So how does English education really compare with other systems?

" 'most of my students are born overseas, and have been brought to the UK for the education system. That must say something.'

One of the main things overseas parents require is education through the medium of English so that their children are properly fluent in the global language of business and academia. This narrows the choice of countries considerably."

Very true. The fact that Finland is top of the leagues doesn't mean people scrape and save to have their children educated in Finland; they'd come out speaking Finnish, which is hardly a major asset if you want to make your way in the global society. Finland is top of the leagues for meeting the needs of its own children. They are particularly good at providing a good uniform education that reaches across the social strata. This is Britain's great weakness, that the education experience is very uneven- but of course that won't affect the foreign parent who manages to get their child into a high quality British school.

Ah hello! I have an MEd in International Education.

The basic answer is that the British education system is bloody brilliant and that the Media are a load of old wingers.

It is obviously more complicated than that, however and there are a number of different factors/ measures that need to be considered:

1. What are you comparing? On one Literacy/ Numeracy measure we're about 9th in the world which I reckon is pretty good. (But there are obviously cultural flaws with measuring an area like this as some countries have different ideas of what it means to be literate or numerate)
2. On a 'learning to learn' measure, we're also doing extremely well. This is the idea that we're producing students who have the skills to adapt and learn new skills (does that make sense?). It is predicted that the students currently in school will have to learn skills for several new careers, possibly ones we haven't actually thought of yet, thus this is considered to be vital.
3. Creativity is also considered to be a vital learning tool for the future. Many countries do not value this skill, but China is carrying out extensive and speedy research to look at introducing Drama/ Art etc. into schools. It has (unsurprisingly) been shown that these subjects provide transferable skills and encourage free-thinkers and entrepreneurs. We are doing very well in this area.
4. Sixth form. We're also still doing very well in this area at the top end- but are not great at the roughly 70% of students who are weaker.

Where are we doing badly?

1. Sixth form. We get to a post-16 stage where we haven't really figured out what to do with students. Yes, we are better than most of the world, but only because most of the world is third world.
2. MFL obviously.

most of my students are born overseas, and have been brought to the UK for the education system. That must say something.

One of the main things overseas parents require is education through the medium of English so that their children are properly fluent in the global language of business and academia. This narrows the choice of countries considerably. Britain is well known for its boarding school tradition but many of these children will come from ex colonies of the UK so it might be seen as a natural choice. Many parents will have a second home in London for example. There will be proportionately fewer well known schools in other English speaking nations.

I haven't read the whole thread, but most of my students are born overseas, and have been brought to the UK for the education system. That must say something.

Unless parents are willing to support their children through their education any education system will be useless, this is half the problem in the UK lazy parents with the mentality of ?I left school without any GCSEs and it didn?t do me any harm?

Where in USA? State or private school?

There are some very good schools in Australia - both state and private. However, like the UK, you need to shop around and do your homework about schools before moving into a neighbourhood.

Does anyone have any insights into the Australian schooling system compared to the UK?

We are currently considering emigration and I'm interested in the comments about the UK schools as I have been getting the impression recently that (not unlike my own school reports) they could do better.

Obviously if the Aussie way is better this would be very high up my "pro's" list.

Shootingstarz we have great schools and colleges in the UK. We have a reputation/tradition for excellent public schools. There are school franchises in China named after our traditional & famous schools. Sometimes this alone is enough to attract pupils - there is an associated gloss & status it seems. Does this mean we can say our education system is strong across the board?

Interestingly - changing the subject a little -I heard now Uni is a serious cost more UK students are seriously considering American Universities too. They don't seem so out of reach/ludicrously expensive any longer.

Of course, Bonsoir. I was responding to Shootingstarz's post about wealthy Chinese choosing UK colleges etc. I took it that he/she was suggesting the Chinese think our system superior. My point is not necessarily they are cherry picking the best places, the USA is also a popular destination & Australia.

The wealthy Chinese you mention are only selecting the very best the UK education system has to offer, the outstanding schools and universities.

That?s the point every country has a low and a high end, people from all over the world are still choosing to come to the UK for education, why ?

Cortina - wealthy families from every country around the world pick and choose the very best in schooling and universities wherever they go. This is not restricted to the Chinese.

I wouldn't class my family as "wealthy" but we are comfortably middle-class and very willing to prioritise education in our budget. We look at the very best global educational establishments, whatever the country.

The wealthy Chinese you mention are only selecting the very best the UK education system has to offer, the outstanding schools and universities.

cory - "The reason university students come to Britain is that British universities are well funded (Cambridge is a huge property owner, living off many centuries of endowments), so can afford the best teachers and fantastic libraries."

I agree very much with this. The same argument applies, multiplied, to US universities. Only yesterday a friend was round at our home to ask my DP whether he would be a speaker on some of her courses at France's most prestigious école de commerce. Now, I think my DP is very fabulous and all that, but if I am totally honest, nobody is going to ask him to be a speaker at a top-ranking UK university. My friend has to scrape around among her friends and acquaintances to put her courses together on the cheap, that's all.

