Education and Development
Warm-up Starter
Complete the following diagrams, giving example of the private benefits and external benefits of education.
Private
benefits
External
benefits
Explain why education is under-consumed in a free market:
Explain why quality primary and secondary education can lead to increased economic development:
Read the following information about PISA tests:
PISA stands for Programme for International Student Assessment; PISA consists of tests for 15 year olds in maths,
English and science, carried out every 3 years. The PISA tests are organised by the OECD. The results of PISA tests are
often anxiously awaited by governments, with some countries radically overhauling their education systems in order
to gain higher PISA scores. Whilst education is undoubtedly important, some academics are concerned. Firstly, many
students face high levels of testing, which doesn’t necessarily correlate with enjoyable learning. Furthermore, many
governments may implement short-term education reforms in response to PISA scores rather than consider longerterm education reforms. The PISA tests also ignore broader education, such as in the arts or humanities.
Education and Development
Main Task
Each student will be allocated 2 or 3 countries from the PISA rankings list below to investigate.
a) Your first task is to complete the table below for your given countries. You can find all the information that
you need from the World Bank’s DataBank, which you can find here:
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx
b) Discuss the factors that you think have caused countries / areas such as Shanghai, Singapore and South
Korea to be so high on the PISA rankings.
c) Discuss possible policy change that the UK government could make to raise the UK’s position in the PISA
rankings.
d) Discuss the factors that you think have resulted in no countries from Latin America or Africa making it into
the top 40 list.
e) Compare and contrast the policies that you have suggested in question c) with the possible policies that the
government of an African country of your choice could use to increase the quality of education in their
country.
PISA
rank
English
Maths
1
Shanghai
Shanghai
2
Hong Kong
Singapore
3
Singapore
Hong Kong
4
Japan
Taiwan
5
South Korea
South Korea
6
Finland
Macao
7
Ireland
Japan
8
Taiwan
Liechtenstein
9
Canada
Switzerland
10
Poland
Netherlands
11
Estonia
Estonia
12
Liechtenstein
Finland
13
New Zealand
Canada
14
Australia
Poland
GDP per
capita
Gini
Index
Expenditure
on
education
as % of all
gov’t
spending
Gov’t
spending
on
education
as % of
GDP
Official
entrance
age to
primary
education
%
enrolment
in
secondary
schools
that are
private
Pupilteacher
ratio in
secondary
schools
Education and Development
PISA
rank
English
Maths
15
Netherlands
Belgium
16
Belgium
Germany
17
Switzerland
Vietnam
18
Macao
Austria
19
Vietnam
Australia
20
Germany
Ireland
21
France
Slovenia
22
Norway
Denmark
23
UK
New Zealand
24
United States
Czech Rep.
25
Denmark
France
26
Czech Rep.
UK
27
Italy
Iceland
28
Austria
Latvia
29
Latvia
Luxembourg
30
Hungary
Norway
31
Spain
Portugal
32
Luxembourg
Italy
33
Portugal
Spain
34
Israel
35
Croatia
36
Sweden
United States
37
Iceland
Lithuania
38
Slovenia
Sweden
39
Lithuania
Hungary
40
Greece
Croatia
Russian
Federation
Slovak
Republic
GDP per
capita
Gini
Index
Expenditure
on
education
as % of all
gov’t
spending
Gov’t
spending
on
education
as % of
GDP
Official
entrance
age to
primary
education
%
enrolment
in
secondary
schools
that are
private
Pupilteacher
ratio in
secondary
schools