Investments in education can play a huge role in building climate resilience and advancing climate mitigation and adaptation. Climate change education gives young people greater awareness of climate risks and more access to tools and solutions for addressing these risks and managing related shocks. Technical and vocational education and training can also accelerate a green economic transformation by fostering green skills and innovation. Greening education infrastructure can help mitigate the impact of heat, pollution, and extreme weather on learning, while helping address climate change. 

Examples of this work are projects in Nigeria (life skills training for adolescent girls), Vietnam (fostering relevant scientific research) , and Bangladesh (constructing and retrofitting schools to serve as cyclone shelters).

Strengthening Measurement Systems

Enabling countries to gather and evaluate information on learning and its drivers more efficiently and effectively.

The World Bank supports initiatives to help countries effectively build and strengthen their measurement systems to facilitate evidence-based decision-making. Examples of this work include:

(1) The  Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) : This tool offers a strong basis for identifying priorities for investment and policy reforms that are suited to each country context by focusing on the three dimensions of practices, policies, and politics.

• Highlights gaps between what the evidence suggests is effective in promoting learning and what is happening in practice in each system; and
• Allows governments to track progress as they act to close the gaps.

The GEPD has been implemented in 13 education systems already – Peru, Rwanda, Jordan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sierra Leone, Niger, Gabon, Jordan and Chad – with more expected by the end of 2024.

(2)  Learning Assessment Platform (LeAP) : LeAP is a one-stop shop for knowledge, capacity-building tools, support for policy dialogue, and technical staff expertise to support student achievement measurement and national assessments for better learning.

Supporting Successful Teachers

Helping systems develop the right selection, incentives, and support to the professional development of teachers.

Currently, the World Bank Education Global Practice has over 160 active projects supporting over 18 million teachers worldwide, about a third of the teacher population in low- and middle-income countries. In 12 countries alone, these projects cover 16 million teachers, including all primary school teachers in Ethiopia and Turkey, and over 80% in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

A World Bank-developed classroom observation tool, Teach, was designed to capture the quality of teaching in low- and middle-income countries. It is now 3.6 million students.

While Teach helps identify patterns in teacher performance, Coach leverages these insights to support teachers to improve their teaching practice through hands-on in-service teacher professional development (TPD).

Our recent report on Making Teacher Policy Work proposes a practical framework to uncover the black box of effective teacher policy and discusses the factors that enable their scalability and sustainability.

 Supporting Education Finance Systems

Strengthening country financing systems to mobilize resources for education and make better use of their investments in education.

Our approach is to bring together multi-sectoral expertise to engage with ministries of education and finance and other stakeholders to develop and implement effective and efficient public financial management systems; build capacity to monitor and evaluate education spending, identify financing bottlenecks, and develop interventions to strengthen financing systems; build the evidence base on global spending patterns and the magnitude and causes of spending inefficiencies; and develop diagnostic tools as public goods to support country efforts.

Working in Fragile, Conflict, and Violent (FCV) Contexts

The massive and growing global challenge of having so many children living in conflict and violent situations requires a response at the same scale and scope. Our education engagement in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) context, which stands at US$5.35 billion, has grown rapidly in recent years, reflecting the ever-increasing importance of the FCV agenda in education. Indeed, these projects now account for more than 25% of the World Bank education portfolio.

Education is crucial to minimizing the effects of fragility and displacement on the welfare of youth and children in the short-term and preventing the emergence of violent conflict in the long-term. 

Support to Countries Throughout the Education Cycle

Our support to countries covers the entire learning cycle, to help shape resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. 

The ongoing  Supporting  Egypt  Education Reform project , 2018-2025, supports transformational reforms of the Egyptian education system, by improving teaching and learning conditions in public schools. The World Bank has invested $500 million in the project focused on increasing access to quality kindergarten, enhancing the capacity of teachers and education leaders, developing a reliable student assessment system, and introducing the use of modern technology for teaching and learning. Specifically, the share of Egyptian 10-year-old students, who could read and comprehend at the global minimum proficiency level, increased to 45 percent in 2021.

