22nd May 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The UK is now in second place among European education systems according to a new global league table. The table includes higher education in its data, and puts the UK second in Europe and 6th worldwide. The UK was beaten to the top spots by South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Finland. The table, compiled by education and publishing firm Pearson, included a range of data including higher education, which is thought to account for the UK’s higher position in international league tables than previous results which examined primary and secondary education only.
The table is based on amalgamations of data including the OECD’s Pisa tests, studies on trends in Maths and Science, the progress in international reading literacy study and higher education graduation rates. The UK performs particularly well in terms of graduation rates, which made up for its recently much publicised poor performance in the OECD’s Pisa tests. The data shows that without the graduation rates being included, the UK would fail to make the top 20. The report’s authors highlighted the fact that teachers and education were prized highly in high performing countries.
Analysis of the data suggests that the success of Asian countries is due to their culture, in which teachers are highly respected, and students, families and schools all take joint responsibility for education. However, the report also questions the educational methods of some top performing countries, noting that students were often made to learn hundreds of facts and figures by rote. The authors suggested that education systems should also make room to encourage creativity. They concluded that greater conversations between countries are required in order that educationalists could learn from one another.