compare education in the united states and in russia

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Education Rankings by Country 2024

There is a correlation between a country's educational system quality and its economic status, with developed nations offering higher quality education.

The U.S., despite ranking high in educational system surveys, falls behind in math and science scores compared to many other countries.

Educational system adequacy varies globally, with some countries struggling due to internal conflicts, economic challenges, or underfunded programs.

While education levels vary from country to country, there is a clear correlation between the quality of a country's educational system and its general economic status and overall well-being. In general, developing nations tend to offer their citizens a higher quality of education than the least developed nations do, and fully developed nations offer the best quality of education of all. Education is clearly a vital contributor to any country's overall health.

According to the Global Partnership for Education , education is considered to be a human right and plays a crucial role in human, social, and economic development . Education promotes gender equality, fosters peace, and increases a person's chances of having more and better life and career opportunities.

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." — Nelson Mandela

The annual Best Countries Report , conducted by US News and World Report, BAV Group, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , reserves an entire section for education. The report surveys thousands of people across 78 countries, then ranks those countries based upon the survey's responses. The education portion of the survey compiles scores from three equally-weighted attributes: a well-developed public education system, would consider attending university there, and provides top-quality education. As of 2023, the top ten countries based on education rankings are:

Countries with the Best Educational Systems - 2021 Best Countries Report*

Ironically, despite the United States having the best-surveyed education system on the globe, U.S students consistently score lower in math and science than students from many other countries. According to a Business Insider report in 2018, the U.S. ranked 38th in math scores and 24th in science. Discussions about why the United States' education rankings have fallen by international standards over the past three decades frequently point out that government spending on education has failed to keep up with inflation.

It's also worthwhile to note that while the Best Countries study is certainly respectable, other studies use different methodologies or emphasize different criteria, which often leads to different results. For example, the Global Citizens for Human Rights' annual study measures ten levels of education from early childhood enrollment rates to adult literacy. Its final 2020 rankings look a bit different:

Education Rates of Children Around the World

Most findings and ranking regarding education worldwide involve adult literacy rates and levels of education completed. However, some studies look at current students and their abilities in different subjects.

One of the most-reviewed studies regarding education around the world involved 470,000 fifteen-year-old students. Each student was administered tests in math, science, and reading similar to the SAT or ACT exams (standardized tests used for college admissions in the U.S.) These exam scores were later compiled to determine each country's average score for each of the three subjects. Based on this study, China received the highest scores , followed by Korea, Finland , Hong Kong , Singapore , Canada , New Zealand , Japan , Australia and the Netherlands .

On the down side, there are many nations whose educational systems are considered inadequate. This could be due to internal conflict, economic problems, or underfunded programs. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's Education for All Global Monitoring Report ranks the following countries as having the world's worst educational systems:

Countries with the Lowest Adult Literacy Rates

• Education rankings are sourced from both the annual UN News Best Countries report and the nonprofit organization World Top 20

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Which country ranks first in education?

Which country ranks last in education, frequently asked questions.

• Best Countries for Education - 2023 - US News
• Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above) - World Bank
• World Best Education Systems - Global Citizens for Human Rights
• UNESCO - Global Education Monitoring Reports
• World’s 10 Worst Countries for Education - Global Citizen
• International Education Database - World Top 20

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The USA vs. Russia Education Compared

No comments · Posted by Alex Smirnov in Education

The US and Russia have fairly old systems of education. They have several similarities and also main differences. In both nations, the governments are committed to a learned population that can continually thrust the nations forward economically, socially, and politically.

Formal education, especially higher education, contributes significantly to the high level of technological advancements observed in the two largest nations in terms of landmass. The similarities and differences in their education systems can be summarized as follows.

Education system controlled by the government

Both nations have government and private schools but they all follow an education system set by the government. The department of education sets the curriculum and controls what schools should teach, starting from the lowest grades to the highest.

This kind of system ensures a unified form of information for all students who go through the education system. To the governments, it is the best way to bring their citizens to a point where they will understand the nation’s dream and play their role towards its fulfillment.

Critical thinking versus memorization

In terms of teaching, American education differs from Russian. The American teacher creates an environment where the learner can actively use his or her mind to create a solution. The teacher will guide the learner on how to create the solution, but at the same time gives them space for independent thinking.

For example, if the students are learning a scientific principle, the teacher allows their students to think about how it works practically. They will do so through experiments, games, writing, and so on.

The system is different in Russia. The Russian teacher is interested more in answers than the process. The student who provides instant answers to a question is more favored than the slow student.

This disparity has turned the students into a community of crammers where students memorize answers instead of stating the facts. As a result, they get challenged when facing real-life after they complete schooling.

Essay writing assistance

Essay writing continues to be a major method for testing student knowledge while in college. It is also the form of testing that most students would wish was not part of college education study. The main reason is due to the hardships many students face when writing essays.

The solution is for the students to seek essay writing help from professional writers. Edubirdie is an established professional academic writing service provider for all college assignments. It includes essays, thesis, dissertations, term papers and much more.

Schooling in a geographical location

Preschool classes in the American system are the responsibility of parents/guardians. They teach their children the basics of education before taking them to grade one. In Russia, there are official early childhood schools and no child can join primary school without having gone through a pre-school. As a result, parents are less concerned with teaching their children at home.

In America, schools are classified into districts. A child can only attend a school within his or her district. If a parent wishes to transfer their child to a school in another district, the only option is to move and live in that district.

In Russia, however, every parent is free to take their child to any school they desire as long as they are willing to study in that school. During admission, the priority is given to children from the district before admitting those from other districts.

College education

Russia does not have too many requirements to join college. All that is needed is for the student to pass the national exam and attain the relevant college entry points. Every academic year has two semesters and each semester ends with an exam. In some instances, students can access higher education for free.

In the US, entry into college has several requirements . Apart from the exams, a student must be recommended by a teacher, be good in extra curriculum activities, write an essay, and be interviewed. During their study, regular knowledge and special talents are taken into account. Higher education in the US is paid for by all students. Special cases need to apply for scholarships or grants.

The level of literacy in any nation is first judged by the number of citizens that have gone through formal education. Every government should create a conducive environment for its citizens to pursue education to the highest level. The governments of Russia and America have played a significant role in ensuring their masses are educated. There are many more chances to improve the current system of education to a better one that produces critical thinkers who can become change agents in technology and the economy.

Author’s Bio:

Julius Sim is the Head of Support Team at EduBirdie and has been a major force behind the academic writing service’s massive success. He has been instrumental in reducing delivery errors to almost zero and ensuring fast resolution to student queries and issues. In his free time, he enjoys walking his pet and watching movies and following business news.

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How Are K-12 Schools Different In Russia (Compared To The U.S.)?

The question on how are K-12 schools different in Russia (Compared to the U.S.) can best be answered by looking at how they are basically structured and identifying their most distinct features. The policies on education of both countries as well as the education system control mechanisms in place at local and federal levels must then be compared. Although the structures of the educational system of both the US are similar in many ways, there are a few peculiarities that distinguish one from the other.

The American Education System

In the United States, there is no such thing as a national school system because the service of providing education to the public is decentralized. The American Constitution grants the exclusive power to craft and implement education policies to each of the states in the union. No national laws are enacted for the purpose of establishing a prescribed curriculum, the recognition of various professions and degrees, the legal status of faculty members and students, or institutional governance. The functions of the U.S. Education Department do not include them.

Creation and administration of education policy starts at the state and spills down to local and institutional levels. This includes laws on school safety and health, formulation of curriculum guidelines, creation and development of public education policies for both primary and secondary levels, appointment of boards and agencies to oversee the administration of public education, and others. The respective state legislature and state boards of education are usually responsible for developing policies on education that are implemented by the states' education departments.

Although state boards of the different states may have a lot of similarities in terms of their functions, and are composed of prominent citizens of the state, they may be formed in various ways. In some states, they are appointed by the governor or the legislative branch. In other states, they are selected by the people through general elections.

State boards in most states are responsible only up to the secondary level, while in some states, the responsibility extends to all levels of education. They perform oversight functions on educational policies. The state board (or the governor) appoints the state superintendent, the highest-ranking education official in the state who manages the day to day activities of the education department.

The Russian Education System

Unlike the U.S., Russia has a centralized education system the direction of which is determined by a specific national policy. Compulsory curriculum guidelines for all public schools are established and implemented by the "Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Social Development." There are, however, some state-financed experiments that are being introduced such us bi-lingual schools that teach the students' native dialect. These initiatives are appreciated and allowed by the federal governors.

Although there are also government-initiated grants and programs such as those for talented and gifted students as well as those for differently-abled individuals, these efforts pale in comparison to those offered in the U.S. The Russian programs are also sometimes not properly disseminated because of lack of funding. U.S. government initiatives, in contrast are well-funded and popular in terms of information and availments.

Just like in the U.S., school choice is also provided in Russia although the initiative is less popularly known in the former Soviet republic. As opposed to the assignment by local school district on which schools children are placed based on residence, the educational reform on school choice gives parents the freedom for parents to enroll their kids in the school they prefer. Although Russian children are initially assigned the schools they should go to, they are now allowed to enroll elsewhere.

The education systems of both the U.S. and Russia were established based on tradition and historical background which explains some things that are unique in each of them. The systems evolve based on the current needs and conditions.

Global Comparison of Education Systems

• Open Access
• First Online: 02 January 2024

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• Ziyin Xiong 4  

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This chapter combines the quantitative data with the rich qualitative evidence and triangulates the diverse evidence to systematically unearth themes and provide an in-depth review of China’s dynamic education system. This chapter not only presents a benchmark study showing how China’s education systems perform vis-a-vis other national education systems, but also probes into the policies and practices to reveal the contextual factors contributing to the unique patterns of China’s education system.

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Comparing Systems

Education Systems in South Asia: An Introduction

How can education systems improve? A systematic literature review

• Education system
• Comparative education
• Education quality

1 Introduction

From a global perspective, this chapter examines education systems at a national level. The concept of education systems borrows the idea of “system” from a broad definition in social science, which refers to a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole (Backlund, 2000 ). In the sphere of education, the idea of education systems typically encompasses all the elements involved in education, such as funding, facilities, staffing, curriculum, pedagogy, regulations, and policies. These elements are interrelated and organized strategically to achieve overarching educational goals. In other words, using the term “education system” aims to deconstruct the complex and multifaceted nature of education. By doing so, this chapter is able to present an overall and comparative view of the education systems in selected countries.

Based on the acknowledgment that students’ learning pathways vary among countries and regions, this chapter begins with a brief introduction of the education systems in selected countries, including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Singapore, the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the United States (U.S.). The learning pathways serve as the foundation of the education systems, which determine when students start their education, what academic tracks students can choose, and how students can move vertically or horizontally to achieve their education goals. A well-designed education system provides flexible learning pathways for its learners and avoid potential social segregation (OECD, 2020 ).

This chapter reviews the learning pathways of education systems at the basic education level by referring to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). ISCED, developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which provides a common framework to benchmark education systems across nations (UNESCO Institute for Statistics [UIS], 2012). This chapter adopts the ISCED 2011 classification to present the learning pathways in each nation. The scope of this chapter covers only the basic education level which includes elementary education (ISCED 1), lower secondary education and upper secondary education (see Table 1 ). While a snapshot of the learning pathway is provided, the distinctive features embedded in these education systems are also highlighted.

The People’s Republic of China (hereafter “China”) has the world’s largest population of school-aged children. Its education system accommodates over 291 million students with more than 18 million teachers serving in 520,000 schools (excluding private education) (Ministry of Education [MOE], 2022 ). In 1986, the Chinese government regulated nine-year compulsory education in its legal framework, with the aim to provide elementary education and lower secondary education to every child in the country.

After completing nine-year compulsory education, students can choose from two distinctive learning tracks provided. One is the academic track and the other is the vocational track. On the vocational track, there are four major types of schooling available, including regular specialized high schools, adult specialized high schools, vocational high schools, and technical schools. One of the major distinctions among them is the difference in the governance bodies and the institutes issuing the certificates. Among the four programs, regular specialized high schools tend to be the mainstream one, which attracts most vocational students. However, compared with the academic track, the vocational track is overall less attractive to Chinese students and their parents (Fig.  1 ).

The education system in China

1.2 The U.K. (England Only)

The education system in the United Kingdom (U.K.) is a devolved matter with each of the jurisdictions having separate systems overseen by separate governments. The U.K. government is responsible for the education system in England, whereas education systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are governed by their respective governments. This section only discusses the education system in England.

England also has a tradition of independent schools and home education. In England, the learning tracks in the state-funded education system are categorized into “key stages” based upon age. It begins with Early Years Foundation Stage (aged 3 to 4). Elementary education (aged 5 to 10) is subdivided into Key Stage 1 (aged 5 to 6) and Key Stage 2 (Juniors, aged 7 to 10). Secondary education (aged 11 to 15) is further split up into Key Stage 3 (aged 11 to 13) and Key Stage 4 (aged 14 to 15). Above Key Stage 4 is the post-16 education (ages 16 to 17) and tertiary education (aged over 18). The law has legitimized the compulsory education for all children under 18 years old. Unlike some countries where there is a clear boundary between lower secondary education and higher secondary education, England unifies the two education levels and organizes them as an integrated whole. In the final two years of secondary education (normally at the age of 15 or 16), students typically take a General Certificate of Secondary Education exams (GCSE) or other Level 1 or Level 2 Footnote 1 certificates of which the result is important for those students in pursuit of further academic qualifications. The division of academic and vocational tracks normally takes places after the completion of secondary education ( education is compulsory until 18, but schooling is compulsory to 16, so post-16 education can be academic or vocational). In terms of higher education, students in England often start with a three-year bachelor’s degree followed by postgraduate studies (Fig.  2 ).

The education system in England

1.3 The U.S

The U.S. adopts a decentralized approach to organize its education system. Education systems adopt various forms across each state. Biggest changes at the state-level include funding, policy, curriculum, and licensing – the overall structure is very similar nationally. While differences exist across the states, this section intends to provide information and common features of how education at the basic level is organized in the U.S.

The age for starting schooling is between five to seven, depending on each state’s regulations. The number of years for compulsory education also vary among states. Around 30 out of 50 states promote 11-year compulsory education. It is worth mentioning that although 11-years are compulsory, basic education typically comprises 13 years of education (K-12). Unlike some countries where there is a clear distinction between the academic track and the vocational track, the U.S. tends to integrate the two tracks into general secondary schools. Instead of providing vocational-oriented schools, the education system in the U.S. tends to spread out the vocational-oriented courses through the academic learning during secondary education. The intention is to broaden students’ learning experiences, cultivate students’ career interests through a wide spectrum of vocational and academic oriented courses (Fig.  3 ).

The education system in the U.S

Education services in Russia are regulated by the Ministry of Education and Science. Russia offers a relatively long compulsory education period, which is 11 years including four years of elementary education, five years of basic general education (equivalent to lower secondary education) and two years of upper secondary education. Children must attend school when they reach the age of seven. The boundary between elementary education and lower secondary education is not clear. Typically, state-run schools offer both education levels to students.

Learning tracks split at the upper secondary education level. The general learning track offers students a two-year academic-oriented education program. Once students complete the general upper secondary education, they are obliged to pass the unified state examination (USE). Math and Russian language are compulsory exam subjects, whereas other subjects are up to students to select other exam subjects to align with university-specific admissions standards. Another track at the upper secondary education level is the vocational training track, which offers a three-year long vocational education program (Fig.  4 ).

The education system in Russia

1.5 Germany

In Germany, once children reach the age of six, they are obliged to attend elementary and secondary education in Germany. Compulsory education includes four years’ elementary schooling and six years’ lower secondary schooling. The division between academic-oriented track and vocational-oriented track begins after the completion of elementary education.

There are various lower secondary schools available in Germany’s education system. The typical ones are namely, Gymnasium (Academic oriented school), Hauptschule (vocational oriented school) and Realschule (comprehensive lower secondary school). Gymnasium represents the general track, which emphasizes academic learning and requires high marks for admissions when compared with the other two schools. Hauptschule offers schooling to young students whose grades are average or below. There are academic subjects offered to students, but the curriculum and content are adjusted to the level of Huaptschule students. In addition, Work Studies are included in the Hauptschulen curriculum but not in the Gymnasium curriculum. Realschule is another type of lower secondary school, which ranks between Hauptschule and Gymnasium in terms of academic requirement for admission. Realschule offers an extensive education service that prepares students to pursue both vocational learning and academic learning in the future (Kotthoff, 2011 ).

One of the well-known strengths in Germany’s education system is that the dual system exists in German vocational schools. The dual system combines apprenticeships at company and vocational education at schools as an integrated program. Germany published the vocational training act which provides a common standard and framework to regulate the dual systems in Germany. The dual system has yielded positive educational results. For example, during the 2008 economic crisis, young German people are more resilient in the labor market than their peers in other OECD countries (Kuczera & Field, 2010 ) (Fig.  5 ).

The education system in Germany

1.6 Australia

Compulsory education in Australia typically lasts for 12 years, which is longer than many education systems introduced in this chapter. The starting age varies between the ages of 4 and 6 and the education lasts until the ages of 15, 16 and 17, depending on the state or territory.

The learning track typically diverges in the final year of the lower secondary education. Students who intend to follow the vocational learning track enroll in further courses at registered training organizations (RTOs) once they complete lower secondary education. RTOs typically provide vocational education services under the direction of the national government. RTOs include both government-owned institutes and private colleges. Vocational education track has a clear qualification framework regulated at the national level, which provides pathways for vocational education students who intend to enter the higher education pathway. Students who obtained certain levels of qualification (e.g., diploma level and advanced diploma level) are allowed to enter higher education (Fig.  6 ).

The education system in Australia

Education is governed by the provincial, territorial, and local governments in Canada. The education system is mainly regulated by provincial jurisdiction and each province also oversees the curriculum. Despite differences across the provinces, the education systems in Canada still have some similar features in its structure (Fig.  7 ).

The education system in Canada

The age for students starting elementary education in Canada is six. It takes six grades to complete elementary education. Secondary education is divided into junior high schools (intermediate level) and high schools, which can be viewed as lower secondary education and upper secondary education. Generally, most provinces require children to stay in school until the age of 16. Some provinces, like Ontario, offer compulsory education for students until 18 years old. There is no clear boundary between the academic track and vocational learning track, with most secondary schools focus on general learning. In Quebec, when students complete high schools and reach the age of 16, they can then enroll in CEGEP, a public-funded two-year college where students can pursue either a university preparation program or a vocational diploma program.

The education system in France is highly centralized and the national government has enforced a consistent education system across regions. By law, all children must go to school until they reach the age of 16. Elementary education normally starts when children reach the age of five and takes five years to complete. Middle school is equivalent to the ISCED 2 level – lower secondary education. Students study four years at middle school, and then move into high schools or upper secondary education, which offers a three-year course to prepare students for pursuing higher education studies or the professional life.

Compared to Germany, the division of academic learning and vocational learning in France takes place in a rather late stage, i.e., the upper secondary education. There are three types of learning tracks available at this stage, i.e., lycée general (general high school), lycée technologique (technological high school), and lycée professionnel (vocational high school). Students who perform well academically typically enroll in the two former tracks. While students who pursue lycée professionnel (vocational high school) follow a more vocational track. The Lycée technologique (technological high school) specifically prepares students who want to pursue a specific technological related domain, e.g., engineering and computer science, or go to specific technological higher education institutions. In recent years, many high schools have become more comprehensive and include all three learning tracks to suit various needs of students (Fig.  8 ).

The education system in France

1.9 Singapore

The education system is highly centralized in Singapore. The central government sets the framework for the education system and oversees all levels of education. Elementary education takes six years, followed by four to six years of secondary education. There is no clear boundary between lower secondary education and upper secondary education. Instead, integrative secondary education is implemented. Its length depends on the learning track that students follow. There are three divergent tracks offered to students at the secondary education level, and students select which one of them once they complete as part of their elementary education. The three are normal academic track, normal technical track and express track. All tracks offer the same courses, but the express track is faster and shorter in length and the normal technical track offers students more applied and work-oriented courses. Students are allocated into the three tracks based on their performance on the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE).

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) is in charge of Japan’s education system. The overall education system from elementary education to secondary education is consistent across the nation despite municipality (Fig.  9 ).

The education system in Singapore

Compulsory education in Japan includes elementary education and lower secondary education: six years of elementary and three years of lower secondary schooling. Almost all Japanese students continue to pursue upper secondary education. At this level, the learning track starts to diverge. Most Japanese students still choose to follow the academic learning path although it is competitive. High schools select students based on their performances. Each high school has their own admission process, and most schools require students to take admissions tests.

In addition to the academic path, students’ other options include enrolling in specialized vocational high schools, technology colleges and specialized training colleges. Also, to nurture a talented workforce that meets the development needs of Japan, Japanese government has created a set of “Super High School” programs, specifically training students in science, global studies, and professional studies with a focus on the fields of science and technology. These programs are intended to prepare a group of potential young scientists and experts for Japan. Some students attend technology colleges which provide students with several technical and engineering programs. The specialized training colleges provide more targeted and specific vocational courses, which do not require any entry exams (Fig.  10 ).

The education system in Japan

2 Highlighting Data

This section intends to analyze the performance of China’s education system through a global lens. Several quantitative data are collected and organized to benchmark China against other education systems around the world. Such comparison will provide empirical evidence that characterizes the features of China’s education system. The analysis highlights the education transformation and trends in China in the past decade.

2.1 Gross Enrollment Ratio

“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” has been set as one of the fundamental sustainable development goals by the United Nations (UIS, 2016). Having equal access to education is a basic right for every child. All education systems around the world should ensure this right be fully fulfilled.

One important indicator for understanding students’ participation in education is the enrollment rate of each education program. The enrollment rate calculates the ratio of students enrolled in the education programs to the total population of school-age students. Internationally, net enrollment ratio and gross enrollment ratio are commonly used. Net enrollment ratio excludes the under-aged and over-aged students enrolled in the program in the calculation, whereas gross enrollment ratio includes all the students, regardless of their ages. In this section, the gross enrollment ratio is adopted for the analysis due to the unavailability of the net enrollment ratio for some education systems selected in this section (Fig.  11 ).

Gross enrollment ratio at elementary and secondary education level (%). Sources Adapted from UIS (2020). Notes The scope of upper secondary education in the analysis, based on ISCED’s definition (2011), includes the final stage of general and vocational education programs. Programs which do not require the completion of lower secondary education for entry, or do not have the cumulative duration after the elementary education, are excluded

In China, the enrollment ratios of elementary and secondary education have all reached above 100%, which indicates compulsory education in China has achieved universal access in general. However, this data should be interpreted with cautions as under-aged and over-aged students are included and may contribute to a high ratio of the gross enrollment. The enrollment ratios at the elementary, lower secondary and upper secondary education level in other countries in this study are all close to or above 100%. At the upper secondary education level, the gross enrollment ratios in many countries are above 100% by a noticeable margin, indicating a larger portion of the over-aged and under-aged students in their education systems. However, in China, this indicator is rather low, i.e., around 80%, showing that there are still some upper secondary school-aged people remaining out of schooling.

2.2 Completion Rate

The completion rate measures the percentage of school-aged students who have successfully completed the corresponding education program. This indicator provides insights into the progress through the education system, which to some extent reflects the overall quality of schooling that children and young people receive.

A high completion rate means a large portion of children and adolescents have completed a given education level by the time they are three to five years older than the theoretical age of entry into the last grade of the given level of education. On the contrary, a low completion rate may be partially caused by the high drop-out, high repetition, late completion, and other reasons existing in its education system (Fig.  12 ).

Completion rates at basic education level (China and the U.S.) (%). Sources Adapted from UIS (2020)

Due to limited availability of data, here only the education systems of China and the U.S. are presented. As shown in the figure above, the completion rates at the elementary and lower secondary education levels in both countries are high and the gaps are insignificant. At the upper secondary education level, China’s completion rate is around 60%, which is lower than the U.S. by a noticeable margin. However, the relatively lower completion rate in China is associated with the lower participation rate at the upper secondary education, which does not necessarily indicate ineffective progress at the upper secondary education level.

2.3 ICT Resources

The information and communication technology (ICT) resources are a prerequisite for promoting innovative teaching and learning in the twenty-first century. The data in this section examine the ICT-related resources available in schools. With the prevalence of ICT-integrated teaching and learning in today’s classrooms, particularly with the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, ICT-facilitated teaching and learning has become widely used around the world.

Figure  13 compared China with Singapore and a group of high-income countries aligning with the World Bank’s definition in terms of the percentage of schools with internet access for pedagogical purposes. It shows that most of the schools in China at all three education levels have provided access to the internet for teaching, which is above the average level of high-income countries. However, upper secondary schools are slightly less common to have internet access compared to elementary and lower secondary schools, the gap remains in terms of achieving universal internet access. All schools in Singapore have achieved internet access for teaching regardless of the education levels.

Percentage of schools with Internet access for pedagogical purposes. Sources Adapted from UIS (2020) (%)

2.4 Student–Teacher Relationship

A positive student–teacher relationship is the cornerstone for a trust-oriented and supportive learning environment. School-aged children are likely to spend more time in schools with their teachers than with their parents. Thus, teachers play a key role in supporting students’ learning and their mental and physical well-being. Evidence shows that a trust-oriented and supportive student–teacher relationship encourages students to seek help from their teachers when they encounter intimidation, bullying and other difficulties (Konishi et al., 2010 ).

Figure  14 measures students’ perception on to what extent teachers provide supports to students during the learning process. A large portion of Chinese students appear to have received support from their teachers, particularly, in their learning needs. Through the comparison with the OECD countries on average, Chinese students receive support from their teachers more often. However, as the data for China are restricted to developed regions, it is unclear to what extent the similar experience is shared by students across the entire China.

Source OECD ( 2019a ). Notes The data for China are restricted to four relatively developed regions (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang)

Percentage of students who reported the following things happen in most or every lesson (%).

2.5 Students’ Cognitive Outcomes

Equipping citizens with the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their full potential contributes to an increasingly interconnected world, and ultimately converting skills they acquired in their lives, is the ultimate goal underpinning many education systems around the world. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) organized by the OECD to some extent reflects how effective countries are at achieving this goal. This section compares China’s PISA performance in relation to other high performing countries, to better understand the productivity of China’s education system.

As usual, PISA 2018 measured students’ cognitive performance in reading, mathematics, and science. These three domains are considered the fundamental skills for students to strive in the twenty-first century world. Through the comparison, it is evident that Chinese students’ performance is above the average level of OECD countries. The data also show that China has a remarkably large proportion of high-performing students and lower proportion of low-achievers than the OECD average, which indicates that the high performance of China in PISA is driven by a general excellence of its students and does not just rely on top-performers. It can be argued that China’s education system has a high capacity to nurture excellence while also ensuring minimum standards. However, as the data are restricted to Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, this interpretation cannot be applied to all regions (Figs. 15 16 and 17 ).

Average performance in PISA 2018.

Percentage of low performing students in PISA 2018 (%).

Percentage of high performing students in PISA 2018 (%).

2.6 Non-cognitive Outcomes

The above cognitive performance only represents one aspect of education success. It is increasingly important to realize that academic achievement alone is far from enough to capture the development of students and the quality of education systems. Many education reform frameworks have prioritized the development of students’ non-cognitive skills, such as social-emotional skills, mental well-being, physical well-being (e.g., China, Singapore, UNESCO, OECD). PISA 2015 and 2018 have assessed to some extent the non-cognitive aspects of student performance, which sheds lights into the efficacy of China’s education system in promoting students’ holistic development. Figure  18 presents students’ motivation and attitudes towards competition and school-work related anxiety. A substantial body of research showed that students’ motivation has explicit relation with students’ academic performance, learning behaviors and mental well-being (Howard et al., 2021 ; Seifert, 2004 ; Thelk et al., 2009 ), which is a non-ignorable aspect of students’ fundamental non-cognitive competencies.

Source OECD ( 2016 ). Notes The data for China are restricted to four relatively developed regions (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang)

Percentage of students who agreed or strongly agreed the following statements (%).

Figure  18 shows how Chinese students feel motivated to achieve in their learning. About 80% of Chinese students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I want to be one of the best students in my class”. Students in the U.S. also demonstrated a high motivation for excellence. Students’ high motivation can have nurturing effects on students’ mental well-being, but when this motivation is driven by external pressure such as a high-stakes test, students are likely to experience mental-illness. It is observed that in many countries where students demonstrated a high achievement motivation, their students also tend to experience schoolwork-related anxiety. However, this does not seem to be the case in China. While many Chinese students demonstrated a very high achievement motivation, less students experienced a schoolwork-related anxiety such as feeling anxious even when they were well prepared for a test.

3 Excellence Indicators

This section intends to develop a set of indicators that provide insights into the performance of education systems. The excellence indicators include both quantitative and qualitative indicators across four dimensions: educational resources, national standards, education performance and outcomes. A comparative analysis was conducted by benchmarking the performance of China’s education system against other global education systems. The goal is to explore a potential common ground for discussing the meaning and to enrich the concept of the excellence of the twenty-first century education systems.

This section comprises three key phases. The first section introduces the conceptual framework and methodology based on which the excellence indicators of the education systems are built. The second section presents an overall result of the excellence indicators of China and other selected countries. The third section taps into the key indicators of the excellence indicators to provide a more detailed interpretation of the data.

The concept of an education system is a complex whole and contains a dynamic interplay of a wide range of factors from different dimensions. To categorize those factors and describe the education systems in a comparable manner, this chapter adopts the Input-Process-Output (IPO) model, which is widely used in system analysis to deconstruct the education system into key components and see whether those components work efficiently to achieve its goal (see Fig.  19 ).

IPO (input-process-output) model for education system

Based on the IPO model, this chapter focuses on the key indicators measuring fundamental qualities of the three phrases of education systems. According to the guidance of the three theoretical phrases, the criteria used for selecting the indicators for this comparative exercise are based on:

Relevance and Comprehensiveness: Indicators must be relevant to the themes of the 14 sub-dimensions outlined in the framework, which are chosen to cover each dimension from comprehensive perspectives.

Comparability: Indicators must have comparable data across education systems, which can be collected through a valid and transparent methodology.

Coverage on China: Indicators must have data on China’s (or its subnational regions’) education systems. If there are equivalent data from domestic data sources, the indicator is included.

3.2 Definitions and Sources

Table 2 explains the definition of the selected indicators. Five key indicators are selected concerning the input (resources) of the education systems. The indicators A1 and A2 examine the financial resources; the indicator A3 reflects the provision of education opportunities; and the indicator A4 and A5 concern about the teaching forces in one education system. The dimensions of standard and performance are closely related to the process of one education system. For the dimension of standard, the two indicators are mainly centered on the question that how the process of education system is held accountable. Thus, the indicators B1 and B2 examine the education governance according to national standards. The dimension of performance provides a general view into students’ cognitive performance at the compulsory education level. The dimension of outcome is captured by two indicators, which intend to reflect an overall picture of its effectiveness to accommodate students in its education system.

This comparative analysis focuses primarily on the existing evidence at the international level, and includes three strands of evidence: administrative data collected from major international organizations, international projects or surveys in which Chinese jurisdictions have participated, and data on China from national statistics.

For quantitative indicators, data are calculated for each country. The standardization method is used to standardize the highest value to 100 while the rest of values are scaled accordingly. After completing data standardization, the sum of the value of each indicator is calculated. Next, the highest value among the sum numbers is standardized to 100 whereas the rest of the values are scaled correspondingly. As a result of this process, the final excellence indicators are produced.

3.3 Findings

Excellence indicators attempt to provide a systematic comparison that reflects to some extent the quality of the education system. Through the calculation, the final finding shows that China’s education has relative strengths in its education governance, however, improvement is still needed in terms of education resources, student performance, and education outcome. Australia and Singapore are the two leading education systems with little score difference in all education dimensions, ranking at the top in this comparison.

Among the selected education systems, China scores the lowest in the final excellence indicators. It is observed that China’s education system demonstrates the strength in terms of education governance, by implementing a highly-structured national standard to regularly monitor the education quality. Different from the PISA test which only includes four Chinese regions, the excellence indicators selected in this chapter mostly represent China as a whole. Therefore, some indicators of China are not necessarily as remarkable as shown in the PISA study. For example, the student performance is lower when Chinese students are sampled as a whole, indicating there are noticeable differences of student performance across the Chinese provinces. This result contributes to the understanding of the overall quality of China’s education system, and highlights the needs for China to continue its education reform for further improvement of its education system from a holistic perspective.

3.4 Discussions

3.4.1 national investment in its education system (indicator a1 and a2).

Financial resources are foundational to building a quality learning environment. The extent to which a country invests in education directly not only affects its citizens—affecting student enrollment, student school life and teachers’ working conditions—but also profoundly enhances the productivity of a society, leading to long-term socio-economic benefits.

Indicators A1 and A2 focus on the financial resources available in the education systems. Indicator A1 shows government expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP, which provides a general look at how much of the national wealth is devoted to the education system and reflects the extent to which a government prioritizes its education as a function over the country’s other functions. Indicator A2 measures the expenditure on education as a percentage of total government expenditure. It gives more focus on the extent of government commitment to provide quality education services to its citizens (Figs. 20 and 21 ).

Source Adapted from UIS ( 2020 )

Government expenditure on education as percentage of GDP (%).

Expenditure on education as a percentage of total government expenditure (%)

3.4.2 Access to Basic Education Opportunities (Indicator A3)

The Article 13 of International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ensures the right to free education as the basic human right that every government should fulfill. The number of years of compulsory elementary and secondary education reflects, to some extent, the educational opportunities provided by the government, which is closely related to the equity and quality in education. Compulsory education means providing reasonable years of education to all people, which is often protected by law. Nearly all the education systems around the world impose compulsory education on its citizens. The length of compulsory education can indicate minimal education services that a person is able to receive. Elementary education and secondary education lay the foundation for an individual to develop basic skills and competencies to live in the society. The indicator A3 examines the length of the compulsory elementary and secondary education guaranteed in the legal framework, which provides a look into the education opportunities available to all citizens (Fig.  22 ).

Number of years of compulsory elementary and secondary education guaranteed in legal framework (%).

3.4.3 Teaching Workforce (Indicators A4 and A5)

The quality of an education system relies largely on the quality of teachers. Adequate supply and retention of highly qualified professional teachers are the prerequisites to sustain quality learning opportunities through which students can receive trustworthy supports.

The indicators A4 and A5 primarily analyze the quantity and quality of the teaching workforce in the education system. Indicator A4 shows the number of students for every teacher, which provides insights into the adequacy of teachers and the workload that teachers may take in an education system. This indicator can reflect whether students in the education system can receive adequate supports from teachers. The higher the student–teacher ratio is, the lower the relative access of students to teachers is. Low student–teacher ratio tends to associate with students’ greater academic achievement (Hattie, 2009 ). However, a lower student–teacher ratio does not necessarily mean a smaller class size. The distribution of teachers also influences the class size. In the indicator A4, Canada tends to have the highest student–teacher ratio, which suggests that teachers in Canada may work with more students than their colleagues in other compared education systems.

Indicator A5 examines the quality of the teaching force by calculating the proportion of teachers who have obtained the bachelor's or equivalent degrees above. This indicator calculates the percentage of teachers received a tertiary education at the lower secondary education level. The general assumption is that the higher education attainment can reflect to some extent teachers’ quality. It is observed that at least 70% of teachers in all education systems have achieved bachelor’s degree or above. Compared to other selected education systems, Chinese teachers’ education attainment is relatively low (Fig.  23 ).

Student–teacher ratio (secondary education).

3.4.4 Accountability (Indicators B1 and B2)

A data-driven and robust accountability culture with adequate assessments can support countries in monitoring and evaluating the overall performance of their education systems, which further allows them to ensure that their education systems are developing towards achieving the overarching education goals.