The China Daily reported: ?China has the largest number of overseas students in the world, with a record 1.27 million studying abroad at the end of 2010, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Education. About 285,000 of them were new students who began their overseas studies last year, up 24 percent over 2009, said the ministry. Self-financed students now make up the largest group of those going overseas, and among more than 100 countries they selected, more than 90 percent of the students chose to study in the top 10 destinations - the United States, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Singapore, France, Germany and Russia. [Source: Chen Jia, China Daily, April 18, 2011]

"Due to more higher-education opportunities available abroad, an increasing number of young Chinese students go overseas to evade the highly competitive national college entrance exam," Li Jing, an application writer who works for an overseas study agency in Beijing, told China Daily. For the universities, assessing these applicants' command of English is a challenge since their parents have usually hired agents to write their application essays, experts said.

After completed four years at a Chinese university many students study abroad. In the early days most of the students who studied abroad were on government scholarships. These days most are from families wealthy enough to send their children overseas to study. "Since China's economy is booming, more middle-class families can afford to send their children abroad for education," Wang Qiang, a Beijing resident who plans to send his son to study in Australia, told China Daily. "Even short-term overseas study experience could win my son better job opportunities here in the future," he said.

The best and brightest Chinese students tend to go to American and European universities. In 2003, there were 18,000 Chinese studying at British universities, making them the largest group of foreign students there. About 35 percent of them took mostly business and accounting courses, 14 percent focused on computers and 11 percent on engineering.

I was struck by the SKY interview recently where by Ofsted rep (I think) and Head of the Chinese school in London were there to give their opinion on the apparent decline in literacy standards.

The Head of the Chinese school didn't say much but it seemed clear to me that she believed there should be a lot of support given at home by parents and academic learning going on outside of school hours. Of course literacy standards would decline if parents were not bought in and helping out at home seemed to be the subtext.

I don't think you can easily compare at all. Education is more important to some countries/cultures than it is to others, different emphasis is placed on different areas of the curriculum etc. Children are apparently a year behind the UK in the USA (at least in the earlier years) and American history seems to be heavily emphasised at the expense of world history - does this mean their system is worse or better? Who can say it's all very subjective.

It?s easier to type UK rather than the national curriculum for England and Wales. We all know you Scots don?t like to be associated with anything English?..except our money LOL

Scotland has its own , and it is very different to England's.

It really isn't very different - not in terms of the global comparisons in teaching style and curriculum content that the op intends.

And as Roseforme suggests above, have you heard the Scottish teaching profession lamenting the horror that is the new Curriculum for Excellence?

Roseformeplease, ever feel you're invisible? I'll say it again. There is no "UK" education system. Scotland has its own , and it is very different to England's.

I thought the standard in the UK is pretty poor. I can't remember the name of the world league table published each year that put the UK a long way down the list for educational achievement standards.

I was state educated and do work in a global business environment and I think my education stands up well but I do meet and deal with a lot of people who have accumulated lots of post grad qualifications, not something that seems to happen in my profession in the UK.

All I can say is we moved from Spain where DS was at nursery to the UK (DH's country) solely for the education. In Reception he did more playing, thinking and creative learning that he had done in two years state nursery in Spain. In Year 2 he was writing stories while his old friends back in Spain were finishing incomplete sentences. His old babysitter from Madrid came to stay with us - she's a reception teacher back there - and she was shocked at the high level he was working at. It is true he is at a really good primary.
Six years later, the differences are a bit less obvious. Their traditional way of teaching maths I think is slightly more succesful. The maths here are tackled from too many angles! But all in all, still very happy with our decision. UK has more critical thinking, more public speaking, more commitment in time and effort from teachers.

League tables are just a set of statistc. The very fact that league tables (domestic and international) can vary so much shows their inherent subjectivity.

The salaries at Cambridge are pretty standard for the sector - more or less the same pay scale is used for all university lecturers in England. So unless you are one of the top 5% or so you're not getting anything you wouldn't get elsewhere in the country ... And the top 5% are never there and don't teach very much at all.

"We have children in our schools from all over the world some of them can barely speak a word of English yet alone write it therefore our results (which are only taken from 15 year olds in state schools, so again unfair analysis) will be weaker than other countries."

I think you will find the same applies in most European countries: a country like Denmark or Sweden is hardly a monoculture these days. Lots of immigrants, and many of them asylum seekers from war-torn countries where they have had little or no chance of an education.

The reason university students come to Britain is that British universities are well funded (Cambridge is a huge property owner, living off many centuries of endowments), so can afford the best teachers and fantastic libraries. A small country like Denmark can't manage to fund their higher teaching institutions like that, however well educated the general population may be.

I used to teach at a Swedish university and the students were quite as bright, and quite as well prepared by their schools as the students I teach here, but we simply couldn't offer the kind of salary that would tempt somebody with the potential to get an Oxbridge or Harvard job: that kind of person went where the money was. Nothing to do with the quality of Swedish schools.

earlier email got chopped. Not that it really matters. The thread has reached a conclusion as far as I am concerned.