Across just about every first world country on earth, education is a primary part of life and a large concern of the government. It should go without saying that a successful educational system is incredibly important to the successful future of a country. A well-educated populous will help a country to be more stable economically and politically. Due to the importance of education, rankings are created on a regular basis based on the quality of a country’s education system. Given its status one would expect America to excel in these rankings, being a well-established and prominent country globally. We fall in at #14. Certainly not a bad ranking given the amount of countries in the world, but not exactly the glamorous top five spot you might expect, so why do we place so low in the ranks? What do other countries do that we don’t? What differences lead these other top 13 countries to succeed moreso than us? Well, the simple answer would be that it varies from country to country, but to go into more detail we’ll look at a few of the front running countries on the list and compare them to America.
Germany comes in at #12, and while it only takes a small lead on America in its ranking, the country has a unique educational system which we could easily label as the source of their relative success. The most notable difference between America and Germany educationally would be the way their school system is structured. One criticism that the American system receives regularly would be its extremely expensive college system. While, yes, scholarships do exist, in almost all cases someone who wants to further his/her education in America has to pay a large sum of money, an amount some people simply can’t pay. In Germany however, the system works differently. After grammar school, schools split into “Hauptschule,” “Realschule,” and “Gymnasium,” schools aimed at particular students, separated by skill level and ambition. Hauptschule focus on students with average and below marks, students who don’t plan on going to a university and rather plan on moving straight to the work force. These schools focus on basic education, and students graduate younger. Realschule is more middling, focusing on students who may choose to go to a university afterwards. Realschule education is more rigorous than Hauptschule, focusing on a broader range of subjects and lasting slightly longer. The highest level of school in Germany is Gymnasium, which are comparable to high level boarding schools. Gymnasium take students with well above average marks, and all students who graduate from a Gymnasium are able to take a test to get into a university. These schools are geared towards students going for more advanced jobs that require going to college. It’s this more advanced structure, with schools geared towards students of different goals and skill levels, which help Germany, achieve a higher level of success, and a higher rank than us.
Currently holding the #2 spot in the rankings is Japan. Unlike Germany, Japan doesn’t have some vastly different system than the US, in fact, the general structure of schools themselves are more or less the same; 6 years of grammar school, 3 in middle school (which is common in many places), and 3 in high school. The notable difference with the system itself would be the way a person chooses which school in which you enroll. All schools cost money, public or private, and choices are less cut and dry. Private schools are much more popular, and students often have a choice between many different schools, each with different levels of prestige, and with different standards to get into. It’s not necessarily dissimilar to the way things work here, it’s just more common — students are often worried about getting to their high school of choice. What’s arguably the biggest factor in pushing the Japanese rank to #2 has less to do with the school system itself and more to do with culture. Generally speaking, Asian culture tends to put much, much more stress on the importance of education, often from childhood, children are told that a good education is necessary for success. Education is more strenuous on the students, many taking cram school alongside regular school to do as well as they can. The content is general more difficult than it is in the US. Another cultural difference would be the status of teachers. Teachers in Japan tend to hold a more respected status in society, for the most part they’re very professional and held in high regard, and teachers also have higher pay usually. All of these factors lead to students who are more driven and well prepared for school, and teachers more prepared to teach them, and therefore a higher world ranking.
Lastly, there’s Finland, at rank #5. Finland’s education system is widely known for being a bit of an outlier. Compared to the skill divided school system of Germany, Finland’s schools don’t divide classes based on skill level. Students of varying levels of intelligence are taught together in Finland. Compared to the taxing and strict education system in Japan and other Asian countries, Finland’s system is incredibly lax. Most Finnish schools let their students out earlier, and have more breaks and shorter classes; most schools don’t even give homework! The educational guidelines imposed upon schools by the government are also much more general than most countries, allowing for schools and teachers to do what they feel is best, and only imposing one standardized test on students compared to the several used in most other countries. Rather than forcing its students to do well by putting tons of pressure on them, or making sure separate students based on skill level, Finland forgoes these and finds another route to success. Students are encouraged more often to learn in Finland, not pressured or forced, supported. Early grades have been described as “learning to learn,” teaching students how to do their best in school, how to enjoy it and achieve as much as they can. Finland is also filled with stories of super-devoted teachers taking unheard of amounts of time to help their students who are having trouble succeed. Of course, that’s not say this doesn’t happen here, but it’s a much more prevalent part of a teacher’s job in Finland, having the time and resources to help a student succeed, often with hours of one-on-one tutoring. Thanks to the more lax nature of the system, students are often more receptive to learning. If Finland proves anything, it’s that there’s more than one route to a successful educational system.
The largest thing we can take out of these systems would be their focus on pushing the student. These countries have found alternatives to dividing schools in a way that allows the student to go as far as they can, having a culture that values education highly, or having a school system that supports individual students without overwhelming them. Especially in the cases of Japan and Finland, teachers are held in high regard culturally (often put on the same level as doctors and lawyers), and often earning much higher wages than they do in the US. We also see that the countries that succeed tend to be the ones who push students from a young age, Germany and the US fall below Finland and most Asian countries, most of which put a value on learning and doing well educationally from a young age. I think that we can learn the most from Finland, who easily have the most different education system from us. It’s impossible to say exactly what can help propel the US higher on the education rankings, but I think it’s important to acknowledge what those countries doing better than we are doing differently.