In  Nigeria , the $75 million  Edo  Basic Education Sector and Skills Transformation (EdoBESST)  project, running from 2020-2024, is focused on improving teaching and learning in basic education. Under the project, which covers 97 percent of schools in the state, there is a strong focus on incorporating digital technologies for teachers. They were equipped with handheld tablets with structured lesson plans for their classes. Their coaches use classroom observation tools to provide individualized feedback. Teacher absence has reduced drastically because of the initiative. Over 16,000 teachers were trained through the project, and the introduction of technology has also benefited students.

Through the $235 million  School Sector Development Program  in  Nepal  (2017-2022), the number of children staying in school until Grade 12 nearly tripled, and the number of out-of-school children fell by almost seven percent. During the pandemic, innovative approaches were needed to continue education. Mobile phone penetration is high in the country. More than four in five households in Nepal have mobile phones. The project supported an educational service that made it possible for children with phones to connect to local radio that broadcast learning programs.

From 2017-2023, the $50 million  Strengthening of State Universities  in  Chile  project has made strides to improve quality and equity at state universities. The project helped reduce dropout: the third-year dropout rate fell by almost 10 percent from 2018-2022, keeping more students in school.

The World Bank’s first  Program-for-Results financing in education  was through a $202 million project in  Tanzania , that ran from 2013-2021. The project linked funding to results and aimed to improve education quality. It helped build capacity, and enhanced effectiveness and efficiency in the education sector. Through the project, learning outcomes significantly improved alongside an unprecedented expansion of access to education for children in Tanzania. From 2013-2019, an additional 1.8 million students enrolled in primary schools. In 2019, the average reading speed for Grade 2 students rose to 22.3 words per minute, up from 17.3 in 2017. The project laid the foundation for the ongoing $500 million  BOOST project , which supports over 12 million children to enroll early, develop strong foundational skills, and complete a quality education.

The $40 million  Cambodia  Secondary Education Improvement project , which ran from 2017-2022, focused on strengthening school-based management, upgrading teacher qualifications, and building classrooms in Cambodia, to improve learning outcomes, and reduce student dropout at the secondary school level. The project has directly benefited almost 70,000 students in 100 target schools, and approximately 2,000 teachers and 600 school administrators received training.

The World Bank is co-financing the $152.80 million  Yemen  Restoring Education and Learning Emergency project , running from 2020-2024, which is implemented through UNICEF, WFP, and Save the Children. It is helping to maintain access to basic education for many students, improve learning conditions in schools, and is working to strengthen overall education sector capacity. In the time of crisis, the project is supporting teacher payments and teacher training, school meals, school infrastructure development, and the distribution of learning materials and school supplies. To date, almost 600,000 students have benefited from these interventions.

The $87 million  Providing an Education of Quality in  Haiti  project supported approximately 380 schools in the Southern region of Haiti from 2016-2023. Despite a highly challenging context of political instability and recurrent natural disasters, the project successfully supported access to education for students. The project provided textbooks, fresh meals, and teacher training support to 70,000 students, 3,000 teachers, and 300 school directors. It gave tuition waivers to 35,000 students in 118 non-public schools. The project also repaired 19 national schools damaged by the 2021 earthquake, which gave 5,500 students safe access to their schools again.

In 2013, just 5% of the poorest households in  Uzbekistan  had children enrolled in preschools. Thanks to the  Improving Pre-Primary and General Secondary Education Project , by July 2019, around 100,000 children will have benefitted from the half-day program in 2,420 rural kindergartens, comprising around 49% of all preschool educational institutions, or over 90% of rural kindergartens in the country.

In addition to working closely with governments in our client countries, the World Bank also works at the global, regional, and local levels with a range of technical partners, including foundations, non-profit organizations, bilaterals, and other multilateral organizations. Some examples of our most recent global partnerships include:

UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  Coalition for Foundational Learning

The World Bank is working closely with UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the  Coalition for Foundational Learning  to advocate and provide technical support to ensure foundational learning.  The World Bank works with these partners to promote and endorse the  Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning , a global network of countries committed to halving the global share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 by 2030.

Australian Aid, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Echida Giving, FCDO, German Cooperation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Conrad Hilton Foundation, LEGO Foundation, Porticus, USAID: Early Learning Partnership

The Early Learning Partnership (ELP) is a multi-donor trust fund, housed at the World Bank.  ELP leverages World Bank strengths—a global presence, access to policymakers and strong technical analysis—to improve early learning opportunities and outcomes for young children around the world.

