6 Minute English / Which country has the best schools?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Phil.

And I m Beth.

So, Beth, we're talking about the best education systems in the world today. You went to school here in Britain. What do you think of the British education system? Do you think it could be the best?

I think that it's quite good, there's probably a couple of things that I personally would change about it, but I would say it's quite good, but maybe not the best in the world.

Well, in this programme, we're going to be talking about the Pisa rankings.

The rankings are based on tests carried out by the OECD, that's an international organisation, every three years. The tests attempt to show which countries are the most effective at teaching maths, science and reading. But is that really possible to measure? Well, here is former BBC education correspondent Sean Coughlan talking to BBC World Service programme 'The Global Story'.

When they were introduced first of all, that was a very contentious idea, because people said 'how can you possibly compare big countries how can you compare America to Luxembourg or to, you know, or to parts of China, or whatever?'

Sean said that the tests were contentious. If something is contentious, then it is something that people might argue about it's controversial. So, at first, Pisa tests were contentious because not everyone believed it was fair to compare very different countries.

Phil, I've got a question for you about them. So, in 2022, Singapore was top of the reading rankings. But which of these countries came second? Was it: