Catching up: learning from the best school systems in East Asia

The world’s centre of high performance in school education is now East Asia. Four of the five top-performing systems are Hong Kong, Shanghai, South Korea and Singapore, according to OECD’s 2009 PISA assessments. In recent years, Australia and many OECD countries have substantially increased education expenditure, often with disappointing results. Grattan Institute’s new report, Catching up: learning from the best school systems in East Asia, shows how studying the strengths of these systems and applying them in our classrooms can improve our children’s lives.