Indicator B1 and B2 explore how education systems are held accountable by examining national policies and government standards. The indicator B1 examines whether there is a data-driven education governance infrastructure which regularly informs the government of the education system performance. This indicator evaluates whether a national or cross-national assessment of learning outcomes was conducted in the last five years in (a) reading, writing or language, and (b) mathematics at the following stages of education:

in the Grade 2/3 in the elementary education.

at the end of elementary education.

at the end of secondary education.

This indicator examines the national standards for setting up a nationally representative learning assessment, which examines whether there is a system-level monitoring infrastructure in the education systems. The existence of such a practice shows that there is a national-level practice to monitor the performance of its education system. It is observed that most of the selected education systems have set up national learning assessments to collect information about the performance of their education systems. Such assessment typically takes place at the end of elementary education and the secondary education. Some education systems also conduct learning assessment in Grade 2 or Grade 3 at the primary education level.

Indicator B2 explores the accountability of education systems at the school level. It examines the frequencies of school inspection as regulated in its national standard. A clear regulation of school inspection suggests that there is a clear governance practice set up for holding school accountable. However, lacking regulation in the national standard does not necessarily mean there is no effort to ensure school accountability. It may be due to the decentralization of education governance in which school inspection is not required at the national level. School inspection is a common approach that is employed by many education systems to gain up-to-date information about school performance and to hold the schools accountable for students and parents. It is observed that many of the selected education systems conduct school inspection once every three years. China organizes annual inspections based upon national regulations/policies. Some education systems have no specific requirements for the frequency of school inspection, such as those of Russia and France (Figs. 24 and 25 ).

Existence of a national learning assessment in education system

The frequency of school inspection legitimatized in national policies

3.4.5 Student Cognitive Performance (Indicator C1)

Fostering students’ cognitive performance is one of the crucial objectives of education systems. Comparing students’ academic achievement on specific cognitive subjects provides an easy way to understand the performance across different education systems. Mathematics and reading are recognized as the basic subjects that are necessary for preparing the core competencies that students need for the future (OECD, 1999 ). Indicator C1 presents the proportion of lower secondary students who have reached the minimum proficiency level in the domain of mathematics and reading of the selected education systems. Specifically, this indicator measures the proportion of children within the ages of lower secondary education that have reached the minimum proficiency level in the domain of mathematics and reading. This indicator reflects the efficiency of the education system in terms of equipping its students with the necessary skills to strive for the future. A higher proportion suggests that the education system has a higher efficiency in preparing its students with the necessary cognitive skills. Around 70% of the lower secondary students in China have achieved the minimum proficiency required at the national level in mathematics and reading. A higher share is observed in many other education systems, among which, Singapore’s education system prepares the highest percentage of students by equipping almost 90% of lower secondary education students with necessary mathematics and reading proficiency (Fig.  26 ).

Proportion of children at the age of lower secondary education prepared for the future (%).

3.4.6 General Performance (Indicator C2 and C3)

Whether students have adequate opportunity to advance from the basic education to the tertiary education is one of the important aspects that reflect the effectiveness of education system. Examining the enrollment and graduation ratio for tertiary education provides information on the proportion of students who succeed in moving all the way up to the tertiary education and eventually complete the tertiary education (Fig.  27 and 28 ).

Gross enrollment ratio for tertiary education (%).

Gross graduation ratio for tertiary education (%).

4 Best Practices

This section draws on influential education practices happening in contemporary China in the context of globalization. It focuses on China’s practices on broadening children’s access to basic education and international collaboration. This section starts with introducing the Project Hope ( Xiwang Gongcheng ), a non-profitable education project with far-reaching effects on China’s education history. The analysis then compares the Project Hope with the global education movement “Education for All” and presents a full picture of how the international community works together towards ensuring every citizen has access to education. This section also highlights recent practices of how China has participated in global education development.

4.1 Sowing the Seeds of Hope to Children in Poverty

Students’ universal access to basic education has improved tremendously in the past decades. Before the economic reform in the 1980s, education in China was still far from achieving the goal of universal access. In 1965, there were merely three million students enrolled in lower secondary education. Despite limited economic capacity, the Chinese government was committed to improving poor education conditions. In 1980, the government set the goal of universalizing elementary education by the end of the 1980s and universalizing the implementation of nine-year compulsory education in the 1990s. This commitment was further enhanced by the Compulsory Education Law published in 1986 (National People’s Congress, 1986 ). It turns out that the Chinese government commitment to universalizing the basic education was not a pie in the sky. With continuous efforts through the decades, by the year of 2020, the participation in education in China has witnessed a remarkable increase. Taking the enrollment rate in the lower secondary education as an example, the rate soared to almost eight times what it was in 1965. Through this process, the government explored a set of effective policies and practices which allowed China to realize the goal of education universalization in a short period of time. One of the most up-lifting practices is Project Hope. The following content presents a sketch of this project and it is expected that these practices can shed lights into the progresses of education reform in contemporary China.

Project Hope is one of the most influential education charity events in China’s non-governmental organization history. The primary aim of this project is to support children from poverty-stricken rural areas to complete the basic education. When the project was established, China was still a low-income country, facing a shortage of education fundings. Many children in poverty-stricken areas were not able to receive basic education. Statistics reported that more than 30 million children between the ages of 6 to 14 were unable to attend school or were forced to drop out. 84% of them were coming from the rural areas (China Youth University of Political Studies, 2010). Each year, there were one million children deprived of education because of poverty (Zhongguowang, 2004 ).

The Communist Youth League, a governmental body, and China Youth Development Foundation, a non-government organization, launched the Project Hope, with the overarching goal of ensuring that all Chinese children can enjoy the basic right to education. The project seeks to accomplish its goals through the following methods: setting up a grant-in-aid program to help drop-out students return to schools; building schools in poverty-stricken areas; providing teaching supports, pedagogical materials and textbooks; and providing special education funds for outstanding students in impoverished areas to go into tertiary education.

Project Hope has been a great success in China. Statistics show, by 2019, this project had received donations of US$2.16 billion dollars, which has helped millions of families and supported over 5.99 million students who had financial difficulties. A total of 20,195 elementary schools have been built, which continue to provide education to children in impoverished areas (Xinhua, 2019 ). The social influence of Project Hope is also remarkable. In 2010, a survey conducted by China Youth University of Political Studies showed that over 90% of Chinese citizens have “heard of” or “know in detail” about the Project Hope (China Youth University of Political Studies, 2010 ).

As it is one of earliest and the most successful non-profit movements in Chinese history, it has inspired an explosion of contribution in education by Chinese non-government organizations, which focuses on various pressing social issues, such as education, health care, environment (Ross, 2006 ; Stalley & Yang, 2006 ). A study surveyed over 1,500 project-sponsored students and found over 90% of them reported that this project has profoundly shaped their life values and raised their awareness to take part in public service activities (China Youth University of Political Studies, 2010 ).

4.2 Providing Education to Every Child

By the end of the twentieth century, the world had become increasingly integrated and globalized. It was in the dearth of building a sustainable development mechanism for the upcoming twenty-first century that education took on the responsibilities of preparing every citizen for work and life in a new era. However, by 1999, there was still a significant portion of uneducated population globally. In this context, the concept of “education for all” (EFA) emerged as the fundamental approach to guide the development of the global education reform. The right to education has been recognized as one of the basic human rights in the twenty-first century. The global community put forward the concept of education for all, which Hulme ( 2007 ) refers as the world’s biggest promise in the form of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2000, there are 189 countries and international partners devoted to promoting EFA in society. This section describes the main educational concept and ideology underpinning the global movement of Education for All, which aims to provide a global picture of education universalization which is similar to the process that took place in China.

EFA is a global movement led by UNESCO, aiming to achieve the basic right of education for every citizen in every society. This movement was officially announced through the Dakar Framework in 2000 at the World Education Forum in Senegal, Africa. 164 countries have participated and committed to fulfil the EFA goal by 2015 (UNESCO, 1996 ) including China. This global movement took place in a setting where children in many countries were not able to attend schools, millions of adults were illiterate, and one in three adult women in the world cannot read or write. Under this circumstance, the following seven goals of the EFA have been established:

Expand early childhood care and education

Provide free and compulsory elementary education for all

Promote learning and life skills for young people and adults

Increase adult literacy by 50 percent

Achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015

Improve the quality of education

Develop the Education for All Development Index (EDI) by UNESCO

With the development of EDI, the international community was able to monitor progress towards the above goals. As of 2015 there has been notable progress towards several goals. Students enrolled in pre-elementary education in 2012 have tripled when compared to 1999. The elementary education enrollment has jumped from 83% in 1999 to 93% in 2015. Participation in lower secondary education has increased sharply. Countries like China have seen the lower secondary gross enrollment ratio increased by at least 25 percentage points. Globally, the literacy rate has risen. More than two thirds of the countries have achieved the gender parity at the elementary education level. Many countries have raised their spending by at least one percentage point of national income (UNESCO, 2015 ).

However, the indicators also reveal that the political commitment for EFA has not been fully achieved and challenges still remain. Globally, one in four children still suffer from a chronic deficiency in essential nutrients. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least one in every five students could not complete the elementary education demonstrating that educational gaps continue to persist. In countries like Philippines, students from the poorest families have fewer opportunities than their economic-advantaged peers to participate in lower secondary education. Additional goal to increase adult literacy by 50 percent remains unachieved; and less than 75% of elementary school teachers have trained to meet national standards (UNESCO, 2015 ).

These indicators suggest that if the current trend of education development continues, the targets of the EFA will not be fulfilled in the future. This result also indicates the pressing need to uphold the international partnership for building continuous systematic supports for global education. Meanwhile, under the influence of the fast-evolving technology and the increasing uncertainty in the world economy and politics, exploring effective and innovative approaches and mechanisms is needed to help transfer the politic commitment into tangible support for education. Given this need, China has provided a few exemplary examples of international cooperation in promoting global education development.

4.3 South-South Cooperation in Education

South-South cooperation means the international cooperation among developing countries in the global South. The distinction between “North” and “South”, rather than geographical location, refers to the social, economic and political differences that exist between developed countries (Global North) and developing countries (Global South). Traditionally, education cooperation often takes the form of North–South 333cooperation, through which the developed countries provide educational resources or other related supports to the less developed countries. However, as the North countries rarely share the same economic or political factors as the South and have rarely experienced the similar challenges in education systems as the South countries, the North–South cooperation may not accurately address the priorities and needs of the developing countries (Matos, 1999 ). South-South cooperation, therefore, is deemed as a complementary approach to international cooperation to facilitate knowledge, policies and knowledge sharing among developing countries (Gray & Gills, 2016 ). Evidence shows that Southern countries have contributed to more than half of the world’s growth in recent years, and the outflow of foreign investment from Southern countries represents a third of the global flows. China is one of the Southern countries that is developing quickly in many domains and contributes to the overall global development.

For decades, China has long been on the beneficiary side from the North–South cooperation for education development. In recent decades, the education development in China has gradually drawn the world’s attention. Since PISA began its world benchmarking efforts in 2003, China and its subregions have constantly scored as one of the best performing countries. Similar outstanding results were reported in the subsequent TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey). The project manager of TALIS, Karine Tremblay, remarked that many initiatives concerning teachers’ professional development implemented in Shanghai, China, could serve as global model (Cao, 2017 ). With the increasing recognition of its education performance in the global community, China has actively engaged in international exchange and cooperation on educational affairs.

One of the noteworthy practices is the establishment of the UNESCO category II centers Footnote 2 in China, which shows China’s initiatives in joining in the global network of international cooperation for education. Two category II centers have been established, taking into the advantages of educational resources of the local regions. The major functions of these centers are focused on knowledge production, capacity building, technical service and information sharing (UNESCO, 2022 ). Depending on the specific domains in education, the category II centers have strengths and serve for different purposes. The two centers in China are the Teacher Education Center in Shanghai and the International Center for Higher Education Innovation (ICHEI) in Shenzhen. Both centers have leveraged the advantages of the educational and other resources in Shanghai and Shenzhen, respectively. The following sections highlights the functions of the two centers.

4.3.1 Leveraging the ICT Capacity in Education Cooperation

ICHEI is based in Shenzhen, the city which is the home to many world-class leading technological enterprises such as Alibaba and Tencent. The Center has taken advantages of the city’s resources, in combination with the strength of China’s quickly expanding higher education system and the lessons learned from the advancement of the education innovation in the Asia–Pacific regions. Together, it promotes the use of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in supporting higher education in developing countries. One of the seminal works produced by the center is the international institute of online education, which equips teachers with essential skills for online training and provides higher education institutions several ICT tools (UNESCO-ICHEI, 2022 ). This program has successfully built partnerships with dozens of higher education institutions in African and Asian countries.

4.3.2 International Cooperation on Teacher Professional Development

With the outstanding performance of its students in PISA and its teachers in TALIS studies, Shanghai has won the world’s attention as one of the most high-performing education systems in the world. International research and studies, with attempts to decipher the excellence of Shanghai education, have concluded that teachers are the most fundamental elements to the success of Shanghai students in PISA tests. The Teacher Education Center, which is another category II center under the auspices of UNESCO, was established under this background. It is in collaboration with Shanghai Normal University, a municipal-level university focusing on teacher training. The main purpose of this center is to be a service provider, standard setter, and a research and resource management center in the field of teacher education beyond the context of China. The functions of the center revolve around four perspectives: producing knowledge in teacher education; designing programs for teacher training; providing ICT supports to teacher education in underdeveloped countries; and sharing information with others UNESCO bodies (Cao, 2017 ). China’s practices in South-South cooperation provide an example of how to leverage the local advantages and share resources to support the educational needs of other southern countries. As a result, this practice built a synergy for enriching the global knowledge and experiences for education development.

5 Inspiring Stories

This section presents two true and up-lifting stories that happened in the history of China’s education: they focus on the inspiring individuals that have engaged in and made impressive contributions to China’s education development. While this section tries to reflect Chinese education from an individual perspective, it also shares encouraging messages on promoting education development.

5.1 Su Mingjuan: Carrying Hope and Giving Back to the Community

In 1991, like many children who lived in rural China, Su Mingjuan struggled to gain opportunities to participate in education. She was a village girl born in a peasant family in a poverty-stricken village, situated in a remote mountainous area in Anhui, a province in central China. Although access to basic education was already guaranteed by law at that time, for families who lived below the poverty line, the additional burdens of paying fees for books and incidental expenses were out of reach for many families. This was also the case for Su.

Su’s family could barely afford to pay RMB100 yuan (less than US$20 dollars) to send Su to the school. Su faced even further challenges when her father, her families primary bread winner, suffered injuries at work, forcing Su to withdraw from school. In this helpless moment, a turning point happened and changed Su’s destiny.

A volunteer photographer from the Project Hope visited Su’s village and tried to take photos of children and poor conditions of schools in the poverty-stricken areas, with the aim to raise the public awareness. This photographer saw shabby classrooms where there were no proper tables and chairs and their windows were without glass and only covered with thin paper. With a heavy heart, this photographer walked into one classroom and saw the children with worn clothes sitting on the benches staring back at him with curiosity.

Suddenly, his camera was attracted by a small girl, eight-year-old Su, holding a pencil that is short enough to hide in her palm. The photographer quickly clicked on the shutter and captured the moment. The photo of Su depicts the realities of many children in the poverty-stricken areas. The big eyes of Su depicted in the picture reflect the in-depth desire and hope of thousands of children for learning. Such emotions have passed on through this photo and reached the bottom of people’s hearts.

With the attentions Su’s picture brought to the Project Hope, it became well known and was able to fund more children in poverty. Because of the Project Hope, Su could go back to school and studied all the way to university. With her excellent academic performance, she has earned her degree and works in the bank in her hometown province.

As a girl living in remote mountain, Su who dropped out of school because of the poverty, was able to leave the mountains and achieve her life goals through the empowerment of education. Later on, Su decided to pay back to the society and help children who are also affected by the poverty. In 2018, Su has donated her savings and set up a student fund. She worked as a volunteer to help children with difficulties. Now, as an alumna of Project Hope, she is an active advocate for education. She actively engages in public welfare and charity with the hope of changing the destiny of more children who live in poverty.

5.2 Andreas Schleicher: Examining China’s Education from an Outsider’s Eyes

PISA is the most comprehensive worldwide international benchmarking study for education systems. It has profound impacts on global education reforms and shaped the rhetoric on teaching and learning in the twenty-first century. Andreas Schleicher is the man who initiated this revolutionary study. Andreas, a German researcher and the head of Education and Skills Directorate at OECD, has been recognized as the funder of the PISA. He has advocated throughout his life for evidence-based education policy making and believes that “PISA can help us to look beyond in the current education system” (Lin & Zhang, 2020 ) and promote global education reform.

When China started to participate in PISA and continuously became the top-ranking country in PISA. Andreas had received many inquiries from the public regarding the reliability of China’s PISA results, as there was skepticism about China’s outstanding performance. For instance, an American think-tank Brookings Institution posted an article named “PISA’s China problem”, which questioned how representative Shanghai’s performance was for the entire country. The article criticized PISA’s Shanghai results for deliberately hiding the results of poor students and poor schools in Shanghai (Loveless, 2013 ). As the first person responsible for PISA, Andreas has engaged in this debate with the Brookings Institute. His provocative response letter back was titled, “are the Chinese cheating in PISA or are we cheating ourselves?” Andreas’s essay began by pointing out a disturbing phenomenon long existing in international medias.

Whenever an American or European wins an Olympic gold medal, we cheer them as heroes. When a Chinese does, the first reflex seems to be that they must have been doping; or if that’s taking it too far, that it must have resulted from inhumane training (Schleicher, 2013 ).

