http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32608772
The biggest ever global school rankings have been published, with Asian countries in the top five places and African countries at the bottom.
Singapore heads the table, followed by Hong Kong, with Ghana at the bottom.
The UK is in 20th place, among higher achieving European countries, with the US in 28th.
The OECD economic think tank says the comparisons - based on test scores in 76 countries - show the link between education and economic growth.
"This is the first time we have a truly global scale of the quality of education," said the OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher.
"The idea is to give more countries, rich and poor, access to comparing themselves against the world's education leaders, to discover their relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see what the long-term economic gains from improved quality in schooling could be for them," he said.
The top performer, Singapore, had high levels of illiteracy into the 1960s, said Mr Schleicher, showing how much progress could be made.
In the UK, the study shows about one in five youngsters leave school without reaching a basic level of education - and the OECD says that reducing this number and improving skills could add trillions of dollars to the UK economy.
"I think it's partly a mindset, an expectation. There are plenty of examples of schools that have raised the bar dramatically," said education minister Lord Nash.
But a leading UK head teacher, Sir Anthony Seldon, criticised such league tables as "arguably doing more harm than good".
"They are skewing schools and national education systems away from real learning towards repetitive rote learning," said Sir Anthony, head of Wellington College in Berkshire.
The analysis, based on test scores in maths and science, is a much wider global map of education standards than the OECD's Pisa tests, which focus on more affluent industrialised countries.
The biggest ever global school rankings have been published, with Asian countries in the top five places and African countries at the bottom.
Singapore heads the table, followed by Hong Kong, with Ghana at the bottom.
The UK is in 20th place, among higher achieving European countries, with the US in 28th.
The OECD economic think tank says the comparisons - based on test scores in 76 countries - show the link between education and economic growth.
"This is the first time we have a truly global scale of the quality of education," said the OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher.
"The idea is to give more countries, rich and poor, access to comparing themselves against the world's education leaders, to discover their relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see what the long-term economic gains from improved quality in schooling could be for them," he said.
The top performer, Singapore, had high levels of illiteracy into the 1960s, said Mr Schleicher, showing how much progress could be made.
In the UK, the study shows about one in five youngsters leave school without reaching a basic level of education - and the OECD says that reducing this number and improving skills could add trillions of dollars to the UK economy.
"I think it's partly a mindset, an expectation. There are plenty of examples of schools that have raised the bar dramatically," said education minister Lord Nash.
But a leading UK head teacher, Sir Anthony Seldon, criticised such league tables as "arguably doing more harm than good".
"They are skewing schools and national education systems away from real learning towards repetitive rote learning," said Sir Anthony, head of Wellington College in Berkshire.
The analysis, based on test scores in maths and science, is a much wider global map of education standards than the OECD's Pisa tests, which focus on more affluent industrialised countries.
