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What are the best practices of best education systems globally?

Education: It’s True Purpose

Five top education systems of the world

The top 5 education systems across the world espouse some common patterns that credit its performance. All of them have made education a top priority nationally, the teaching profession is highly sought, competitive and requires continuous learning. Teachers are respected and have a lot of autonomy, systems have a good balance of school autonomy with focus on decentralization. Furthermore there is a lot of focus on equity and the belief that all students (irrespective of their socio-economic background) can perform equally well.

Canada – a model for integration

1. highest-achieving countries in the 2015 round of PISA tests, ranked third for reading and in the top 10 for mathematics and science.
2. emphasis on equity and its ability to elicit excellent results from students of different social backgrounds, including students with an immigrant background. PISA results suggest that within three years of arrival, the children of new immigrants are scoring as high as their nonimmigrant schoolmates.

3. It integrates content from different cultures into the curriculum,so that students learn early on how to see the world from different perspectives.

4. The education system is run at the level of provinces and territories, with local ministers running regional school systems. Canada has a system of dispersed responsibility, which still seems to deliver. It shows, to a certain extent, that success can be achieved without a single national strategy. Rather, the local approaches, which can be distinctive, move broadly in the same direction.

5. Young people in Canada are more likely than students almost anywhere else in the world to read for pleasure.

6. entry into the teaching profession in Canada is selective – and better-quality (and better-paid) teachers tend to get better student results.

7. Canada’s support for new arrivals and efforts to make sure that they are able to integrate. There is extra help for language learning and support for children with special needs. The education system is able to find the balance between respecting different cultures and helping establish a common Canadian identity.

Finland: Independence and agency

1. This is a system where students spend less time in school than is observed in many of the highly competitive Asian systems, where there is little homework
2. School inspections have been abolished.

3. Finnish system is based on the assumption that disadvantaged students can also succeed in school, and that all schools, no matter where they are located, should be of high quality

4. The education system is run at the level of provinces and territories, with local ministers running regional school systems. Canada has a system of dispersed responsibility, which still seems to deliver. It shows, to a certain extent, that success can be achieved without a single national strategy. Rather, the local approaches, which can be distinctive, move broadly in the same direction.

5. Young people in Canada are more likely than students almost anywhere else in the world to read for pleasure.

6. entry into the teaching profession in Canada is selective – and better-quality (and better-paid) teachers tend to get better student results.

7. Canada’s support for new arrivals and efforts to make sure that they are able to integrate. There is extra help for language learning and support for children with special needs. The education system is able to find the balance between respecting different cultures and helping establish a common Canadian identity.

Shanghai: Competitive learning and teaching

1. 1. with a population of over 24 million, Shanghai is larger than many other countries that participate in PISA.

2. Under the banner “First-rate city, first-rate education” Shanghai made a priority of raising education standards to realize its economic ambitions.
3. It was the absence of underachievers that propelled Shanghai to the top of international rankings.. It assumes that such social factors will not be an excuse for failure. As a consequence, in the 2012 PISA results, children from poor families in Shanghai outperformed middle-class children in the United States.
4. The best teachers are directed towards the schools needing the greatest support. Strong schools are expected to support weaker schools, with the aim of raising the overall standard. Educational research.
5. Education is also intensely competitive. Students in Shanghai often supplement their learning in school with long hours of homework and private tuition

Singapore: Education as top priority with focus on best teachers

1. It has made the leap from “third world” to “first” in little more than one lifetime.
2. It was a deliberate decision to use education as a foundation for building an advanced economy. Education was to be the engine of economic growth.
3.
This economic upgrade was accomplished by overhauling the education system – introducing a new curriculum and different pathways for academic and vocational studies.
4. “Teach Less, Learn More” campaign, which was promoted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, along with the continuing campaign for “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” In 2010, education represented 20% of government expenditure, the biggest item apart from defense.
5. Singapore has become a model of the principle of hiring teachers from among the best graduates, and keeping them well-trained and motivated. Teachers are entitled to 100 hours of professional development per year. All teachers are trained at the same institution, so that every teacher will have emerged from the same “production line”, meeting the same standards.

Estonia : Reducing Low achievers

1. Experts from Finland advised Estonia on education reforms in the 1990s.This is made manifest in the small differences between the results of affluent students and those of disadvantaged students. one of the highest in the industrialised world – of students in Estonia successfully complete secondary school
2. Equity is also apparent in access to early childhood education, which feeds into the school system. Compulsory schooling does not begin until children are seven years old, but large proportions of three- and four-year-olds are in state-provided early education. Teacher-pupil ratios in these early education settings are half the OECD average.
3. After independence, Estonia decentralized the school system, giving schools greater autonomy, with the freedom to make decisions about the curriculum, budgets, and hiring and dismissing teachers.
4. Education in Estonia, as in other Nordic and Baltic countries, is publicly funded; there is relatively little private funding for education.
5. Where Estonia really excels as a world leader is in its relatively small proportion of low achievers

Synthesis from : WORLD CLASS How to build a 21st-century school system, OECD

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