Where in the World are the Best Schools and the Happiest Kids?

The best test scores don’t always mean the happiest kids at school.  The Best Schools and the Happiest Kids visualizes the results from a worldwide survey of over 500,000 15-year-olds globally.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial international survey compared test scores from 65 countries. Happiness was ranked based on the percentage of students who agreed or disagreed with the statement “I feel happy at school.” Test scores were ranked based on the combined individual rankings of the students’ math, reading, and science scores.

I can’t tell for sure, but it appears that Jake Levy, Data Analyst at BuzzFeed created this data visualization based on the data from OECD survey results.  Infographics like these often get shared without the rest of the article, so it’s important to include all of the necessary framing information in the graphics itself.  Title, descriptive text, sources, URL, publishing company, copyright, etc.

Thanks to Ron Krate on Google+ for posting

Comments

[lorinc]

Based on PISA 2012 test results. Critics say: "no news that the Chinese education system is excellent in preparing outstanding test takers, just like other education systems within the Confucian cultural circle: Singapore, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong."

Personally I agree with that, some cutting-edge companies (like google) already know and use in HR practice: performance in public education has no correlation with performance in real life work.

I might be biased though.

[S Matthews]

Interesting, but perhaps misleading? The OECD's PISA testing results - you're right, upon which some of the data above is probably sourced - are perhaps more about a given country's students' ability to 'do the test' amongst other things, which leads to some interesting questions about general comparability. That aside, 'happiness' is very subjective, and likely to include cultural bias also. I'm Australian. Australian school kids are apparently more 'unhappy' than 'happy' at school, despite the relatively short hours, inclusion of sports programs and the friendly, 'easy going' nature of most schools. On the other hand, countries (and non-countries like Shanghai!) rate highly in happiness where students attend school for extra ordinarily long hours, more days of the week, and education is almost a life-or-death thing literally. Is that true happiness, or just a reflection of cultural difference? Either way, it's unlikely that any of the data on either axis is 100% comparable. As I say, an interesting exercise, nonetheless.

[Mac Miller]

This is refereed to statistics that re out of calculations. Some countries like India is not listed. This is find big employee in our country USA. I bet Indian kids to be most toppers.

[john]

great post

[Peter]

Awesome post! I really appreciate the useful information that you shared here. It is really beneficial read for me, Thanks for sharing.

[Roger C]

And the happiest/unhappiest teachers?

[Shriram School Indore]

Informative post with good and deep insights, I totally consents with you.

[Dina]

You have given me right incite to find the right school. This would be very handy where I'm gong to select a school for my child in the City. Thanks for sharing