Canada entered the top 10 countries in terms of quality of education

When we talk about the world’s best education systems, we most often mention Asian heavyweights such as Singapore and South Korea or northern omnifiction, such as Finland or Norway.

But according to the latest research by the international education evaluation organization PISA, Canada’s previously unnoticed education system has fallen into the top 10 in math, science and reading.

Tests conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are the most important in the study and evaluation of educational systems and, according to these tests, Canadian adolescents have shown themselves to be among the most educated in the world.

They are well ahead not only of their geographical neighbors, such as the United States, but also some European countries with strong cultural ties, like Great Britain and France.

In terms of university education, Canada has the highest percentage of people of working age with higher education in the world, at 55% compared to the OECD average of 35%.

Immigrant students

Canada’s success in school tests is also very unusual in comparison with other international trends.

Typically, the leaders of the rankings were compact countries with close public ties, such as the now prosperous Singapore, it became a model of systematic progress, in which each individual part of the education system, integrated into the common national system.

Canada, in fact, does not have a national education system. It is based on autonomous provinces. It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast between a city like Singapore and a country as big as Canada.

The OECD, trying to understand Canada’s success in education, describes the federal government’s role in education as minimal and sometimes even zero.

However, not everyone knows that Canada has a high rate of immigrant children in schools. More than a third of young people in Canada are from families where both are parents from another country. But the children of the newly arrived, migrant families, seem to be integrating quickly enough to the high level of their classmates.

If you take a closer look at the latest PISA rating, it’s easy to see that Canada’s success is even much higher regionally, compared to the federal one.

If in the Canadian provinces the results of the PISA tests were taken into account as the results of individual states, three of them, Alberta, British Columbia and quebec, would be among the top five countries for science in the world, along with Singapore and Japan, and would be ranked such countries like Finland and Hong Kong.

So how has Canada overtaken many countries in education?

Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s director of education, says that justice is a great unifying force in Canada. Despite different policies in individual provinces, there is a common focus on equal chances for all students in school.

He says there is an unshakable sense of fairness and equal access to education – a guarantee of high success among migrant children. And as a consequence of the serious success of the school system as a whole.