We help World Bank teams and countries get the information they need to make the case to invest in Early Childhood Development (ECD), design effective policies and deliver impactful programs. At the country level, ELP grants provide teams with resources for early seed investments that can generate large financial commitments through World Bank finance and government resources. At the global level, ELP research and special initiatives work to fill knowledge gaps, build capacity and generate public goods.

UNESCO, UNICEF:  Learning Data Compact

UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning data gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries from monitoring the quality of their education systems and assessing if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a  Learning Data Compact , a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS):   Learning Poverty Indicator

Aimed at measuring and urging attention to foundational literacy as a prerequisite to achieve SDG4, this partnership was launched in 2019 to help countries strengthen their learning assessment systems, better monitor what students are learning in internationally comparable ways and improve the breadth and quality of global data on education.

FCDO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  EdTech Hub

Supported by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the EdTech Hub is aimed at improving the quality of ed-tech investments. The Hub launched a rapid response Helpdesk service to provide just-in-time advisory support to 70 low- and middle-income countries planning education technology and remote learning initiatives.

MasterCard Foundation

Our Tertiary Education and Skills  global program, launched with support from the Mastercard Foundation, aims to prepare youth and adults for the future of work and society by improving access to relevant, quality, equitable reskilling and post-secondary education opportunities.  It is designed to reframe, reform, and rebuild tertiary education and skills systems for the digital and green transformation.

Choosing our Future: Education for Climate Action

Bridging the AI divide: Breaking down barriers to ensure women’s leadership and participation in the Fifth Industrial Revolution

Common challenges and tailored solutions: How policymakers are strengthening early learning systems across the world

Compulsory education boosts learning outcomes and climate action

Areas of focus.

Data & Measurement

Early Childhood Development

Financing Education

Foundational Learning

Fragile, Conflict & Violent Contexts

Girls’ Education

Inclusive Education

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Tertiary Education

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Collapse and Recovery: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It

BROCHURES & FACT SHEETS

Flyer: Education Factsheet - May 2024

Publication: Realizing Education's Promise: A World Bank Retrospective – August 2023

Flyer: Education and Climate Change - November 2022

Brochure: Learning Losses - October 2022

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Global Education Newsletter - June 2024

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Learning Can't Wait: A commitment to education in Latin America and the ...

A new IDB-World Bank report describes challenges and priorities to address the educational crisis.

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• 6 Innovative Ways Different Countries and Schools Have Dealt With Common Student Problems

You’d be surprised, then, at some of the educational innovations made possible by going back to the drawing board. In this article, we look at some of the alternative education systems and revolutionary ways of doing things with which various countries and schools have addressed common student problems, and show you the potential for improved academic performance to be had by breaking the mould.

1. Finland: a learning environment free from academic pressure

Finland’s education system has been crowned the best in the world, its children consistently ranking among the highest-achievers for mathematics, reading and science alike. It achieved these impressive results through major educational reforms forty years ago, despite spending 30% less per student than the US – which is powerful testimony to the effectiveness of the very different model of education the country has come up with. While most education systems are centred on evaluation, with frequent testing, Finland’s 100% state-funded system goes very much against the grain.

So what makes Finland’s education system so different yet so successful? For a start, Finnish children don’t start formal education until they’re seven (compared with four or five in most countries). They do virtually no homework or exams until they’re well into their teens, and they’re not tested at all for their first six years. This lack of competition and academic pressure allows children to flourish, teaching them how to learn, rather than how to pass exams. The only mandatory test Finnish children take is at age 16, at the end of their time at secondary school. In Finland, children of all abilities are taught in the same class, which allows less academically gifted children to learn from the brighter ones – with the result that the gap between the highest and lowest achievers is the smallest in the world. Yet more proof that Finland is immensely switched on when it comes to education lies in their small science class sizes, which are limited to sixteen students at a time, so that all pupils can participate in scientific experiments. And this superb learning environment clearly works: 66% of students go on to college, which is the highest rate in Europe. They’re evidently doing something very right.