Although there are detailed technical note provided to justify the validity and reliability of Shanghai data published by OECD, Andreas was still surprised that many criticisms were groundless and did not even look at the official documents that already addressed their concerns. One of the major criticisms of PISA’s China performance was the internal immigrant problem. International stereotype was that the house registration system in China restricted children from rural areas from gaining access to education in Shanghai. However, this was no longer the case. In fact, China had changed this policy long before opening up the education opportunities for immigrant children. When PISA 2012 was conducted, the coverage of immigrant children in Shanghai was the same as all other countries. This stereotype held by the international community is engendered from long-time misinformation.

Andreas accurately sensed this misunderstanding long existed between China and the West. As a researcher himself, he has always believed in empirical evidence over second-handed opinions. To better understand Shanghai and China’s education systems, he visited China many times, going to local schools and observing China’s education system through his own eyes. With the information he gained, Andreas developed more in-depth and critical insights into China’s excellent academic results. One of the advantages featured in China’s education system is the equity of learning despite students’ backgrounds. He has observed that “the four provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang) tested in PISA have made teaching as a profession very attractive” (Edwards, 2019 ). He noticed and shared that Shanghai’s system has the capacity to attract well-qualified teachers to top schools, which provides disadvantaged students at these schools a greater chance to accelerate their learning. According to his experiences in remote areas in Yunnan, Andreas observed that students there also received good-quality education. It was through close observation and fieldwork-based research that Andreas developed a more comprehensive and objective understanding of China’s education systems, which allowed him to see both its strengths and deficits.

Academic achievement is one strength reflected in China’s PISA results. However, Andreas pointed out that the non-cognitive skills of students in China and expressed concerns. Additionally, in the PISA 2018, Andreas pointed out that Chinese students showed less satisfaction with life compared to their peers in other OECD countries. Anyone who has experienced China’s education systems would notice its competitive exam-oriented culture and Andreas observed this too. He further commented on the prevalent exam-oriented culture in China, saying that “the exam is just one of many ways to verify learning. It is about whether you can think like a scientist or mathematician, translate a real-world problem into a mathematical solving, interpret the result back in the problem context”. When he was asked to give suggestions to Chinese education policymakers for the future education reform, he commented with a simple phrase “learn a little less for the exam, a little more for life” (Lin & Zhang, 2020 ). This story reflects the misunderstanding towards China’s PISA performance in the global community. Rigorous research is needed to explore the Chinese education myth under the PISA statistics and reveal the mechanism of China’s education. Only through this, can the PISA test bring more meaningful discussions for global education reform rather than just a simple comparison.

6 Latest Research

This section presents an outline of the existing literature on education system reform and development with focus given to Chinese contexts. Bibliometric analysis was used to map existing research on education systems. Quantitative results from the bibliometric analysis are presented, highlighting emerging themes and research trends. Finally, a comparison between Chinese literature and international literature in this domain is reviewed, providing recommendations and suggestions for future research.

6.1 General Overview

By collecting data from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) platform, a citation analysis is conducted for all Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) articles relevant to education systems. Articles are selected and screened based on the following criteria:

Papers were published between 2012 and 2022;

Article theme must be concerned with education system reform;

Papers must be situated in the academic field of education research;

Papers must relate to basic education, and tertiary education related articles are excluded

Papers are published in academic journals indexed by PKU (Peking University Core journals) or CSSCI (Chinese Social Science Citation Index).

Through citation analysis, key sub-themes were identified (see Fig.  29 ).

Source Compiled from search results from CNKI and CSSCI

The major themes emerged in the Chinese publications concerning education system reform and development.

A total of 10,690 published articles meeting the inclusion criteria have been identified. From 2012 to 2022, there have been a steady amount of academic research relevant to the topic of education system reform. Approximately 1,000 research articles have been published annually. The most commonly identified themes include education theory and management, vocational education, teaching and Learning reform, and secondary education. Four additional emerging themes are also found in the current Chinese literature, including continuing education, early childhood education, primary education, and talent cultivation.

By leveraging word cloud analysis of international literature indexed in Web of Science (WOS) social science citation index database, 20 frequently used keywords appeared in the themes of the selected literature for education system research. The majority of the current international research on education system research is centered on higher education, which matches the patterns shown in Chinese literature. In addition, distance education and teacher education also appear to be the popular research topics that attracted many researchers’ attention. However, there is also a portion of literature devoted to international development topics such as inclusive education and sustainable development, which signifies the importance of a global perspective in the research of education systems. Noticeably, China’s education system has drawn much attention of the international research community and emerged as a popular research topic. Two research designs appear most frequently, which include case studies and systematic reviews. These two research methods are also used widely by Chinese researchers. A case study is most often used by researchers to explore policy and best practices of education system reforms based on a comparative education analysis (Fig.  30 ).

Source Compiled from search results from SSCI

Word clustering analysis of the international articles published in a recent decade concerning education system indexed in SSCI (Social Science Citation Index).

6.2 Current Research Focus

6.2.1 technology-empowered education reform.

This section highlights one of the broad themes emerged in the literature of the education system reform – technology empowered education reform. The use of technology has brought an innovative transformation to the traditional education system in the twenty-first century. Contemporary researchers in China have devoted a large amount of interests on this topic. According to different types and uses of technology in education, the literature on this topic can be summarized into three subthemes, that is, distance Education, education informatization, and AI-empowered education.

Distance Education. Distance education has emerged as one of the major themes relevant to education system research. The literature focuses on integrating technology into education and building an innovative education system, which disrupts the traditional monotonous form of education and explores a blended form of education design. Researchers explore the potential of using different technologies to design distance education system. Cui and his colleagues ( 2020 ) explored how to use VR live broadcast technology to design a distance education system that can improve teaching efficiency. Some researchers explored the use of Web, Java and other technologies in the design of a distance education system. There is also a portion of literature that seeks to construct new conceptual theories to guide the design of a technology-enhanced education system (e.g., Feng et al., 2013 ; Hu et al., 2019 ). The concept of life-long learning serves as the fundamental conceptualization in guiding researchers discussions on the rationale and methods of promoting distance education (Zhang, 2022 ). Literature regarding the distance education suggested a need for more evidence-based research and a need for enriching the general theories for distance education. Meanwhile, promoting blended learning and deep learning through a distance education system is a promising area for future research to explore (Tan & Xu, 2018 ).

Education Informatization in Education Systems. Another theme focuses on education informatization, which emphasizes the use of communication technologies to facilitate the innovative education reform. Education Informatization 2.0 has emerged as an attractive research topic among Chinese researchers. Education Informatization 2.0 is distinctive from education informatization 1.0 which mainly focuses on qualitative changes of technological software in school systems. The education information 2.0 focuses more on transformation and innovation of education systems empowered by informatization. For example, Chinese researchers discussed building an eco-system for teaching and learning with the integration of big data and artificial intelligence. Some conceptual suggestions on how to construct an effective education system in the era of education informatization 2.0 have also been explored (Hu & Zhang, 2018 ; Zhang & Liu, 2020 ). Equivalent to the term of education informatization, “smart education” is widely used to express the similar concept in Chinese literature. Many researchers study how to build smart education systems which enable effective teaching, personalized learning, and more supportive environment (Zheng, 2018 ; Zhu & Hu, 2022 ).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Empowered Education System. With the growth of interest in technology empowered educational reform, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has attracted the interests of many researchers. Following UNESCO’s first international meeting on AI in education in Beijing in 2019, there has been a blooming literature provided in-depth thoughts into how to build an AI empowered education system. Wu and his colleagues (2017) analyzed the current research outcomes in China by using word frequency and co-word analysis. Their research concluded that the AI education products developed by Chinese enterprises were the driving force for promoting AI empowered education reform. They further proposed a conceptual framework for an AI empowered education eco-system that encompassed the key consideration including the technical architecture, the application forms and the stakeholders. Some researchers tend to focus on AI for a specific education system, such as teacher education (Chen, 2019 , 2019a , 2019b ), or higher education (Li et al., 2021 ). Meanwhile, other researchers have adopted a comparative lens to examine best practices for the integration of AI in education systems, such as in Canada (2020), and the U.S. (Tian, 2021 ). Chinese literature in this domain focus principally on the technology transformation and regard it as a core driving power for the high-quality education system reform in the future.

6.2.2 Universal Access to Education

The education opportunities for students have been a core concern for Chinese policymakers and researchers. Literatures discussing China’s education reform provide extensive insights into this question. One genre of policy-based research systematically analyzed the policies that Chinese government had conducted to promote education universalization. Fan and Fan ( 2022 ) pointed out that China’s education reform for the past decades has been guided by a people-centered principle, which always upholds the interests of people. Many researchers paid particular attention to education reforms since the “opening-up” policy in 1980s, highlighting the changing priorities of government policies in promoting education universalization (Liu & Cheng, 2018 ; Qi & Yang, 2018 ). The unified development of urban and rural education has been regarded as an effective strategy that is worth to be continually upheld in China education reform.

Student access to upper secondary education is one of the most popular research areas when discussing Chinese education universalization. Many researchers highlighted the urgent need to improve the attractiveness and quality of vocational education at the upper secondary education level to achieve a well-balanced development of the education system (Li, 2015 ). Researcher analyzed education policies on vocational education and identified that current education reform goals are to promote the equal proportion of student enrollment in general learning and vocational learning tracks at the upper secondary education level (Li, 2021 , 2021b ). Improving the quality of rural education is another crucial priority for narrowing the educational gap and achieving universal access to education. Zhang ( 2012 ) identified a pattern from Chinese unique characteristics in the policies and practices carried out by the Chinese government from the past 60 years, which are still considered as meaningful for the future development of the rural education in China.

6.2.3 Education Equity

Ensuring the equity in education has been set as the fundamental principle for China’s contemporary education reform. In the past several decades, the Chinese government has put forth the new policies and practices to develop an education system with high-quality and equity development. Relevant literatures have summarized the reform experiences for ensuring education equity in China’s education history, arguing that the meaning of education equity has become more comprehensive and inclusive (Feng & Gao, 2022a , 2022b , 2022c , 2022d ). With the age of globalization and informatization, the education ecosystem has been reconstructed. Researchers argued that the idea of education equity is shifting towards fulfilling the diverse learning needs of learners. This idea suggests the education system should be reformed in a way that allows for more seamless transitions of different learning tracks and pathways, so as to empower the learners to pursue individualized learning goal (Xu & Xie, 2022 ). In terms of policy implementation, some researchers focus on education governance in China and explore approaches to optimize the government’s capacity to monitor the equity of public education services (Li et al., 2022 ). Zhou and Li ( 2022 ) discussed the potential pathways to conduct a systematic education reform, which viewed the public service, teacher education and lifelong education as an integrated approach to promote education equity.

How to leverage the benefits of the information technology to promote the education equity is a question that has received growing attention in recent years. Many researchers explore the mechanism (e.g., Han, 2021 ), the implementation strategies (e.g., Chen & Zhang, 2012 ) and the practical cases (e.g., Feng et al., 2020) of using technology for equity promotion in education. From a perspective of education governance, a country’s education development is deemed as instrumental for the overall development of national education equity. Liu ( 2021 ) identified that the county education existed various forms of segregation and building county’s government capacity to connect the resources and knowledge with outside was needed to overcome such segregation. In the urban area, the problems like shadow education are also considered harmful for education equity which has raised researchers’ concerns. For example, Li ( 2020 ) analyzed the causal mechanism of shadow education problem through the lens of social science, putting forth specific strategies of how to prevent the extracurricular tutoring. In addition, some researchers highlight the problem of the high-stake test culture that has long existed in the Chinese education system and point out the need to reform such culture to better support the economically and socially disadvantaged students (Lu & Chu, 2017 ; Qi & Tang, 2016 ).

6.3 Research Trends

6.3.1 leveraging the benefits of technology to improve underdeveloped education areas.

Vocational education has long been an underdeveloped education area, which needs urgent intervention to improve its overall quality and attractiveness for students and their parents. With the growing acknowledgement of the benefits of using technology for empowering education system reforms, a growing number of researches study recent education reforms in vocational education. Exploring how to leverage the role of technology for improving the quality of vocational education has emerged as an identical trend in current Chinese academic research. Some researchers focused on the curriculum and pedagogical reforms enabled by the ICT-related technology (e.g., Gao, 2015 ; Yang, 2018 ) while other researchers focus on specific case studies to unearth the potential rules or principles for guiding technology used for improving vocational education (e.g., Chen, Y., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). In addition to vocational education, other underdeveloped education areas including career education (e.g., Qi & Wang, 2021 ), entrepreneurship education (e.g., Wang, 2022 ), adult education (e.g., Feng & Cheng, 2020 ), have also emerged as relatively new focused areas in Chinese literatures discussing the role of technology in the process of education reform.

6.3.2 Increasing Focus on High-Quality Development to Strengthen Education Access

With the rapid development of universal access of compulsory education in China over the past decades, the needs of education reform gradually moved from broadening public access to compulsory education towards providing high-quality education services to the people. A growing number of researches have paid attentions to upper secondary education and extends the scope of education universalization beyond the compulsory education. While student enrollment in upper secondary education is booming in China, Chinese researchers identified a number of existing problems, such as shortages of qualified teachers, a widening gap in student performance, the governance challenges in large-scaled schools (e.g., Liu & He, 2016 ; Shi & Zhu, 2015 ). They explored the potential strategies for education reform, including a systematic reform approach that integrates teaching, assessment and recruitment (Sang & Xu, 2021 ); a comparative model guiding the distinctive reform between vocational and general learning tracks (Liu, 2020 ); and a potential solution to break the binary of vocational and general learning divisions (Chang, 2020 ). Likewise, research trends on the quality development in the process of education universalization also extend to the early childhood education stages. Researchers not only discussed the management (Hu, 2021 ), the curriculum (Li & Fan, 2020 ) and teaching methods (Wen, 2020 ) of the early childhood education reform, but also shed lights on early childhood education development in the rural areas and socially disadvantaged groups (Li, 2019 ).

6.3.3 Growing Emphasis on Building a Well-Balanced, Inclusive and Equitable Education System

During the past decades, education equity at the basic education level has improved dramatically in China. However, there are still many pressing issues endangering the quality of its basic education, such as students’ academic burden, exam-oriented culture, and poor management of private education services (Xu, 2015 ). These real problems matter to the interests of all citizens, which urge Chinese researchers to conduct more in-depth research to explore the possible solutions. One emerging research trends concerns the modernization of the governance of education quality. Chinese researchers explore how to build an education governance infrastructure so that the quality of basic education can be monitored with scientifically methods (e.g., Tian et al., 2022; Li & Li, 2021 , 2021b ). Song and his colleagues (2021) proposed the idea of leveraging the benefits of big data to drive the reform of basic education evaluation. Such research focuses on data-driven governance is in line with the global education governance reform, which places values on evidence-based policymaking and management (Zheng & Yu, 2022 ). Another emerging trend in the research related to education equity is the focus on the policy agenda of alleviating students’ homework burden (“Double Reduction” policy). Researchers started to discuss how to reshape the current academic oriented education system towards a more inclusive education that accommodates increasing diverse needs of learners, with the overall goal of achieving both high-quality development and the education equity (Fan, 2021; Dong & Li, 2022a , 2022b , 2022c , 2022d ; Liu, 2022 ).

7 National Policies

This section introduces some innovative national Chinese educational policies. These policies reflect the trends of current education reforms that China’s education systems are being shaped towards. The long-term goals depicted in these policies outline a blueprint for China’s future education development, which shed lights on the future society and citizens that China aims to develop. This section highlights the latest education policies that are fundamental for international researchers to interpret China’s education context.

7.1 Fundamental Policies on Education System Reform

Building a future-ready education system has long been a priority concern of the education reforms around the world. With a world facing rapid changes in technology and an increasing uncertainty of the global environment, how to prepare their citizens so that they can strive to live in an uncertain world appears to be a fundamental question when planning education reforms. Future education largely depends on the guidance of the national policies. China has oriented education reforms towards he modernization ever since its opening up in 1978. The overall goal of reforms is to ensure the equal participation of every child in education. During the past decades, the participation rate of Chinese children in compulsory education has soared. The goal of providing universal access to education has been achieved, from the perspective of participation rates. With economic growth, China is no longer a “poor country running big education” rather it is shifting towards a “great country building strong education” (Zhu, 2019 ). A strong education system requires more than just achieving universal participation rates. The following subsections introduce the latest national education policies carried out in China. These policies determine the directions of China’s current education reforms and depict the outlines of future education and the competencies of future citizens in China. The following content introduces the fundamental and cutting-edged educational policies that lay a solid foundation for the education development in the twenty-first century.

7.1.1 Constructing a Supportive Learning Environment

China has dedicated to providing a supportive learning environment. Following are the typical policies demonstrating Chinese efforts in doing so.

Online Learning. Since 2000, China has launched the basic education informatization plan. With the growing recognition of technologies’ roles in education, China’s central government published a policy entitled Guidelines on Strengthening the Construction and Application of Online Education and Teaching Resources in Elementary and Secondary Schools (MOE et al., 2021). This policy proposed five crucial initiatives:

Construct a multi-scaled online learning platform that coordinates national, provincial, municipal, county and school-level platform

Develop high-quality online learning resources

Make full use of the online learning platform in the education process

Improve teachers’ and students’ information literacy

Improve policy governance on informatization in education

Preventing School Bullying. To strength a healthy school climate and protect the physical safety of the students, MOE published Provisions on the Protection of Minors by Schools (MOE, 2021a), which lays out regulations to address the potential safety issues in schools, including establishing a special protection system to prevent school bullying, specifying the regulation to prevent, educate and intervene in school bullying, improving the prevention measures towards sexual harassment.

Controlling the Use of Mobile Devices. With the pervasion of the mobile devices, the disadvantages of using phones in student development and school management have also been observed. To prevent students from overusing mobile phones, Notice on Strengthening the Management of Mobile Phones for Elementary and Secondary School Students has been published (MOE, 2021b), which requires that students in elementary and secondary education shall not bring their personal phones to school. When students have an absolute need to bring the phone, parents’ permission is required. Schools must set out detailed rules to control students’ use of mobile phones. The cooperation between schools and families is needed to provide a consistent guidance for students to use mobile phone wisely.

