I could be very confused if I took at face value everything I was told in articles such as this. I’m not quite sure how the Pearson Group has arrived at its league table. Apart from a few nebulous statements:
“…the intention is to provide a more multi-dimensional view of educational achievement”
“The rankings combine international test results and data such as graduation rates…”
But where detail is shown the criteria used seem not very appropriate to me to arrive at a relative measure of education systems. For example, one mentioned is “… such as how many people go on to university.”. Not very helpful. A nation could send 100% of its people to university and they could all emerge no more educated that when they entered.
This article, from the World Literacy Foundation:
http://www.worldliteracyfoundation.org/Media/25-1-12.html
suggests that one in five adults in the UK is “functionally illiterate“. This lines up quite well with my personal experience of others and is perhaps a better measure of achievement in providing decent education.
But this list from Wiki suggets otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
This says that 99% of adults in the UK are literate. But for some strange reason, whilst the definition of literacy for most nations is “age 15 and over can read and write” (which I would suggest is a fairly good definition), for the UK it is “age 15 and over has completed five or more years of schooling” - a very different proposition indeed.
Furthermore, it is not stated whether the Pearson study for the UK concentrates on just the State sector or encompasses all schools. If the latter the results would be considerably skewed because whilst the State sector educates some 93% of the population I would be surprised if anybody emerged from a private education as “functionally illiterate”.
If the UK is truly 6th best in the developed world at educating its young then I am astonished. 93% of pupils attend schools in a system that is often at best inadequate and, in some of the worst examples, simply unfit for purpose. But of course over 93% of the 5.2m GCSE examinations this year resulted in a pass, so there may be something in it. The fact that I cannot quite square that with the notion that 20% of those eligible to sit them cannot adequately read and write may mean that I have to go back to school.
The Pearson Group also owns the Financial Times and the Penguin publishing group and was owner, until 2000 of the Lazard financial group. So Education is just one of its interests - a minority one at that - and their involvement consists mainly of selling books and biros to anybody who wants them. So no, jake, I won’t be joining in the celebrations. At least not until the Pearson Group’s “findings” are a little more clear.
As an aside, sp, these are not “the people who are going to be funding my state pension in a few years,”. You are funding your State pension through the Tax and National Insurance contributions you are making during your working life. It is scarcely your fault that successive governments have seen fit to run pension scheme as some sort of glorified Ponzi scheme. But it suits their purpose perfectly to have you believe that they do.