2. The UK and Canada: Raising alertness levels and reducing absenteeism by allowing teenagers to sleep in

An unusual solution to the problem of teenagers needing more sleep hit the headlines in the UK earlier this year, when a school in London became the first to allow teenagers to have a later start. Research found that allowing teenagers to start school just 25 minutes later raised alertness levels, meaning that the pupils were better able to concentrate on learning without having to resort to raising their caffeine intake. The UCL Academy in London moved the start time from 9am to 10am, which made them more alert: proof, if any teenager needed it, that a lie-in isn’t just a luxury – it’s a necessity. It’s not the first time that a later school start time has been advocated, however; back in 2009 a school in Kent moved the start time for sleepy teenagers to 11.30am, with the result, according to the headteacher, that “Their punctuality and attendance has improved, their questioning and answering is better because they are more alert and the pace of lessons is often much quicker”. A school on Tyneside saw absenteeism drop by a third while academic performance increased after it implemented later start times, while in Canada, Toronto’s Eastern Commerce Collegiate was one of a number of Canadian schools to implement a similar shift in start time for the same reason. While such changes have yet to be written into the education systems of these countries as a whole, the success with which these trend-setting schools have been met suggests that it’s worthy of much wider consideration.

3. China: An education system that cultivates amazing maths skills

In the UK, mathematics is traditionally one of the most hated subjects among school pupils of all ages. On the other hand, Chinese students are famous for their impressive mathematics skills, and it’s clearly a country in which maths is in no way the maligned subject it’s thought of in the UK. So why the difference? It’s important to address this question with Chinese cultural expectations in mind, as this has a clear impact on attitudes towards education as a whole, not just maths. The One Child Policy, for instance, has meant that parents place high demands on their children and expect them to achieve strong academic results across the board. However, maths is a particularly highly regarded subject, and the expectation is there that children will be comfortable in it and that they will work hard to be so. The country has achieved its impressive maths record through its different teaching methods and approach to maths to those of the UK. China places an emphasis on practising maths and on learning the concepts and logic behind problems, meaning that children are equipped with the necessary knowledge to approach unfamiliar problems more successfully. Teachers illustrate problems using examples that range in difficulty, exposing children to a variety of mathematical scenarios. The whole class is expected to engage in learning as a group, unlike the UK’s focus on attention to the individual, and children are expected to work out solutions to mathematical problems in front of the class, without the concern for public humiliation we have in the UK these days. Interestingly, pupils are also taught to use the right mathematical language, with marks deducted in exams if they do not. Chinese children typically spend around 15 hours a week working on their maths, a combination of teaching time and homework, and studying mathematics is compulsory until they reach 17 or 18. Towards the end of secondary school there are different maths options for those who wish to take science subjects at undergraduate level and those who wish to take humanities subjects, but they all have to take maths regardless of what degree they wish to pursue; a rare exception may be made for drama students, but that’s it. The teachers are superb, too; they’re specialists in their subjects even at primary school level, and devote lots of time to their own professional development. All this adds up to the ability to produce a nation of people famous for their mathematical aptitude, and there’s surely plenty to be learned from this here in the UK.

4. The Netherlands: “Education for a New Era”

If you’re among those who think that it’s about time that the potential of 21st century technology was properly exploited for educational purposes, you’ll enjoy this next innovation in education. Trust the cool Dutch to come up with a revolutionary new teaching model fit for the digitised world. An educational model called “ Education for a New Era ” (known as “O4NT” in Dutch) has seen the opening of eleven “iPad Schools” or “Steve Jobs Schools” in Holland, in which iPads and apps replace traditional resources such as books and chalkboards. Proponents of this new concept argue that this not only acknowledges the very different world in which today’s students grow up, but it also better prepares students for the world beyond school by equipping them with the skills they need to take advantage of today’s (and tomorrow’s) technology. For these schools, technology such as the iPad is not a distraction; it plays a central role in the learning process, and the strong educational value of the iPad is exploited to the full. The present generation is already well-versed in the use of such devices, and these schools recognise that such skills can be put to good use to aid the learning process. The iPad is transformed into a virtual classroom, and, since each child has access to their own iPad, they effectively receive one-to-one tuition, meaning that it caters well to the needs of the individual child. These schools also do away with traditional age group classes; instead, children are grouped into two age brackets, for those aged four to seven and those aged eight to twelve.