Family Education . China’s education policy further extends its scope to home education and sets a framework to regulate the home education environment. The new law on family education promotion was put in place in 2022 (National People’s Congress, 2021 ), which is the first law in China’s education history to provide a clear legal framework for family education. This law has outlined parents’ role as the guardians for their children’s education at home and emphasizes the guardians’ responsibility to arrange the time for children’s learning, entertaining and exercises. Reducing children’s academic burden and protecting them from internet addiction is emphasized in this law.

7.1.2 Promoting Quality Teaching and Learning

Promoting quality teaching and learning is another goal China has always strived to achieve. The following are the typical policies demonstrating Chinese efforts in doing so.

Reducing the Academic Burden . To protect students’ well-rounded development and promote students’ mental health and well-being, China issued a policy aiming to reduce students’ homework and extracurricular training on subjects like Chinese, math and English (the State Council, 2021 ). It is officially required that the intensity and length of the homework should be reduced for compulsory education students. Schools must improve the quality of homework and provide guidance for students’ homework. Schools should consider extending the after-course tutoring services to meet the diverse learning needs of students. This policy also set out the regulation for private supplementary tutoring services out of schools. To enhance the quality of school-based tutoring service, the policy further lays out the concrete measures, such as expanding the teaching force, increasing the financial subsidies for teachers, and controlling the advertisement of the shadow education.

Improving Curriculum and Learning Materials . To enrich the reading contents for students and extend their reading activities, MOE published a regulation on management of students’ extracurricular reading materials (MOE, 2021c). This regulation specifies the ban of commercial activities such as lectures, promotion or advertisement of any kind of extracurricular reading materials in schools. Furthermore, the requirement for regulating the curriculum for the extracurricular activities is also set out, and corresponding policies were published to provide a guiding framework for private institutions to design, use, self-censor and supervise their curriculum.

Reorienting the Purpose of Examinations in Compulsory Education. The high-stake examination culture has always been a hotly debated issue in Chinese education. The Ministry of Education has carried out interventions to tackle the negative effects of examinations in compulsory schools (The State Council, 2021 ). It requires that schools reduce the frequency of exams, standardize content, scientifically use examination data, develop formative assessment and enhance the quality monitoring of student learning. The national policy clearly requires that the first and second grades in the elementary education shall not conduct any pencil-and-paper exams; the third to sixth grades in elementary education shall only have one final exam. Secondary education is permitted to have mid-term exams however only the higher secondary entrance exam will be used for selecting or tracking students.

Promoting Evidence-Based Education Governance. An evidence-based governance infrastructure supports policymakers in monitoring the quality of education systematically and contributing to well-informed decision-making in education reforms. China’s MOE initiated a national assessment plan to monitor basic education quality in 2015 (The State Council, 2015 ). Design of this assessment plan is closely aligned with China’s long-standing goals of improving education quality. The plan outlines detailed information regarding the targeted populations, subjects, assessment contents, timespan, assessment instruments and report types, which serves as the blueprint to guide the implementation of the national assessment to monitor basic education quality in China (Table 3 ).

7.2 Current Policy Highlights: Building a Future-Ready Education System

7.2.1 education modernization 2035: background.

In 2019, China published its education blueprint for the next 15 years entitled China Education Modernization 2035 (The State Council, 2019 ). It states eight key action areas for current education reform.

At the international level, China’s education modernization plan is a response to the United Nations’ sustainable development goal, “to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. This goal established by the international community has guided China’s overall education policymaking and has been assimilated into the preparation of China Education Modernization 2035 .

At the domestic level, China has witnessed rapid socio-economic development in the past decades. The Chinese government put forward the national strategy of achieving socialist modernization by the year of 2035. Constructing socialist modernization requires the support of a modernized education system. Chinese policymakers have realized the importance of reforming education to meet the needs of national development. As President Xi Jinping mentioned in his speech, “We must give priority to education, further reform in education, speed up its modernization, and develop education that people are satisfied with.”

It is under both international and domestic contexts that China Education Modernization 2035 has been created. Through past efforts, students’ access to education has been largely enhanced. However, challenges still remain. For example, current education tracks (general/vocational programs) are unbalanced; an exam-oriented culture persists, and school autonomy is low. The current education system is still far from meeting the needs of the national development goal, which is to build a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful modern socialist country (Xi, 2017 ).

7.2.2 Key Concepts Underpinning 2035 Reforms

The fundamental theme underpinning China Education Modernization 2035 is to build an education system that can prepare future-ready citizens through well-round development. There are eight key broad concepts are identified as the conceptual pillars in the document to guide the strategical planning—ethics as the priority of education, well-rounded development, people-orientation, lifelong learning, personalized teaching, integration of knowledge and practice, integrated development, and co-construction and sharing.

Under the guidance of the above conceptual ideas, the key developmental goals aimed to achieve by the year of 2035 include:

Build an education system that provides life-long learning opportunities

Achieve universal attendance in quality pre-school education

Provide high quality and balanced compulsory education (Grade 1–9)

Achieve maximum attendance in senior high school (Grade 10 – 12)

Significantly improve vocational education

Build a more competitive higher education system

Provide adequate education for disabled children/youth

Establish a new education governance system with participation from stakeholders across society

Given the current problems and challenges in today’s education system, China Education Modernization 2035 outlines ten key strategic action areas to be addressed through the following priorities:

Promote socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era .

Achieve high quality education with world class and Chinese characteristics

Promote high quality of education at all levels and equal access to basic public education

Achieve universal and equitable access to basic public education services

Build lifelong learning systems

Provide training and innovation of first-class talents

Build a high quality and innovative teaching force

Accelerate educational reforms in the information age

Create a new pattern of opening up education to the outside world

Modernize the education governance system

7.2.3 Highlights in China’s Education Modernization Reform

There are several noteworthy changes from the previous education reform that can be observed in China Education Modernization 2035 . One major change is the emphasis on innovation across all education levels and domains. The word “innovation” has appeared 18 times in this document, which involves building students’ innovative spirits and abilities, developing an innovative teaching force, enhancing higher education institutions’ capacity for innovation, reinforcing research innovation, as well as innovating education governance system. In this plan, “innovation” is placed as the keyword that involves in many specific reform strategies.

The second notable trend appearing in the plan is the emphasis on educational cooperation and exchanges. With the continuous opening and development of “One Belt One Road” initiative, there is a growing need to promote educational cooperation and exchanges in China. Thus, this plan defines developing a new pattern for education cooperation and exchange as one of the top priorities in the country’s reform.

Another change can be observed from the plan 2035 concerns the education investment. Education investment is the prerequisite for building a quality education system. However, in previous education policies, the minimum expenditure on education was never required by the Chinese government. This current plan clearly requires “raising the level of education input”, including ensuring the national expenditure on education to be no less than 4% of the gross domestic products. At the same time, the government must ensure that the educational expenditure per student increases every year. Such a requirement reflects the strong determination of Chinese government to reform its education system and the financial security guaranteed to support the realization of the education modernization.

7.2.4 The Global Trend in Education Reform: An Example from OECD’s Education 2030

As one of the influential international organizations, OECD is also actively involved in the global discussion of education reforms. In line with UNESCO’s 2030 Framework for Action on Education, OECD launched a project namely The Future of Education and Skills – Education 2030 (hereafter Education 2030 ) (OECD, 2019b ) to provide the conceptual guidance for global education system reform. OECD believes that the rapidly changing world brings challenges but also opportunities to global education. To better leverage the opportunities emerging from the rapidly changing world, education systems should prepare learners for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have yet been invented, and to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated. It is guided by this vision that Education 2030 intends to provide an international common ground and shared space for education reform in the twenty-first century.

Based on the competence framework established for the PISA study, the Education 2030 project looks beyond the cognitive competencies (reading, mathematics, science), proposed a broader concept of “core foundations” that are necessary for individuals to lead a quality life towards future. The core foundations consist of:

Cognitive foundations, which include literacy and numeracy, upon which digital literacy and data literacy can be built.

Health foundations, including physical and mental health, and well-being;

Social and emotional foundations, including moral and ethics.

Both China’s Education Modernization 2035 and OECD’s Education 2030 stress the above core foundations. However, it is notable that the Education 2030 project tends to propose a more specific range of competencies from the individual levels, whereas China Education Modernization 2035 includes similar concepts of core foundations inexplicitly in its text under the general themes such as “foster well-rounded development of citizens”. The physical development of citizens is treated as equally important as intellectual development in this plan. However, developing learners’ digital and data literacy seems to be less emphasized in China’s Education Modernization 2035 (Table 4 ).

It is based on the above core foundations that one individual can develop a higher-level competency, according to OECD. The Education 2030 project proposed a set of transformative competencies that a future-ready education system ought to nurture:

Create New Value. By fostering student capacity for creating new value requires an orchestration of a number of qualities, including critical thinking, creativity, adaptability, an open mindset, collaboration, agility, risk management, curiosity and a sense of purpose.

Reconcile Tensions and Dilemmas. Some key qualities that shape an individual’s ability to reconcile tensions and dilemmas can be cognitive flexibility, perspective-taking skills, empathy, respect, creativity, problem-solving skills, conflict resolution, resilience and tolerance for complexity and ambiguity, and responsibility.

Take Responsibility and Consider the Consequences of Their Actions. Individuals should think reflectively and critically about the context and situation, the environment and society; have a sense of integrity, compassion, respect and willingness to trust others and society; and should develop self-awareness, self-regulation and locus of control to manage their emotions and behaviors.

The idea of transformative competencies featured by the OECD can also be found in China’s Education Modernization 2035 . For example, China’s 2035 plan emphasized the same concept of creating new values. It proposes that the “curriculum needs to be reformed to foster students’ innovative sprits and practical abilities”. However, the China’s plan does not provide an explicit concept of transformative competencies.

Another major difference that can be identified from the two future-oriented education policies, is their stances. China’s Education Modernization 2035 focuses on the systematic changes across all education levels. Therefore, the plan gives primary attention to the education system reforms. Whereas, OECD’s Education 2030 project takes a stance from individual development, meaning the whole conceptualization is centered on human development rather than the education system. Focusing more on individual development, OECD 2030 project can guide the thinking of what kind of education systems needs to be built. It might be important for China’s education modernization reform to refer to international experiences and ideas (such as the Education 2030 project), as this could effectively leverage the best policies and practices of education reform and meanwhile facilitate the educational exchanges and cooperation.

With the rapid development of education in China, which is evidenced by its remarkable performance in several international empirical assessments, knowledge about China’s education system is important to enrich the global discussion of building the twenty-first century high-performing education system. This chapter provides a comparative review of China’s education systems, primarily focused on its basic education level. The general performance of China’s education system is benchmarked against several education systems around the world based on the comparative evidence collected by the reliable international databases and domestic sources. The intention is to display a more comprehensive picture of China’s education systems rather than just the academic performance of students. Meanwhile, to compare the quality of its education system with the other major world education systems from a more holistic perspective.

The introduction presented how the Chinese education system differs from other major education systems around the world. China adopted nine-year universal compulsory education that covers the elementary education and lower secondary education levels. Learning tracks diverge into the vocational learning and academic learning tracks after lower secondary education. The diversification of the learning tracks has advantages in terms of offering students more fruitful learning opportunities. Some countries like Germany, tend to promote the diversification of the learning track at the early stage, which contributes to a robust vocational education system that effectively prepares a high-quality national skilled labor force. However, from a social reproduction perspective, a clear diversion of vocational education at an early stage may be at risk of diverting working-class students from higher education which perpetuates social segregation (Shavit & Muller, 2000 ). Providing students and their parents adequate education and career guidance is key to avoid such risks. Some education systems (e.g., the U.K., the U.S.) proposed a post-secondary education before the tertiary education to provide students a more targeted support, which can prepare students for a more in-depth knowledge acquisition, a chance to smoothly transform into work-life or a preparation into a tertiary education examination.

In the Highlighting Data section, key indicators that reflect the performance of China’s education system were introduced. The participation rate of Chinese students in compulsory education is worth mentioning. It shows the improvement of education equity in China in the past decades. Student participation rates are catching up with many education systems in the developed countries at elementary education and lower secondary education levels. However, upper secondary education participation still lags behind. Regarding the ICT resources available in the education system, Chinese teachers and students tend to enjoy pervasive access to ICT resources. The overall student and teacher relationship is positive, Chinese students perceive their teachers to be very supportive of their learning. Based upon indicators of the productivity of China’s education system, Chinese students demonstrated a higher excellence in the core cognitive domains, including reading, math and science than the OECD average. Furthermore, through comparing the proportion of high achievers and low achievers between China and OECD average, student performance is not merely driven by the top-performers, but also relies on the universal success of most students.

The Excellence Indicators section provides a systematic comparison that reflects to some extent the quality of the education system. Ten indicators are in the end selected which collected information on the financial resources, human resources, education opportunities, education governance, student performance and overall outcomes. Among the selected education systems, China scored the lowest on the final calculation of the excellence indicators. It is observed that China’s education system demonstrates strength in the education governance, which implements a highly structured national standard to regularly monitor education quality. Different from the PISA test, which only covers four Chinese regions, the indicators selected in this chapter represent China as a whole. Therefore, some indicators of China are not necessarily as remarkable as shown in the PISA study. For example, student performance is lower when Chinese students are sampled as a whole. This result contributes to the understanding of the overall quality of China’s education system and highlights the needs for China to continue its education reform for the further improvement of its education system from a holistic perspective.

The Best Practices section describes national practices implemented in China’s education system, which illustrate the rapid development of the education participation at the basic education level in China. The Project Hope is a far-reaching practice in China’s education history that contributes profoundly to support economic-disadvantaged children complete schooling. This national initiative resonates with the wide global movement EFA, which provides millions of children around the world the access to education. China is one of the key participating countries that contribute to the overarching goal of the education for all movement. In recent years, China has become actively participated into the global cooperation on education affairs. The ICHEI and The Teacher Education Center built in China, both take advantages of the cities’ resources and support the education development in the underdeveloped countries. The inspiring stories in this chapter introduced some influential figures who have contributed profoundly to the contemporary development of China’s education systems, and whose works and practices have inspired many educators, researchers and policy makers in China and in the world.

The Latest Research section summarized the key themes and trends in the existing Chinese literature on researching the topics of education system. Technology integration in education systems is another popular research topic. Chinese researchers have devoted attentions to distance education, informatization in education and AI empowered education systems, and tend to recognize the technology transformation as the driving force for education system reform. Other topics, such as talent cultivation, education reform and teacher education, have also drawn Chinese researchers’ interests. Compared with the international literatures, some topics are found also attractive to international researchers, such as higher education, distance education and teacher education. Education systems for early childhood education and for sustainable development are the two emerging themes in the international literatures, which are still under-explored in Chinese academia.

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Xiong, Z. (2024). Global Comparison of Education Systems. In: Niancai, L., Zhuolin, F., Qi, W. (eds) Education in China and the World. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5861-0_8

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• Published: 01 March 2021

Skill levels and gains in university STEM education in China, India, Russia and the United States

• Prashant Loyalka   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0640-6074 1 , 2 ,
• Ou Lydia Liu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6296-5092 3 ,
• Guirong Li 4 ,
• Elena Kardanova   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2280-1258 5 ,
• Igor Chirikov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0542-9888 5 , 6 ,
• Shangfeng Hu 7 ,
• Ningning Yu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7619-7300 8 ,
• Liping Ma 9 ,
• Fei Guo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0934-696X 10 ,
• Tara Beteille 11 ,
• Namrata Tognatta 11 ,
• Lin Gu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7283-0749 3 ,
• Guangming Ling   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1185-6384 3 ,
• Denis Federiakin   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0993-5315 5 ,
• Huan Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3219-7226 2 ,
• Saurabh Khanna   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9346-4896 2 ,
• Ashutosh Bhuradia   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6925-0962 2 ,
• Zhaolei Shi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0010-2096 1 &
• Yanyan Li 4  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  5 ,  pages 892–904 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 06 April 2021

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Universities contribute to economic growth and national competitiveness by equipping students with higher-order thinking and academic skills. Despite large investments in university science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, little is known about how the skills of STEM undergraduates compare across countries and by institutional selectivity. Here, we provide direct evidence on these issues by collecting and analysing longitudinal data on tens of thousands of computer science and electrical engineering students in China, India, Russia and the United States. We find stark differences in skill levels and gains among countries and by institutional selectivity. Compared with the United States, students in China, India and Russia do not gain critical thinking skills over four years. Furthermore, while students in India and Russia gain academic skills during the first two years, students in China do not. These gaps in skill levels and gains provide insights into the global competitiveness of STEM university students across nations and institutional types.

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A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01102-y

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Carnoy, J. Cohen, T. Dee, B. Domingue, A. Eble, R. Fairlie, E. Hanushek, B. Kim, S. Loeb, K. Muralidharan, S. Reardon, S. Rozelle, D. Schwartz, S. Sylvia and C. Wieman, and participants at the demography workshop at the University of Chicago, the economics of education workshop at the Teachers College, the South Asia Region Knowledge Exchange Group at the World Bank, KDI School and technical reviewers at ETS for their feedback. We appreciate research funding from E. Li, the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics and Russian Academic Excellence Project 5–100, and the All India Council for Technical Education. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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P.L., O.L.L., G.Li, I.C., E.K., N.Y., F.G., L.M., S.H., A.B., T.B. and N.T. designed research. P.L., O.L.L., G.Li, I.C., E.K., N.Y., F.G., L.M., S.H., H.W., Y.L., A.B. and S.K. performed research. P.L., O.L.L., E.K., D.F., L.G., G.Ling, S.K. and Z.S. analysed data. P.L., O.L.L. and I.C. wrote the paper.

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Loyalka, P., Liu, O.L., Li, G. et al. Skill levels and gains in university STEM education in China, India, Russia and the United States. Nat Hum Behav 5 , 892–904 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01062-3

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Why Other Countries Keep Outperforming Us in Education (and How to Catch Up)

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The Biden administration has put an enormous amount of money on the table for our schools and, apparently, as much as 10 years to spend it. The potential for the improvement of the performance of our schools is unprecedented, provided that policymakers use it well.

