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EDU-cation: Comparing Estonian Education on an International Level

This past month has given us interesting information on how the Estonian education system compares to other systems in the world. First, at the end of November, the International Civics and Citizenship Study (ICCS) 2022 results were published.

Johanna Helin—Doctoral candidate in Education Leadership and Policy, OISE, University of Toronto

A week later, the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2022 results were revealed. Although there is critique among educators against large-scale international assessments and different understandings on how the results can and should be interpreted, they still give us useful data, both for making comparisons and for understanding general trends.

Estonian pupils at the top in core PISA competencies

PISA 2022 tested math, reading, and science knowledge/skills among 15-year-olds in 40 countries all over the world. Estonian students have achieved the best scores among Europeans in previous PISA studies and continue to do so. Among European countries, Estonia ranked 1st-2nd in math together with Switzerland, 1st in science, and 1st-2nd in reading together with Ireland. However, in all of these tests, East Asian education systems (Singapore, Taiwan, Macao, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea) outperformed other countries.

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