Because teaching takes place via the iPad, parents can follow what their child is doing from home via an app, and each child has access to a portfolio of their own achievements. Pupils of these schools still go to a physical school building, in which they are taught in rooms for different subjects, take part in educational activities and can socialise and learn with other children, but there’s also a virtual school yard or playground accessed via the iPad. Rather than standing at the front of the classroom disseminating knowledge, teachers in these schools become “coaches”, guiding children as they direct their own learning. This intriguing educational model ultimately also hopes to provide a solution to a problem we’re used to hearing about in the UK, which is that of parents taking their children out of school during term time to go on holiday (for which parents are now being handed fines). Education in the Steve Jobs Schools can take place 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year, which means that school hours and holidays are very flexible, leaving parents free to decide for themselves what hours their children should study, or when to take them on holiday. Holland isn’t quite there with this yet, but this is certainly amongst plans being discussed, and it surely can’t be long before technology is similarly embraced much more widely than it is currently.

5. The UK’s Studio Schools: Education rooted in the real world

Here in the UK, a new breed of state school has been developed called the Studio School. They’re Government-funded, but their approach to education could hardly be more different from the approach of traditional state schools, with a focus on creativity, the teaching of life skills, and working in small teams on practical projects, as opposed to pupils simply sitting listening to a teacher do the talking. Designed to feel more like the workplace, with work placements alongside traditional academic subjects and 9-5 opening hours, this new mode of teaching is meant to ensure that pupils’ education is rooted in the real world, better equipping them for life outside school.

6. Barefoot College: Education for the developing world

Barefoot College is an organisation dedicated to providing an education for the rural poor in the world’s ‘Least Developed Countries’. As well as running projects such as the delivery of clean water and solar energy, Barefoot College is committed to educating those living in poverty and to empowering women. Its classes are held in the evening to allow children to work during the day, with teaching coming from the villagers themselves, for whom the organisation provides the necessary training. This may not seem particularly relevant to the advanced education systems of developed countries, but the approach taken by Barefoot College is unusual and potentially has a valuable point to make. The College believes in tapping into the innate wisdom found within the people of impoverished rural communities; “literacy”, they say, “is what one acquires in school, but ‘education’ is what one gains from family, traditions, culture, environment and personal experiences.” Thus, in a radical departure from traditional schools, “everyone is considered an education resource, the teacher as well as the student and the literate as well as illiterate.” It may not offer certificates and qualifications in the way we know them, and its lessons may not look like those we’d recognise in the UK, but this extraordinary organisation strips education to the fundamentals and gives every individual the chance to develop themselves and improve their lives through practical education, of which literacy is only one aspect. Since 1975, the College has educated 75,000 people in a system that deserves to be much more widely applied. From Finland’s approach to academic pressure to China’s lack of maths hatred, and from the UK’s solution to sleepy students and absenteeism to Holland’s approach to 21st century education, we’ve now seen that there’s much to be admired in the innovative ways in which a selection of countries have tackled common educational problems. There are many lessons to be learned from these unusual modes of education, not least that the traditional methods aren’t always the most effective, nor necessarily the best way of preparing students for life.

Image credits: banner ; Finland ; asleep ; China ; Netherlands ; iPad ; Zambia .

Four of the biggest problems facing education—and four trends that could make a difference

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic , which was a follow up to,  Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About , which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of the private sector, education technology, inequality, and pedagogy.

Unfortunately, we think the four biggest problems facing education today in developing countries are the same ones we have identified in the last decades .

1. The learning crisis was made worse by COVID-19 school closures

Low quality instruction is a major constraint and prior to COVID-19, the learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was 57% (6 out of 10 children could not read and understand basic texts by age 10). More dramatic is the case of Sub-Saharan Africa with a rate even higher at 86%. Several analyses show that the impact of the pandemic on student learning was significant, leaving students in low- and middle-income countries way behind in mathematics, reading and other subjects.  Some argue that learning poverty may be close to 70% after the pandemic , with a substantial long-term negative effect in future earnings. This generation could lose around $21 trillion in future salaries, with the vulnerable students affected the most.

2. Countries are not paying enough attention to early childhood care and education (ECCE)

At the pre-school level about two-thirds of countries do not have a proper legal framework to provide free and compulsory pre-primary education. According to UNESCO, only a minority of countries, mostly high-income, were making timely progress towards SDG4 benchmarks on early childhood indicators prior to the onset of COVID-19. And remember that ECCE is not only preparation for primary school. It can be the foundation for emotional wellbeing and learning throughout life; one of the best investments a country can make.