The economic stakes are hard to overstate. Thirty countries now outperform the United States in mathematics at the high school level. Many are ahead in science, too. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the millennials in our workforce tied for last on tests of mathematics and problem solving among the millennials in the workforces of all the industrial countries tested. We now have the worst-educated workforce in the industrialized world. Because our workers are among the most highly paid in the world, that makes a lot of Americans uncompetitive in the global economy. And uncompetitive against increasingly smart machines. It is a formula for a grim future.

The idea of significantly boosting the achievement of the average American high school graduate and making American workers once again the best educated in the world, coming from the bottom of the pack, seems like a pipe dream. After all, there has been no improvement in high school math and reading scores on the N ational Assessment of Educational Progress after more than 40 years of trying every “proven practice” we can think of.

Yet the evidence that it is not a pipe dream is staring us in the face. It’s all those countries that have education systems that are outperforming ours. If they can do it, then we can do it. But we have to figure out how they did it and use that information to develop strategies that will work for us.

The National Center on Education and the Economy, the organization I headed for 30 years, has been doing just that for decades.

We now have the worst-educated workforce in the industrialized world.

We’ve learned two very important things. First, though the countries that are outperforming us have value systems and cultures very different from each other, most of the strategies they have used to get to top performance (while increasing equity) are very similar. If that is true, then those differences in culture and values are irrelevant. There is nothing standing in the way of using their strategies. Second, the most important thing that distinguishes education in our states from education in these other countries is that all of them have systems of education that hang together, systems that are coherent, in which each policy supports the other policies at every level of the system, from the classroom to the top of the ministry of education. With rare exceptions, we have no such system.

Raising academic standards, for example, works only when instituted as part of a whole system of innovations designed to mesh. The Common Core State Standards failed because teachers were being judged against student performance on tests that did not measure what the teachers were supposed to teach, there were no curriculum materials available to support what the students were supposed to learn, the teachers had never been taught to teach what their students were supposed to learn, the way students progressed through the grades had not been redesigned against the targets specified by the standards, and no effort was made to reorganize the work of teachers so that they would have more time for students who would need additional help to reach the standards. This is but a small sample of the factors that are routinely taken into account in the design of education systems that deliver much better results at the scale of a state or large city system.

The National Center on Education and the Economy has traced the trajectories of dozens of countries as they have gone from widespread illiteracy to highly educated and skilled , some of them in just a few decades. But none of them has done it overnight. Again and again, we see that the reforms that work and endure through many changes in political leadership are those that begin with a process of goal setting and system design that takes years. The process involves many stakeholders in many discussions that leads in turn to a shared understanding of the challenges facing the nation or state and the ways others who have had success have addressed those challenges. That builds a broadly shared consensus on the path forward. As those plans coalesce into a design, those who will have to implement the design are asked to plan it, and at least as much effort is put into planning for implementation as was put into the design itself. More often than not, the implementation period lasts 10 to 20 years.

That’s not how we usually do things here. New political leaders, once in power, decide on a few narrowly defined initiatives that they think they can get passed and implemented within the current election cycle. A bill is drafted, a few hearings are held, the usual suspects testify, and the bill is passed. Few educators pay much attention because they know that the next administration will have no investment in their predecessors’ agenda, but will have its own, which will also be largely ignored, for the same reason.

The Biden administration has given our states an incredible gift: enough time and money to involve a great many stakeholders in thinking hard about what the future will bring and how their entire system will have to change. That should lead to carefully researching the strategies used by much higher-performing systems to get much better performance and more equity at lower cost; coming up with a sound plan; and then taking a decade or more to implement it, rather than railroading it through, dooming it to failure.

Educators need to seize this opportunity. First, because they care about this country and its youth. Second, because if the Biden administration succeeds in opening the faucets of federal spending on the scale it has in mind, and five or 10 years from now, there is still no significant improvement in results, the whole country will turn on the educators and the No Child Left Behind era will look like a picnic.

Maryland recently spent three years planning the kind of sweeping and sensible redesign I’m suggesting, got overwhelming support in the legislature, and is now embarked on its 10-year plan. Yes, your state can do it, too.

A version of this article appeared in the June 02, 2021 edition of Education Week as Why Other Countries Keep Outperforming Us in Education (and How to Catch Up)

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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Five killed in Russian strike on ‘Harry Potter castle’ in Odesa

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Five civilians have been killed after a Russian missile attack struck an educational institution in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa.

At least 32 people have been injured, local officials said, including a four-year-old and a pregnant woman.

Regional governor Oleh Kiper said that in addition to those killed in the attack , one man died after suffering a stroke attributed to the strike.

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“Monsters. Beasts. Savages. Scum. I don’t know what else to say,” Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov said in a video posted on Telegram. “People are going for a walk by the sea and they are shooting and killing.”

The attack came after Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg condemned the slow delivery of aid from Ukraine ’s allies in the West and said “serious delays” allowed Russians to advance on the war frontline in the 25-month-old invasion.

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Flames engulf ukraine’s ‘harry potter castle’ after deadly russian missile attack.

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The building damaged in the strike is the residence of prominent former MP Serhiy Kivalov, who was among the wounded.

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Sophie, 59, made the surprise visit on behalf of the Foreign Office to show solidarity with those impacted by the war and as part of her work to champion survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, Buckingham Palace said in a statement.

While there, she met with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and survivors of torture who shared their stories, as well as female volunteers who help their communities cope with the aftermath of the attacks with mental health care activities for children.

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In a report seen by Reuters, the monitors informed the Security Council that “debris recovered from a missile that landed in Kharkiv , Ukraine, on 2 January 2024 derives from DPRK Hwasong 11 series missiles”. DPRK is Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the formal name of North Korea.

The attack killed at least three people and injured 62. The use of North Korean missiles in Ukraine is in violation of the 2006 UN arms embargo on the East Asian country, the report noted.

North Korean missile debris found in Ukraine’s Kharkiv

‘In front of my eyes, a missile was shot down'

A student at the academy who identified herself by her first name, Maria, said the blaze in Odesa on Monday was caused when a missile was intercepted.

“In front of my eyes, a missile was shot down, this was just in front of me. My doors were blown open and the glass was shaking. And then I saw this,” she told Reuters, pointing to the burning building.

“Just before this happened, we wanted to go down there for a walk, but thank God we weren’t there when it happened.”

Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk, in a posting on a military Telegram channel, said the strike was conducted by an Iskander-M ballistic missile with a cluster warhead.

Public broadcaster Suspilne said the academy’s president, a prominent former member of parliament, Serhiy Kivalov, was among the injured.

A Russian missile attack on an educational institution in a popular seafront park in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa on Monday killed at least five people and injured 32, local officials said.

Regional governor Oleh Kiper, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said that in addition to those killed in the attack, one man died after suffering a stroke attributed to the strike.

Kiper said eight of the injured were in serious condition, including a 4-year-old child. Among the injured were another child and a pregnant woman.

Reuters Television footage showed the roof of the ornate building, a private law academy, all but destroyed after the strike. Firefighters were directing water on small fires still burning.

Pictures posted earlier online showed the building ablaze and smoke billowing skyward.

Video footage, which could not be immediately verified, showed people receiving treatment on the street alongside pools of blood. One photo showed officials examining part of a missile.

Ukraine’s troops hope new US weapons will turn tide as Putin’s forces advance in east

Ukraine’s top military commander has been uncharacteristically open about the fact that some of Kyiv’s troops have been withdrawn from several frontline positions in eastern Ukraine as Russia intensifies its attacks .

Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi made the comments as Russian forces have been pressing hard since they captured their biggest prize this year, Avdiivka, north of Donetsk city, eastern Ukraine, in February.

Recently Russian forces have advanced to the town of Novokalynove, north of Avdiivka, and into Keramik, northwest of there. There has also been significant movement around Ocheretyne, and Moscow claimed on Sunday its troops captured Novobakhmutivka, 16km (10 miles) north of Avdiivka and, closer, heavy fighting is reported near Berdychi. On Monday, Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed it has taken another village, Semenivka.

Moscow’s push has sought to take advantage of Ukraine running low of vital ammunition and weapons thanks to political infighting in the US Congress that delayed the passing of a $61bn (£48bn) aid package until last week.

Askold Krushelnycky speaks to a Ukrainian colonel in this report:

NATO's chief chides alliance countries for not being quicker to help Ukraine against Russia

NATO countries have failed to deliver in good time what they promised to Ukraine, the alliance’s chief said Monday, as Russia rushes to exploit its battlefield advantages before Kyiv ‘s depleted forces get more Western military supplies in the war that has lasted more than two years.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that “serious delays in support have meant serious consequences on the battlefield” for Ukraine.

Thirty men died trying to leave Ukraine to avoid mobilisation since war began

About 30 Ukrainian men have died trying to illegally cross Ukraine’s borders and avoid fighting in the war against Russia which started in 2022, an official in Kyiv said.

“Some lost their lives while attempting to cross a mountain river or traverse mountains,” said Andriy Demchenko, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s border service told the Ukrinform news agency.

He added: “Overall, since the full-scale invasion began, about 30 people have died attempting to illegally cross the border.”

Of these, 24 men alone have died while trying to cross the Tisa river on Ukraine’s border with Romania.

Additionally, Ukrainian border guards have uncovered about 450 criminal groups that have attempted to smuggle people across the border since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Mr Demchenko said.

With some exceptions, Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country as they may be mobilised to fight, according to Ukraine’s martial law.

Ukraine faces worsening situation on eastern front thanks to intense Russian attacks, army chief says

Ukraine’s top commander has said Kyiv ‘s outnumbered troops have fallen back to new positions west of three villages on the eastern front where Russia has concentrated significant forces in several locations.

The statement by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi reflected Ukraine’s deteriorating position in the east that Kyiv hopes it can stabilise once it takes delivery of U.S. weapons under a $61 billion (£48bn) aid package approved this week.

Ukraine faces worsening situation on eastern front, army chief says

Ukraine’s allies say slow arms deliveries have helped Russia

Nato countries haven’t delivered what they promised to Ukraine in time, allowing Russia to press its advantage as Kyiv’s depleted forces waited for military supplies to arrive from US and Europe, the alliance’s chief said yesterday.

“Serious delays in support have meant serious consequences on the battlefield” for Ukraine, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference in Kyiv with president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Outgunned, Ukraine‘s troops have struggled to fend off Russian advances on the battlefield. They were recently compelled to make a tactical retreat from three villages in the east, where the Kremlin’s forces have been making incremental gains, Ukraine’s army chief said.

The Russian Defence Ministry claimed its forces had also taken the village of Semenivka.

“The lack of ammunition has allowed the Russians to push forward along the front line. Lack of air defense has made it possible for more Russian missiles to hit their targets, and the lack of deep strike capabilities has made it possible for the Russians to concentrate more forces,” Mr Stoltenberg said.

Kyiv’s Western partners have repeatedly vowed to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

But vital US military help was held up for six months by political differences in Washington, and Europe’s military hardware production has not kept up with demand. Ukraine‘s own manufacturing of heavy weapons is only now starting to gain traction.

Now, Ukraine and its Western partners are racing to deploy critical new military aid that can help check the slow and costly but steady Russian advance across eastern areas, as well as thwart drone and missile attacks.

Ukraine's farm minister is the latest corruption suspect as Kyiv aims to undo recent Russian gains

A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.

Four killed in Russian missile attack on Odesa

At least four people were killed after a Russian missile attack struck an educational institution in a popular seafront park in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa.

One man also suffered a stroke attributed to the missile attack, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. The injured include a child and a pregnant woman.

Seven of the injured were in serious condition, including a four-year-old child, the official said.

The missile attack was carried out using Iskander-M ballistic missile with a cluster warhead, a missile known as harder to intercept, said Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk.

“Monsters. Beasts. Savages. Scum. I don’t know what else to say,” Odesa mayor Hennadii Trukhanov said in a video posted on Telegram. “People are going for a walk by the sea and they are shooting and killing.”

Reuters Television footage showed the roof of the ornate building, a private law academy, all but destroyed after the strike. Firefighters were directing water on small fires still burning actively.

A student at the academy who identified herself by her first name, Maria, said the blaze was caused when the missile was intercepted.

North Korean missile hit Ukraine’s Kharkiv, say UN experts

Debris from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile was found in Ukraine’s Kharkiv when it came under attack on 2 January this year, according to the United Nations sanctions monitors.

The UN sanctions members informed a Security Council committee in a 32-page report seen by Reuters, concluding that “debris recovered from a missile that landed in Kharkiv, Ukraine on 2 January 2024 derives from a DPRK Hwasong-11 series missiles.”

Missile’s use in Ukraine is in violation of the arms embargo on North Korea, the report added.

“Information on the trajectory provided by Ukrainian authorities indicates it was launched within the territory of the Russian Federation,” officials wrote in a 25 April report to the Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee.

Three sanctions monitors travelled to Ukraine earlier in April to inspect the debris and found no evidence that the missile was made by Russia. They “could not independently identify from where the missile was launched, nor by whom.”

“Such a location, if the missile was under control of Russian forces, would probably indicate procurement by nationals of the Russian Federation,” they said, adding that this would be a violation of the arms embargo imposed on North Korea in 2006.

Ukraine pushes to get military-age men to come home. Some neighboring countries say they will help

Ukraine’s foreign minister doubled down Friday on the government’s move to bolster the pool of fighting forces by cutting off consular services to conscription-age men outside the country, saying it was a question of “justice.”

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the policy would ensure men in Ukraine and those who have left were both treated fairly.

As EU election campaigns kick off in Germany, the Ukraine war, rise of far right are dominant themes

Several German parties on Saturday kicked off their campaigns for the election of the European Parliament in June with a focus on issues such as the war in Ukraine and support by many European voters for far-right nationalist parties across the continent.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ’s center-left Social Democrats, or SPD, launched their official campaign for the June 9 EU election with a rally in Hamburg, Scholz’s longtime home city.

Russia launches fresh missile barrage across Ukraine – but Kyiv fights back with drones

Russian missiles have pounded power facilities across Ukraine – with Kyiv saying it had launched its own major long-range drone attack into Russia .

The airstrikes by Moscow, carried out with ballistic missiles and cruise missiles fired by Russian strategic bombers based in the Arctic Circle, are the fourth large-scale aerial assault targeting the power system since the last week of March .

Russia launches missile barrage across Ukraine – but Kyiv fights back with drones

More footage of the Russian missile strike in Odessa

Below you can see more footage of the aftermath of a Russian strike on the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa.

Mexican film wins top prize at Moscow International Film Festival while major studios boycott Russia

A Mexican film has won the top prize Friday at the Moscow International Film Festival, which took place as major Western studios boycott the Russian market and as Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds into its third year.

“ Shame ,” a film by director Miguel Salgado and co-produced by Mexico and Qatar, was the most highly awarded film at the festival, which began in 1935 and which has been held annually since 1999. This year’s edition included more than 240 films from 56 countries.

Two Russian journalists jailed on 'extremism' charges for alleged work for Navalny group

Two Russian journalists were arrested by their government on “extremism” charges and ordered by courts there on Saturday to remain in custody pending investigation and trial on accusations of working for a group founded by the late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny .

Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin both denied the charges for which they will be detained for a minimum of two months before any trials begin. Each faces a minimum of two years in prison and a maximum of six years for alleged “participation in an extremist organization,” according to Russian courts.

Russian court places Forbes journalist under house arrest

A Russian court has placed a journalist from the local edition of US magazine Forbes under house arrest.

Sergei Mingazov was detained earlier on Friday on suspicion of spreading false information about the Russian army , according to the magazine.

Vladimir Torkonyak, an official from the Khabarovsk Regional Court said that the 55-year-old journalist was placed under house arrest for spreading “ fake news about the Russian army ” through a two-year-old post on a Telegram channel, reported Russia ’s state-owned RIA news agency.

Russian missile hits educational institution, kills two in Ukraine's Odesa

A Russian missile attack on an educational institution in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa on Monday killed two people and injured at least 17, officials said.

Regional governor Oleh Kiper, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said 17 people had been injured, at least two of them in serious condition. The injured included a 12-year-old boy.

Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov put the number of injured at 20.

Pictures posted online showed an ornate building close to the seafront ablaze and smoke billowing skyward. Video footage, which could not be immediately verified, showed people receiving treatment on the street alongside pools of blood.

Public broadcaster Suspilne said the roof of the building, described as a legal academy, had been nearly destroyed. It said the academy’s president, a prominent former member of parliament, Serhiy Kivalov, was among the injured.

The Ukrainian Air Force had announced a harder-to-intercept ballistic missile threat ahead of the strike.

“NATO allies have not delivered what they promised,” Stoltenberg said at a news conference in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, referring to delays by the U.S. and Europe in sending weapons and ammunition.

UAE and Ukraine conclude talks on bilateral trade deal

The United Arab Emirates and Ukraine have completed negotiations for a bilateral trade deal, according to a joint statement released on Monday, ahead of its formal signing.

The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) will remove or reduce tariffs on a range of good and products, remove trade barriers and ease market access to exporters from both sides, the statement said.

In addition, the CEPA will also “support Ukraine‘s recovery and the rebuilding of key industries and infrastructure, while also helping to strengthen supply chains to the (Middle East and North Africa) region for major exports such as grains, machinery and metals.”

UAE-Ukraine bilateral non-oil trade reached $385.8 million in 2023, with joint investment worth about $360 million by the end of 2022 spanning sectors including logistics and infrastructure, travel and tourism, and advanced technology.

“We want to be ready for the next era of Ukraine,” Thani al Zeyoudi, UAE minister for foreign trade, told Reuters.

“It (the CEPA) is an important step for us to have another gateway to Europe through Ukraine,” Zeyoudi said, adding the deal will provide potential market access not only for goods but also services and allow UAE companies to build up connectivity to the European Union if or when Ukraine joins the bloc.”

