| | |  Editorials | Opinions | December 2009 
Is There a "Best" Educational System for Primary, Secondary and Pre University?
 Guillermo Ramon Adames Suari - PVNN
December 13, 2009
 |  | As far as best overall systems, the more structured economies have the best structured educational systems. |  | | |
I worked in the Office of Statistics of UNESCO for some 20 yrs altogether. Part of my duties was to keep all data submitted by Member States in UNESCO's database. All UNESCO publications and studies which depended on that data were responsibility of the Office of Statistics. These data were educational science, budget, research, libraries and all other Educational Scientifical and Cultural. This was our mandate for UNESCO. We were the only organization of the UN family to deal with educational data altogether.
For example FAO was responsible of Agricultural data; the World Bank and the IMF were responsible of the financial data altogether etc. So I had in front of me, yearly, educational data for some 150 countries for over a period of 40 yrs. I was working in my Ph.D. dissertation. After a number of trials my thesis director and I came with an Idea: Let's compare the world's educational systems to obtain the main characteristics of the best results. There is no educational theory about this. There are not worldwide comparisons available in this context. There was not existing technology.
The first problem was to obtain the approval of Member States to use their national proprietary data in a research project. On the other hand we were going to compare historical data of the US vs. the Soviet Union, West Germany vs. the Democratic German Republic, Israel vs. the Arab Countries - you will agree that this was not very subtle from the political point of view: And so many other not very "reasonable" comparisons. The formula I presented to the Member Countries was this: "We do not question your sovereignty: Let us simply measure the results you obtained with your educational system by gender: your input, your output and your educational system hoping to get a common denominator for the best worldwide results". For example, India is not comparable to Nigeria nor Hong Kong or Great Britain which somehow inherited the British educational system. Elder ex-colonies such as the US Canada and Australia had taken a different path altogether. Surely, the quality of the education could not be measured. Even in countries with almost identical educational systems.
Now: which statistical technology? We centered ourselves in Factorial Correspondence Analysis. Theoretically, this allows factors to group independently. The first part was "which data is good". Out of 150 Member States at the time, I ended up with 96 countries. A number of filters were applied such as the Discrepancy Index (published earlier in Banderas News, November 19, 2009). I had interviews with Ambassadors who clarified some of the data. At the request of both the Ambassadors of the Soviet Union and the US, both countries' data were not included. Likewise for both Germanys and China. So, there was the research but there were also political subtleties that entered intrinsically in the problem. The rest of the countries authorized their data to be used in the research. The next problem was the huge amount of data. Computers in the 80's/90's were not what they are today and memory was very limited. UNESCO's mainframe was an IBM 360/65 and we had some 40 years of data. Software: despite the initial stages of SPSS, the computer programmes were not available and the sizes of files were enormous… with no guarantee of results. So I had to generate pre files, programmed in FORTRAN IV. Afterwards we used a correspondence analysis programme from the University of Paris, Paris VI. Every run would take about 30 minutes processing time. Fortunately UNESCO supported my research and granted me all the required computer time. It was a long hard working process.
So: the conclusions were very good.
The best educational system out of all the systems in consideration is based on the earliest starting age. Most countries with the earliest educational system (starting at 4 to 5 yrs of age), had better results than all the other educational systems.
The second parameter is length in primary education. A long primary education seems to forge the children. Their passage from primary education onwards, was more successful than a shorter primary education.
Another factor is gender. Definitely girls are better students than boys. Unfortunately in some countries girls were taken out of school to marry or to work for the families. Boys, until needed were kept in school. In some contexts, girls were (or are) a "bad investment": they marry and the leave taking away all that was invested in them. This rate of success is valid today at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico. My best students are girls.
Secondary school was the breaking point. This is where most students split from training. What happened was that boys were kept in school and if they got someplace, they would be supported to continue. At the minimum failure of a child he was taken off and put to work. Life is tougher for girls. They have to show a distinctively higher performance for parents to allow them to stay at school. In richer countries the difference between opportunities duet o gender were less dissimilar but girl's success numbers were always higher.
As far as best overall systems, the more structured economies have the best structured educational systems. Switzerland and pre China's Hong Kong seem to have the best structure. Japan and Singapore have excellent results also. British structured education gave very good results over "Latin" countries.
When we consider budget, the countries that invest the most are the ones with best results. Brunei and the Arab Countries invest a lot in education. Alternatively the correlation between results and budget, countries investing under 4% of PIB into education had bad results altogether.
Tourism is the economic engine for a number of countries. Seychelles has an excellent example of the way in which they administer their education. They have made it compatible with their primary economic activity.
There are many other poles of interest and the list could be far too long for an article in a journal. But improvements are possible.
Probably the most significant would be that there is not "the" educational programme. The most difficult is to accept that education is more of a local solution with main guidelines.
Guillermo Ramón Adames y Suari is a former electoral officer of the United Nations Organization. Contact him at gui.voting(at)gmail.com |
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