3. There is an inadequate supply of high-quality teachers

Low quality teaching is a huge problem and getting worse in many low- and middle-income countries.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 . In addition, in many countries teachers are formally trained and as such qualified, but do not have the minimum pedagogical training. Globally, teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects are the biggest shortfalls.

4. Decision-makers are not implementing evidence-based or pro-equity policies that guarantee solid foundations

It is difficult to understand the continued focus on non-evidence-based policies when there is so much that we know now about what works. Two factors contribute to this problem. One is the short tenure that top officials have when leading education systems. Examples of countries where ministers last less than one year on average are plentiful. The second and more worrisome deals with the fact that there is little attention given to empirical evidence when designing education policies.

To help improve on these four fronts, we see four supporting trends:

1. Neuroscience should be integrated into education policies

Policies considering neuroscience can help ensure that students get proper attention early to support brain development in the first 2-3 years of life. It can also help ensure that children learn to read at the proper age so that they will be able to acquire foundational skills to learn during the primary education cycle and from there on. Inputs like micronutrients, early child stimulation for gross and fine motor skills, speech and language and playing with other children before the age of three are cost-effective ways to get proper development. Early grade reading, using the pedagogical suggestion by the Early Grade Reading Assessment model, has improved learning outcomes in many low- and middle-income countries. We now have the tools to incorporate these advances into the teaching and learning system with AI , ChatGPT , MOOCs and online tutoring.

2. Reversing learning losses at home and at school

There is a real need to address the remaining and lingering losses due to school closures because of COVID-19.  Most students living in households with incomes under the poverty line in the developing world, roughly the bottom 80% in low-income countries and the bottom 50% in middle-income countries, do not have the minimum conditions to learn at home . These students do not have access to the internet, and, often, their parents or guardians do not have the necessary schooling level or the time to help them in their learning process. Connectivity for poor households is a priority. But learning continuity also requires the presence of an adult as a facilitator—a parent, guardian, instructor, or community worker assisting the student during the learning process while schools are closed or e-learning is used.

To recover from the negative impact of the pandemic, the school system will need to develop at the student level: (i) active and reflective learning; (ii) analytical and applied skills; (iii) strong self-esteem; (iv) attitudes supportive of cooperation and solidarity; and (v) a good knowledge of the curriculum areas. At the teacher (instructor, facilitator, parent) level, the system should aim to develop a new disposition toward the role of teacher as a guide and facilitator. And finally, the system also needs to increase parental involvement in the education of their children and be active part in the solution of the children’s problems. The Escuela Nueva Learning Circles or the Pratham Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) are models that can be used.

3. Use of evidence to improve teaching and learning

We now know more about what works at scale to address the learning crisis. To help countries improve teaching and learning and make teaching an attractive profession, based on available empirical world-wide evidence , we need to improve its status, compensation policies and career progression structures; ensure pre-service education includes a strong practicum component so teachers are well equipped to transition and perform effectively in the classroom; and provide high-quality in-service professional development to ensure they keep teaching in an effective way. We also have the tools to address learning issues cost-effectively. The returns to schooling are high and increasing post-pandemic. But we also have the cost-benefit tools to make good decisions, and these suggest that structured pedagogy, teaching according to learning levels (with and without technology use) are proven effective and cost-effective .

4. The role of the private sector

When properly regulated the private sector can be an effective education provider, and it can help address the specific needs of countries. Most of the pedagogical models that have received international recognition come from the private sector. For example, the recipients of the Yidan Prize on education development are from the non-state sector experiences (Escuela Nueva, BRAC, edX, Pratham, CAMFED and New Education Initiative). In the context of the Artificial Intelligence movement, most of the tools that will revolutionize teaching and learning come from the private sector (i.e., big data, machine learning, electronic pedagogies like OER-Open Educational Resources, MOOCs, etc.). Around the world education technology start-ups are developing AI tools that may have a good potential to help improve quality of education .

After decades asking the same questions on how to improve the education systems of countries, we, finally, are finding answers that are very promising.  Governments need to be aware of this fact.

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Consultant, Education Sector, World Bank

Senior Adviser, Education

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