US intelligence believes Putin probably didn’t order his rival Navalny’s killing, report claims

US intelligence agencies are said to have concluded that Vladimir Putin probably did not directly order the killing of his most prominent critic Alexei Navalny, who suddenly died in his Arctic prison cell in February.

The death of 47-year-old Mr Navalny, leading light of Russia’s opposition movement, was announced on 16 February. He had been serving a prison sentence on charges of extremism, which the international community decried as trumped up to try and silence a thorn in the side of the Kremlin.

World leaders have lined up to condemn the death, while a number of nations – including the UK and the US – have announced sanctions against those in charge of the prison in which Mr Navalny was held.

US intelligence believes Putin probably didn’t order Navalny’s killing, report claims

Russia is plotting attacks across Europe – and they’re only going to get worse

The Kremlin stands accused of everything from arson attacks in the UK to targeting GPS systems used to navigate flights, writes Keir Giles . As the country recruits more freelancers to act on its behalf, we should prepare for the dangers ahead:

Russia is plotting attacks across Europe - and they’re only going to get worse

Putin puts captured British armoured cars and American tanks on display after they were captured in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has proudly displayed a selection of American and British tanks in Moscow after they were captured on the frontline in Ukraine.

A British Saxon armoured personnel carrier, believed to have been given to Ukraine in 2015, was among vehicles pictured parked in the Russian capital under red banners boasting “Our victory is inevitable”.

The display is part of a month-long exhibition, which also features an American Bradley tank, a Swedish CV90 and a French-made AMX-10RC armoured fighting vehicle.

Putin parades British armoured cars and US tanks captured in Ukraine

Latvians told to turn basements into bomb shelters amid fears Russia could target Baltic states next

Latvians have been told to convert their basements into air raid shelters amid fears that Vladimir Putin could target the Baltic states next.

Vilnis Kirsis, the mayor of Riga, Lativa’s capital , said people should be ready to shelter in their cellars

“We call on everyone during the big clean-up, but also afterwards, to ensure that your cellars and your basements can be used as shelters in case of emergencies,” he said.

Latvians told to turn basements into bomb shelters amid Russia attack fears

Killing of two Ukrainian soldiers may be political, German prosecutors say

German prosecutors on Monday said they were not ruling out a political motive as they investigated a Russian citizen arrested on suspicion of stabbing to death two convalescing Ukrainian soldiers over the weekend.

The soldiers - who had been recuperating in southern Germany - were found with serious stab wounds outside a shopping centre in the Bavarian town of Murnau am See on Saturday evening, according to police. One of them, aged 36, died at the scene, while the other, 23, succumbed to his wounds in hospital.

A 57-year-old Russian citizen was arrested in his home shortly after the act on suspicion of murder, police said.

Early indications suggest the three men had known each other.

“The motive for the crime is currently unclear, although a political motivation cannot be ruled out and is being investigated in all directions,” the prosecutor general’s office in Munich said as it took over the case.

Ukrainian consuls are clarifying information about the units in which the victims served and establishing contact with their families, the Ukrainian government said in a statement.

Nato chief criticises allies for not being quicker to help Ukraine

Nato countries have not delivered what they promised to Ukraine in time, the alliance’s chief said Monday, allowing Russia to press its battlefield advantage while Kyiv’s depleted forces wait for Western military supplies to arrive.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that “serious delays in support have meant serious consequences on the battlefield” for Ukraine.

“Nato allies have not delivered what they promised,” Mr Stoltenberg said at a news conference in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, referring to delays by the US and Europe in sending weapons and ammunition.

Ukraine‘s troops were compelled to make a tactical retreat from three villages in the eastern region, where the Kremlin’s forces have been making incremental gains against their weaker opponent, Ukraine‘s army chief said Sunday.

The Russian Defence Ministry claimed on Monday that its forces had also taken the village of Semenivka.

Mr Stoltenberg said: “The lack of ammunition has allowed the Russians to push forward along the front line.

“Lack of air defence has made it possible for more Russian missiles to hit their targets, and the lack of deep strike capabilities has made it possible for the Russians to concentrate more forces.”

Russia's war in Ukraine boosts EU case for further expansion, chairman says

Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine has given a fresh impetus to the European Union’s drive to admit more countries, the bloc’s chairman said on Monday, adding he hoped the 27-nation club and prospective new members would be ready by 2030.

European Council President Charles Michel spoke ahead of the 20th anniversary on Wednesday of the EU’s “Big Bang” enlargement that added 10 mostly ex-communist nations such as Poland and Hungary but also the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus to a bloc that had then comprised just 15 members.

“It was a call of history to unite European countries,” Michel told reporters of the 2004 enlargement.

“Twenty years later we face a similar challenge because there is this geo-political chaos, including because of this war by Russia against Ukraine. And facing this chaos is the geo-political strategy to reunify once again.”

He added: “Because of the war launched by Russia against Ukraine, there is a new impetus, a reinvigoration of the (EU) enlargement strategy.

“It is challenging. But what is the alternative? The alternative would be a terrible, irresponsible mistake from the EU,” he said, calling for the EU and candidate countries to carry out by 2030 the reforms necessary for a new enlargement.

Russia jails two journalists for ‘working with Alexei Navalny group’

Russia has jailed two journalists on extremism charges for working with a group founded by the late opposition politician Alexei Navalny .

Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin have been accused of producing content for Navalny’s YouTube channel, NavalnyLIVE, run by the Foundation for Fighting Corruption. The organisation, which is dedicated to investigating corrupt practices by Vladimir Putin, his associates and the ruling elite, has been declared an “extremist” body by the Kremlin.

Mr Gabov, arrested on Saturday, was accused of being involved in the “ preparation of photo and video materials” for the YouTube channel, Moscow’s Basmanny district court press service said.

“The enemy again massively shelled Ukrainian energy facilities,” said DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private electricity company, adding that four of its six thermal power plants had suffered damage overnight.

Read more from Chris Stevenson here:

Ukraine’s Zelensky urges US to speed up weapons deliveries

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that vital US weapons were starting to arrive in Ukraine in small amounts and that the process needed to move faster as advancing Russian forces were trying to take advantage.

Zelensky told a joint news conference in Kyiv alongside visiting NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg that the situation on the battlefield directly depended on the speed of ammunition supplies to Ukraine.

“Timely support for our army. Today I don’t see anything positive on this point yet. There are supplies, they have slightly begun, this process needs to be sped up,” he said.

The Russian defence ministry announced the capture of Novobakhmutivka on Sunday, another village close to Ocheretyne, which has become a focal point of fighting in recent days.

“Russian forces will likely continue to make tactical gains in the Avdiivka direction in the coming weeks,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

“The next line of defensible settlements in the area is some distance from the Ukrainian defensive line that Russian forces have been attacking since the seizure of Avdiivka in mid-February 2024.”

Russian forces advance in Ukraine's east

Russian forces advanced at points along the front line in Ukraine on Monday, taking a village in the Donetsk region, gaining better positions in the Kharkiv region and repelling a number of Ukrainian attacks, Russia‘s defence ministry said.

Russia controls about 18% of Ukraine - in the east and south - and has been gaining ground since the failure of Kyiv’s 2023 counter-offensive to make any serious inroads against well dug-in Russian troops.

President Vladimir Putin in February ordered Russian troops to push further into Ukraine after the fall of the town of Avdiivka where he said Ukrainian troops had been forced to flee in chaos. Ukraine said it withdrew from Avdiivka.

Russia‘s defence ministry said its troops had taken the village of Semenivka, northwest of Avdiivka. Russia said it had defeated Ukrainian forces and foreign mercenaries in a number of other villages in the area.

Russia also reported defeating Ukrainian troops in the areas of Synkivka in the Kharkiv region and at a number of other points along the front line. It also said it had struck Ukrainian drone workshops.

North Korea criticised the United States for supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine, state media KCNA reported on Monday, citing a statement from the defence ministry.

The United States in recent weeks secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine for use in its battle to fight off Russian invaders, a US official said on April 24.

On Sunday, the director of the Department of Foreign Military Affairs of North Korea’s Ministry of National Defence was quoted as saying in a statement: “The US has secretly supplied long-range missiles to Ukraine, sparking off uneasiness and concern of the international community.”

“The US can never defeat the heroic Russian army and people with any latest weaponry or military support,” the director said.

Military ties between Pyongyang and Moscow are growing which the U.S. and its allies see as escalating tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

Russian forces take control of village in Ukraine's Donetsk region

Russian forces have taken the village of Semenivka in Ukraine‘s Donetsk region, Russia‘s defence ministry said on Monday.

On Sunday, the ministry announced the capture of Novobakhmutivka, another village close to Ocheretyne, which has become a focal point of fighting in recent days.

Telegram unblocks chatbots used by Ukraine's security services

Ukraine said on Monday the Telegram messaging app had restored access to a number of chatbots used by Ukraine‘s security agencies to collect information about Russia‘s war effort after the services were briefly suspended.

The Dubai-based Telegram app founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov blocked a number of bots used by Ukraine to fight back against Russia‘s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s military spy agency GUR said in a statement shortly after midnight.

A Telegram bot is an automated feature that allows the app’s users to submit or ask for information. Some of the bots run by Ukraine‘s government allow people to report the whereabouts of Russian military hardware and personnel inside Ukraine.

The GUR had said that “management of the Telegram platform unreasonably blocked a number of official bots that have opposed Russia‘s military aggression against Ukraine, including the (GUR) bot”.

By morning, Ukraine‘s Centre for Strategic Communication said that three affected bots, used by Ukraine‘s SBU security service, GUR and digital ministry for the war effort had been unblocked.

A Telegram spokesperson said bots were “temporarily disabled due to a false positive but have since been reinstated”, without giving further details.

Ukraine's farm minister welcomes end of Polish border blockade

Ukraine’s farm minister welcomed the ending of a months-long border blockade by Polish protesters, which he said followed productive talks with Poland.

“The negotiations that took place were not easy, but the main thing is that we have a result,” Mykola Solsky was quoted as saying in a statement from the ministry.

Polish protestors stop blocking cargo vehicles at Ukraine crossing point

Polish protesters have stopped blocking cargo vehicles at the Hrebenne-Rava-Ruska crossing point, The Kyiv Independent reported on Monday.

Ukraine’s Border Guard Service said in a statement that trucks carrying grain crops to Poland would still not be allowed passage, except for those transiting to other countries.

Zelensky says Ukraine is focusing on improving drone operations

Volodymyr Zekensky said Ukraine is making “every effort to increase our capabilities in drone operation” in a post on X today.

The Ukrainian president also thanked all those involved in the production which is helping to “protect Ukrainian skies”.

A Ukrainian court ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister on Friday in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.

Read more here:

Ukraine spy agency says Telegram platform blocks its key bots

Ukraine‘s military spy agency GUR said on Monday that the management of the Telegram messaging platform has blocked a number of official bots that opposed Russia‘s military aggression against Ukraine.

“Today, the management of the Telegram platform unreasonably blocked a number of official bots that opposed Russia‘s military aggression against Ukraine, including the main Intelligence bot,” GUR said in a statement posted on the Telegram.

“Despite the blocking of our bot - your personal data is safe.”

Telegram’s press service did not immediately reply to Reuters’ request to comment.

A bot is a software application that can run on its own following instructions and is programmed to perform certain tasks. It can mimic conversation with people, among others, or collect content.

The Dubai-based Telegram messaging app, one of the most popular social media platforms, was founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on another social media platform, which he had sold.

Ukraine pushes to get military-age men to come home

Ukraine’s foreign minister doubled down on the government’s move to bolster the pool of fighting forces by cutting off consular services to conscription-age men outside the country, saying it was a question of “justice.”

“It’s about justice -- justice in the relationship between Ukrainian men abroad and Ukrainian men inside of Ukraine,” he said on Friday.

Earlier this month, Ukraine lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25 in an effort to bolster the size of its military.

“The situation at the front has worsened,” he wrote on the Telegram app, describing the “most difficult” areas as west of occupied Maryinka and northwest of Avdiivka, the town captured by Russian forces in February.

Record 30 per cent rise in Russian men aged 31-59 with disabilities

Russian demographers have recorded a 30 per cent increase in Russian men aged 31-59 with disabilities since 2023, attributing the rise to military casualties since the war began.

Russian journalists jailed on ‘extremism’ charges for alleged Navalny group work

Two journalists have been arrested in Russia on charges of “extremism” amid claims from the Kremlin they were connected to groups founded by late Russian politician and freedom fighter Alexei Navalny.

Journalists Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin both denied the charges of alleged “participation in an extremist organisation” with a penalty of six years in jail.

They are just the latest media personnel targeted amid a government crackdown on dissent and independent media that has intensified after the invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

The Russian government passed laws criminalising what it deems as false information about the military, or statements seen as discrediting the military, effectively outlawing any criticism of the war in Ukraine or speech that deviates from the official narrative.

Forbes magazine Russian journalist Sergei Mingazov was also arrested on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military, his lawyer said on Friday.

Mr Gabov and Mr Karelin are accused of preparing materials for a YouTube channel run by Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption, which Russian authorities have outlawed.

Ukraine pulls US-provided Abrams tanks from the front lines over Russian drone threats

Ukraine pulls US-provided Abrams tanks from front lines over Russian drone threats

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More US aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia. Winning is another matter

Soldiers carry the coffins of two Ukrainian army sergeants during their funeral in Lviv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

The body of a woman killed by Russian bombardment in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Ribbons with the colors of the European Union and Ukraine are attached to a tree next to memorial wall of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A woman rallies to raise awareness on the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, talks during an interview with Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A volunteer makes a camouflage net at a facility producing material for Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

From left, U.S. representatives Nathaniel Moran, R-Tx, Tom Kean Jr, R-NJ, Bill Keating, D-Mass, and Madeleine Deane, D-Pa, talk to journalists during a joint news conference outside Saint Michael cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A big, new package of U.S. military aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia . Winning will still be a long slog.

The arms and ammunition in the $61 billion military aid package should enable Ukraine to slow the Russian army’s bloody advances and block its strikes on troops and civilians. And it will buy Ukraine time — for long-term planning about how to take back the fifth of the country now under Russian control.

“Ultimately it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”

The U.S. House of Representatives approved the package on Saturday after months of delays by some Republicans wary of U.S. involvement overseas. It was passed by the Senate on Tuesday, and President Joe Biden signed it into law on Wednesday.

The difference could be felt within days on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia’s much larger army has been slowly taking territory against massively outgunned Ukrainian forces .

The aid approval means Ukraine may be able to release artillery ammunition from dwindling stocks that it has been rationing. More equipment will come soon from American stocks in Poland and Germany, and later from the U.S.

The first shipments are expected to arrive by the beginning of next week, said Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.

But opposition lawmaker Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, said logistical challenges and bureaucracy could delay shipments to Ukraine by two to three months, and it would be even longer before they reach the front line.

While details of the shipments are classified, Ukraine’s most urgent needs are artillery shells to stop Russian troops from advancing, and anti-aircraft missiles to protect people and infrastructure from missiles, drones and bombs.

What’s coming first is not always what front-line commanders need most, said Arakhamia, the Ukrainian lawmaker. He said that even a military giant like the U.S. does not have stockpiles of everything.

“The logic behind this first package was, you (the U.S.) finds our top priorities and then you see what you have in the warehouses,” Arakhamia said. “And sometimes they do not match.”

Hope for future breakthroughs for Ukraine still hangs on more timely deliveries of Western aid, lawmakers acknowledge.

Many experts believe that both Ukraine and Russia are exhausted by two years of war and won’t be able to mount a major offensive — one capable of making big strategic gains — until next year.

Still, Russia is pushing forward at several points along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, using tanks, wave after wave of infantry troops and satellite-guided gliding bombs to pummel Ukrainian forces. Russia is also hitting power plants and pounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv , which is only about 30 kilometers (some 20 miles) from the Russian border.

Ivchenko said the goal for Ukraine’s forces now is to “hold the line” until the bulk of new supplies arrive by mid-summer. Then, they can focus on trying to recapture territory recently lost in the Donetsk region.

“And probably ... at the end of summer we’ll see some movement, offensive movement of the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.

Some military experts doubt Ukraine has the resources to mount even small offensives very soon.

The U.S. funding “can probably only help stabilize the Ukrainian position for this year and begin preparations for operations in 2025,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.

In the best-case scenario for Ukraine, the American aid will give commanders time to reorganize and train its army — applying lessons learned from its failed summer 2023 offensive. It may also galvanize Ukraine’s allies in Europe to increase aid.

“So this just wasn’t about Ukraine and the United States, this really affected our entire 51-country coalition,” said U.S. Congressman Bill Keating, a Democrat who visited Kyiv on Monday as part of a four-member congressional delegation.

Zelenskyy insists Ukraine’s war aim is to recapture all its territory from Russia — including Crimea, seized illegally in 2014. Even if the war ultimately ends through negotiation, as many experts believe, Ukraine wants to do that from as strong a position as possible.

A volunteer makes a camouflage net at a facility producing material for Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Whatever happens on the battlefield, Ukraine still faces variables beyond its control.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who seeks to retake the White House in the November election, has said he would end the war within days of taking office. And the 27-nation Europe Union includes leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico , who have opposed arming Ukraine.

Ukraine’s allies have held back from supplying some arms out of concern about escalation or depleting their own stocks. Ukraine says that to win the war it needs longer-range missiles it could use for potentially game-changing operations such as cutting off occupied Crimea, where’s Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based.

Ukraine especially wants a longer-range version of Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, from the U.S., along with Taurus cruise missiles from Germany. Both governments have resisted calls to send them because they are capable of striking targets deep within Russian territory.

The new bill authorizes Biden to send Ukraine ATACMS that have a range of some 300 kilometers (190 miles) “as soon as practicable.”

On Wednesday, American officials revealed that the U.S. already secretly transferred a number of the longer-range missiles to Ukraine last month, and they were used for the first time last week to strike an airfield in occupied Crimea. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the delivery before it became public.

Meanwhile, Russia is using its advantage in troops and weapons to push back Ukrainian forces, perhaps seeking to make maximum gains before Ukraine’s new supplies arrive.

For weeks it has pummeled the small eastern city of Chasiv Yar , suffering heavy losses. Britain’s Ministry of Defense says 900 Russian troops are being killed or injured a day in the war.

Capturing the strategically important hill town would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities Ukraine controls in the eastern region of Donetsk. It would be a significant win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Western officials say is bent on toppling Ukraine’s pro-Western government.

Russian pressure was aimed not just at gaining territory, but on undermining Zelenskyy and bolstering critics who say his war plan is failing, said Clarke of King’s College London.

The U.S. aid package decreases the likelihood of a political crisis in Ukraine, and U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson deserves credit for pushing it through Congress, he said.

“He held history in his hands,” Clarke said.

This story has been updated to correct Orbán’s title, the Slovak prime minister’s name and that the British estimate of daily Russian losses is for the war, not one battle.

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp contributed from Washgington.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Education > College and university Stats : compare key data on Russia & United States

• Country Info
• Russia vs. United States
• College and university

Definitions

• Gender parity index : Country's gender parity index for college and university enrollment. For countries with a rating of over 1, more females are enrolled while countries with a rating under 1 have more males enrolled.
• Gender ratio : Ratio of female to male tertiary enrollment is the percentage of men to women enrolled at tertiary level in public and private schools.
• Private school share : Percentage of post-secondary students who attend a private school, college, or university.
• Share of total education spending : Percentage of government education funding that goes to post-secondary education.
• Teachers > Proportion of teachers female : Percentage of country's college and university professors that are female.

SOURCES: United Nations Statistics Division . Source tables ; United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics.; UNESCO Institute for Statistics . Source tables ; UNESCO Institute for Statistics . Source tables ; United Nations Statistics Division . Source tables

APA MLA MHRA CSE AMA Chicago Bluebook Bluebook/JOLT Citation

Compare russia and united states in, factoid #42.

• English speaking kids are the world's biggest novel readers - but the least enthusiastic comic readers .

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How States Compare in the 2024 Best High Schools Rankings

Massachusetts tops all other states with the highest percentage of top-ranked public high schools.

How States Compare in Best High Schools

A breakdown by state of the 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools rankings shows that Massachusetts is once again the leading performer. This state-by-state performance comparison is solely based on which states have the largest proportion of their high schools in the top 25% of the 2024 Best High Schools rankings.

This year, 43.9%, or nearly half, of Massachusetts' eligible high schools were in the top 25% of the rankings. Connecticut came in second with 42.9% of its schools in the top 25%, New Jersey in third with 42.1%, Maryland in fourth with 39% and Florida in fifth place with 37.4%.

The top-ranked U.S. public schools in the 2024 Best High Schools rankings are those whose students earned outstanding scores in math, reading and science state assessments; took and earned a qualifying score in an array of college-level exams; and graduated in high proportions. U.S. News ranked nearly 18,000 public high schools using a comprehensive formula. The six ranking factors and their weights are explained in the rankings methodology .

State rankings are calculated based on the proportion of each state's schools in the top 25% of the 2024 Best High Schools rankings. That level of achievement is the most valid indicator of the relative performance of a state's high schools compared with other states. This is because a relatively high percentage of a state's high schools in the top 25% demonstrates that those high schools have performed at the highest levels compared with other U.S. schools.

The results vary greatly for the percentages of states' high schools in the top 25% of the rankings. Only 13 states had 30% or more of their schools in the top 25%. Twenty-one states had 25% or more of their high schools in the top 25%. However, 19 states had 20% or fewer of their high schools in the top 25%, and eight states had fewer than 10% of their high schools in the top 25%.

The two states at the bottom of the ranking – Maine and Oklahoma – were the only states that did not give U.S. News permission to use their schools' Advanced Placement data in the rankings. Less than 5% of the high schools in those two states finished in the top 25% of the rankings.

Tags: education , high school , K-12 education , public schools , rankings , students , Maryland , Florida , California , advanced placement

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We travel a lot, and our son attends local classrooms along the way. We noticed primary schools in Europe let kids be kids.

• My husband and I homeschool our son, which allows us to travel. 
• In addition to his homeschooling curriculum, he has attended schools in different countries. 
• We've noticed differences — and similarities — between the schools he attended in Europe and the US.

My son has been homeschooled, essentially, his whole academic life. Because of this, we're able to travel multiple times each month without worrying about him missing school. I am a writer and my husband is a film and TV composer as well as an investor, which also makes this possible.

Not only can we take my son's work with us, but he has also been able to experience schooling in various countries by joining classrooms and homeschool groups throughout our travels. His curriculum is based in the United States, but integrating local schools helps him learn different languages, culture, and of course, make friends.

Because we have spent extended periods of time in Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy, we have been able to experience how a few schools in these places approach education more intimately. While we've experienced some similarities across the schools he's attended, like classroom size and curriculum structure, we also noticed distinct differences in approach.

School was low-stress in the Netherlands

Where we lived in the Netherlands, children as young as four years old often happily walked themselves to school. The school my son attended in the Netherlands was run like a well-oiled machine, yet they still maintained a playful and innocent atmosphere.

The school administrators were strict about timeliness — I often witnessed that if students arrived even one minute late, they were considered late, with no exceptions. However, discipline for kids was simply a stern talking-to from teachers. Teachers told us that if children had issues with each other, they were expected to sort it amongst themselves, while the adults observed from a distance.

Friends who had kids at other schools in the Netherlands confirmed that this focus on independent conflict resolution with minimal adult intervention was common. Play was the central focus of the day for children until they were about seven years old. The primary focus during those early years was on children learning to coexist with one another rather than academics.

Learning to swim was also a significant focus in the early years in the Netherlands and considered more critical than learning to read by many locals we spoke with. Once compulsory, now only some schools integrate swim classes into the curriculum. Given the numerous canals everywhere, this emphasis is understandable.

Related stories

Children at my son's school spent a large portion of their day outdoors, regardless of the weather, which parents said was typical. The Dutch often say, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing." At school, my son assisted in preparing daily vegan meals, and occasionally brought home crafts to do.

Friends who had older kids in the Netherlands told me that the homework increased once they hit middle school, where there was more of an emphasis on academics. I truly appreciated this low-stress setting we encountered during our son's primary school years.

We saw more emphasis on collaboration than individual performance in Portugal

In Portugal, there was an emphasis on projects that children completed together to enhance their collaboration skills, and praise was often based on the collaboration itself rather than individual performance.

We noticed that children rarely had packed schedules filled with extracurricular activities like in the US, and often stayed up very late at night with their families, based on our own observations and talking to Portuguese parents.

While I adored the genuinely "crunchy" vibe of the schools my son attended and the kindness of the teachers, I believed our son would benefit from more structure and consistency in his routine . So, for a time, we supplemented even more than our usual load of schoolwork at home to provide more academic consistency during his short stint at a Portuguese school and eventually transitioned to only homeschooling again and met with a homeschool group for field trips.

We noticed less encouragement of competition in Italy than in the US

At the school my son goes to in Italy , it was immediately evident that food and dining is treated as an important part of the school day. Students are given a proper dining experience with formal table settings. The primary schools get a full two-hour break in the middle of the day including lunch and free time, known as riposo , lending to a much longer school day overall.

Football (soccer) is also taken seriously, so most schools we visited have specialized schedules specifically for children who play and perhaps want to pursue it as a career. Participation in the arts, football, and music is encouraged, but football is by far the most popular activity at our school and in our region.

As for the emphasis on the curriculum, so far, it seems far less rigid than in the US. Cognitive and social skills appear to be the primary objectives, rather than a heavy focus on testing. There is almost no encouragement of competition that we witnessed, as collaboration seems to be the focus until middle school.

My son is not yet in middle school, but from what I've heard both in preliminary conversations with schools, open days, and from Facebook groups with other expat parents , it sounds like middle school takes a more rigorous academic approach across Europe. For example, some countries, like Italy, expect children to know their primary focus of study by the time they enter high school, and then are placed in a specialized school program geared towards that interest area. Middle school seems to help form this decision by focusing on more specific subjects like robotics, engineering and anatomy, as they are already expected to know how to work together.

The unifying theme we observed throughout the schools in Europe that our son has attended, regardless of the country, was to allow children to be children and let the serious learning come later. At almost all the schools my son attended or toured, more importance was placed on children's ability to coexist together, work on projects and tasks collaboratively, than on core subjects like math, science, and history in those early years.

Each country had something we cherished and something we had to learn to adjust to. Overall, compared to our group homeschooling experience in the US, I would say that the primary schools in the European cities we joined were far less stressful. The academics seemed to get prioritized more as the kids got older. This makes me really appreciate how the lower grades focused on collaboration and coexistence.

• Main content

Childhood and Education in the United States and Russia

Sociological and comparative perspectives, table of contents, introduction, part 1: establishing theoretical tools, childhood and education intertwined, children and schooling through sociological lens, understanding stratification in socialist and postsocialist space, part 2: comparing childhoods, change or continuity: from the soviet reality to the new russia, brave new world staggering inequality in america, quantifying childhood, where have we been and where are we going, datasets used for the analysis in chapters 5 and 6.

• Katerina Bodovski

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China's Vision for Global Security: Implications for Southeast Asia

As China looks to change global security order, ASEAN countries should pay particular attention to norms around cybersecurity.

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

/ READ TIME: 6 minutes

By: Thy Try

Editor's Note: The following article is part of a USIP project, " Tracking China's Global Security Initiative ." The opinions expressed in this essay are solely those of the author and do not represent USIP, or any organization or government. 

China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) marks a new phase in Beijing’s ongoing push to change the international security order. Through the GSI , China seeks to establish itself as a counterbalance to U.S. influence and to reshape security management in a number of strategically important regions. The GSI is still in the early stages of implementation, but it has already demonstrated the potential to disrupt the existing security framework in Southeast Asia. This may lead to increased polarization within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with some member states aligning with the GSI and others remaining cautious due to their stronger affiliations with the United States.

What Does China Hope to Accomplish with the GSI?

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced the GSI in 2022, it was described as a comprehensive framework for addressing global security challenges that centered on six principles , including an emphasis on shared responsibility, sovereignty and peaceful dispute resolution.

The GSI’s primary goals, according to Beijing, include maintaining global security, enhancing coordination among regional organizations and addressing diverse challenges — from traditional conflicts to climate change to cybersecurity.

China’s motivation for the GSI is influenced by heightened threat perceptions in its neighborhood, driven by events like Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. China seeks regional stability through nonmilitary means, aligning with its economic statecraft and diplomatic strategies, including the Belt and Road Initiative.

The GSI In Southeast Asia

There is ongoing debate surrounding the implications of the GSI for ASEAN, with several potential impacts that demand careful consideration and analysis.

For example, the GSI may foster increased security cooperation between China and ASEAN member states. This cooperation could challenge the long-standing U.S.-led security order in the region, as the GSI promotes norms and principles — such as sovereignty, noninterference and win-win cooperation — that diverge from those embedded in the U.S.-led security order, which emphasizes collective security and the rule of law.

Despite these efforts, unresolved territorial disputes — specifically China’s claims in the South China Sea — have sparked skepticism in some Southeast Asian nations about China’s increasing political influence in the region.

As the situation in the South China Sea becomes increasingly militarized , the concern among Southeast Asian nations is that China could use the GSI as a justification for its actions there , citing principles of sovereignty and noninterference to legitimize its activities. This could complicate not just the South China Sea dispute but set a precedent for other ongoing territorial disputes in the region, as China argues that its actions are necessary to safeguard its sovereignty and maritime interests.

China’s Vision for Global Data Security

The GSI concept paper also proposes to “build more international platforms for exchange and cooperation on addressing security challenges,” including on cybersecurity . The concept paper specifically states that China should increase international cooperation in the field of information security, formulating global rules on digital governance, and strengthening global governance systems for cyberspace. 

Many of these goals for cybersecurity reflect those previously described in China’s Global Data Security Initiative (GDSI) , which was launched in September 2020. The GDSI laid out a vision to establish international norms and standards for data security and promote cooperation between nations, particularly with China, in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT).

At the forefront of the GDSI’s eight key aims is securing global supply chains. The GDSI principles oppose ICT activities that could harm critical infrastructure or engage in data theft. They also propose taking decisive action against personal data infringements, including advocating against mass surveillance of other countries. GDSI encourages companies to comply with host countries’ laws, respecting the sovereignty of data. Additionally, these points assert that law enforcement access to overseas data should be completed through judicial assistance and other legal channels.

The initiative's roots can be traced to China's own data security legislation, which has been criticized by some for its strictness and implications for civil liberties. The legislation grants extensive powers to the Chinese government in data collection and regulation, raising concerns about potential misuse, particularly in suppressing dissenting voices and political opposition within China.

The GDSI has elicited varied responses , creating a divided landscape where some nations express support, while others harbor deep concerns about China's underlying intentions. Under the GDSI framework, participating nations may be required to disclose detailed information about their data security practices, raising concerns about granting China access to sensitive information, and potentially compromising data privacy and security on a regional or perhaps global scale.

Additionally, the GDSI provision granting China veto power over international agreements related to data security has raised concerns about the potential for China’s disproportionate influence on the global data governance landscape, potentially altering the existing international order in this crucial domain.

While the GDSI offers potential advantages, such as enhancing global data security and fostering universally accepted data security standards, it thus also presents significant risks. These include concerns about China's potential exploitation of the initiative for strategic advantage, misuse to suppress dissent and criticism, and the initiative’s role in giving China disproportionate influence in the realm of global data management.

How China’s Data Security Could Undermine ASEAN

If the GDSI is understood as an important dimension of the GSI, it suggests that Beijing may be exploring the establishment of a cyber cooperation initiative with Southeast Asia, akin to existing collaborations with the League of Arab States and Central Asia . 

While collaborating with China through the GDSI could deepen cooperation between China and ASEAN in the ever-more important cyber realm, it also poses a number of potential security challenges. For one, it may increase the potential for cybersecurity threats from China in the region.  Chinese hackers have been targeting government and private sector organizations in ASEAN countries, raising concerns about cybersecurity threats emanating from China.

In addition, heightened data sharing between ASEAN and China potentially increases vulnerability to data breaches and outside cyberattacks. Moreover, the establishment of data security cooperation mechanisms could be influenced by Chinese norms, which may not align with global best practices — certainly, they are distinct from those that currently shape cyberspace.

All in all, China's growing global influence through initiatives like the GSI and the GDSI has various implications for ASEAN. The GSI offers cooperation opportunities but may disrupt regional security and escalate territorial conflicts.

Given the high-level provenance of GSI and Beijing’s continuing efforts to promote it as an increasingly important centerpiece of its diplomatic engagement, ASEAN countries should expect China to encourage their commitment to participate in a range of GSI-related agreements and activities, including in the area of cybersecurity. Prudent foreign policy choices are essential for managing the complexities involved in these engagements and safeguarding national interests in the evolving global geopolitical landscape.

Thy Try is a researcher from Cambodia.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s).

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Most Americans think U.S. K-12 STEM education isn’t above average, but test results paint a mixed picture

Most Americans believe K-12 STEM education in the United States is either average or below average compared with other wealthy nations, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Recent global standardized test scores show that students in the U.S. are, in fact, lagging behind their peers in other wealthy nations when it comes to math. But America’s students are doing better than average in science compared with pupils in these other countries.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ ratings of K-12 STEM education in the United States. For this analysis, we surveyed 10,133 U.S. adults from Feb. 7 to 11, 2024.

Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its methodology .

We also analyzed the latest data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-old students in math, reading and science in member and partner countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This analysis only includes scores from students in the 37 OECD countries that took the 2022 PISA.

How do Americans think U.S. STEM education compares with other wealthy countries?

Just 28% of U.S. adults say America is the best in the world or above average in K-12 science, technology, engineering and math education compared with other wealthy nations. A third say the U.S. is average, while another 32% think the U.S. is below average or the worst in K-12 STEM education.

Some demographic groups are more pessimistic than others about the state of U.S. STEM education. White Americans (24%) are less likely than Black (31%), Hispanic (37%) or English-speaking Asian (43%) Americans to say U.S. K-12 STEM education is the best in the world or above average. And fewer women (25%) than men (32%) say K-12 STEM education is at least above average.

Republicans and Democrats give similar ratings to K-12 STEM education: 31% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say it is at least above average, as do 27% of Republicans and GOP leaners.

Americans’ views today are similar to those in a 2019 telephone survey by the Center, which was conducted before the coronavirus pandemic caused major disruptions in the country’s schools. In that survey, 31% of Americans said U.S. K-12 STEM education is the best in the world or above average compared with other nations.

How does the U.S. compare with other countries in STEM test scores?

The latest figures from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) show a mixed picture in U.S. math and science scores.

As of 2022, the U.S. was below average in math but above average in science compared with other member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of mostly highly developed, democratic nations:

• U.S. students ranked 28th out of 37 OECD member countries in math. Among OECD countries, Japanese students had the highest math scores and Colombian students scored lowest. The U.S. ranking was similar in 2018, the last time the test was administered. The U.S. average score for math fell by 13 percentage points between 2018 and 2022, but the U.S. was far from alone in experiencing a decline in scores. In fact, 25 of the 37 OECD countries saw at least a 10-point drop in average math scores from 2018 to 2022.
• In science, the U.S. ranked 12th out of 37 OECD countries. Japanese students ranked highest and Mexican students ranked lowest. The U.S average science score was virtually unchanged since 2018. Across OECD countries, far fewer countries experienced a large decline in science scores than in math scores. Seven OECD countries saw their mean science scores decline by 10 points or more.

PISA is taken by 15-year-old students about every three years. Students in 37 OECD countries took the 2022 PISA.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its methodology .

• STEM Education & Workforce

Brian Kennedy is a senior researcher focusing on science and society research at Pew Research Center

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About half of americans say public k-12 education is going in the wrong direction, what public k-12 teachers want americans to know about teaching, what’s it like to be a teacher in america today, race and lgbtq issues in k-12 schools, most popular.

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