Based on testing of nearly half a million 15-year-old students worldwide, South Korea ranks as the number 1 country overall for education. It’s laid out beautifully in the graphical illustration by Paul Scruton for this article by UK’s Guardian on which country does best at reading, science and maths. This breaking news is timely for me because I will be in Seoul Thursday giving a presentation hosted by the Department of Statistics at Chung-Ang University. The USA fell far down the list in math, so I suppose I am a bit out of line trying to explain new tools of design of experiments to anyone in this country. ; )
I spoke today to a resident of Busan with a daughter in high school. She said the school runs from 8 in the morning to 8 at night Monday through Friday and a half day every other Saturday. No wonder South Korean teenagers test so highly relative to the USA!