Education - US 18th Out
Of 24 Industrialized
Countries
South Koreans, Japanese at Top of Class
11-26-2
- GENEVA (Reuters) -
Students in South Korea and Japan scored highest in academic surveys
comparing 24 industrialized countries, with teenagers in southern Europe
lagging in both reading and math, the United Nations said
Tuesday.
-
- Finland and Canada came third and fourth in the table
compiled by the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), while Spain, Italy,
Greece and Portugal held the lowest overall rankings. The report, issued
by UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center in Florence, Italy, is based on
results from three surveys testing 14- and 15-year-old's literacy and
ability to apply essential math and science.
-
- "A child starting school in Canada, Finland, or
(South) Korea ... has both a higher probability of reaching a given
level of educational achievement and a lower probability of falling well
below the average," UNICEF said.
-
- "The United Kingdom, where hand-wringing over
educational failures is a national pastime, fares better than all other
countries in the European Union except Finland and Austria."
-
- Britain ranked seventh overall, followed by France at
12, the United States at 18 and Germany at 19, the agency said.
-
- The report examined performance in 24 member countries
of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),
whose 30 members account for most of the world's wealth.
-
- "The 'big picture' shows that some OECD countries are
consistently performing better than others when it comes to educating
and equipping their young people for life in the 21st century ..." it
said.
-
- "In all countries under review, a strong predictor of
a child's success or failure at school is the economic and occupational
status of the child's parents," it
added.
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The Mulindwas
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