Asia Tops

Biggest Global School Rankings

Pisa (I), May 2015 - The biggest-ever global school rankings have been published, with Asian countries in the top five places and African countries at the bottom. Singapore heads the table, followed by Hong Kong. The UK is in 20th place, among higher-achieving European countries, with the US in 28th.

The OECD economic think tank says the comparisons, based on test scores in 76 countries, show the link between education and economic growth. "This is the first time we have a truly global scale of the quality of education," said the OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher.

"The idea is to give more countries, rich and poor, access to comparing themselves against the world's education leaders, to discover their relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see what the long-term economic gains from improved quality in schooling could be for them," he said.

Rankings based on maths and science, at age 15

1. Singapore

2. Hong Kong

3. South Korea

4. Japan (joint)

4. Taiwan (joint)

6. Finland

7. Estonia

8. Switzerland

9. Netherlands

10. Canada

11. Poland

12. Vietnam

13. Germany

14. Australia

15. Ireland

16. Belgium

17. New Zealand

18. Slovenia

19. Austria

20. United Kingdom

21. Czech Republic

22. Denmark

23. France

24. Latvia

25. Norway

26. Luxembourg

27. Spain

28. Italy (joint)

28. United States (joint)

30. Portugal

31. Lithuania

32. Hungary

33. Iceland

34. Russia

35. Sweden

36. Croatia

37. Slovak Republic

38. Ukraine

39. Israel

40. Greece

41. Turkey

42. Serbia

43. Bulgaria

44. Romania

45. UAE

46. Cyprus

47. Thailand

48. Chile

49. Kazakhstan

50. Armenia

Asia Tops