In the world’s biggest education test, one small country has raced past all the others

Jenny Anderson/Amy X. Wang Quartz December 06, 2016

Every three years the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tests 15-year-olds around the world on their math, science and reading abilities.

Then, countries around the world celebrate, or panic.

For example, in 2000, the world learned Finland was a global education superpower (that was news to many in Finland too, according to some). Somehow the country managed to start kids in school at 7, have short school days, assign little homework, test kids infrequently, and still eke out amazing results.

Finland’s schools became a top tourist attraction, as educators around the globe flocked to understand their secret (basically, stringent selection of teachers, who are given autonomy to teach).

But what goes up sometimes comes down. In the OECD’s latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking, for 2015, Finland has fallen from its perch (though it remains a very high performer), and Singapore trounced the rest of the world on math, reading and science.

PISA 2015 includes data from 72 countries and economies, including all 35 OECD members and 37 other countries and economies. In some cases, regions stand in for countries: Taiwan’s results are based on testing in Taipei, in Argentina only the city of Buenos Aires participates, and in mainland China, four provinces — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong (B-S-J-G) participate.

In addition, some countries paid to have subnational regions tested separately; the US, for instance, asked for rankings for Massachusetts and North Carolina. Approximately 540,000 students took the test, which aims to capture what students know toward the end of their formal schooling, and how well they can apply that knowledge more broadly.

Here’s a snapshot of the winners and losers. We present these with the obvious caveat that the sum of an education is not a score on a test; read here, for instance, about how teachers worldwide are focusing on other skills, like agency and empathy, to create a more rounded education.

Results

Singapore takes the top dog award. Over the past three years, it has gained in every single area. And its scores utterly smoke every one else’s:

In addition to Singapore, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, and Macao were the only places where at least four out of five 15-year-old students have mastered the OECD’s baseline level of proficiency in science, reading and mathematics.

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