Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
Insight and inspiration on making the right choices for people and planet. We feature bold conversations with global leaders and innovators from government, businesses, community advocacy, foundations, and more who are charting a path for inclusive growth and sustainability. Hosted by Michael Green, CEO at Social Progress Imperative, we explore how the world must move beyond GDP metrics and economic growth to truly improve the social and environmental wellbeing of communities. ©Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast is an essential listening for decision-makers ready to do things differently.
Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
Which Country is Top of The Class?
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Is your country’s education system actually setting the next generation up for success? We use the Global Social Progress Index to conduct a rigorous analysis of the education component across the world.
There might be some expected champions, but we also share the shocking outliers. In this episode, Michael Green covers the global education trend, gives a shout-out to countries doing a great job, and discusses the ultimate cost of exclusion for one particular country.
Who do you think is the leader in education?
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Education, every parent knows and every child has to hear, is the key to success in life. So which countries in the world are providing the best school age education and which ones are the worst? Now, how do we measure a school system? The Social Progress Index doesn't make judgments about whether public or private schools are better or whether some curricula are better than others. We just want to know which country delivers the best outcomes, which means no child left behind, everyone in school learning and achieving. Overall, the world has been improving on education outcomes over the last 15 years, albeit at a fairly snailish pace. In part that's because the easy wins of getting more kids into school have been used up, and now enrolment is much more of a last mile challenge. But there has been more rapid progress on gender equity in education and until recently on secondary school attainment. Equality of access, however, seems to be on the decline. But which country is actually best at educating its kids? You guessed it. It's rich European countries. Switzerland, Norway, and Luxembourg are the ones that top the rankings. And yes, a lot of rich European countries as well as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore follow close behind. But there are some surprises. The United Arab Emirates is up there with the Europeans in 13th place, following rapid improvement in recent years. Moldova, a middle-income country, does as well as many of its richer European neighbours, coming in in 23rd place. And Kyrgyzstan, the Switzerland of Central Asia but without the money, does as well as the United States. Now, not to take anything away from Kyrgyzstan's achievement, I mean the US does rank 47th in the world, and so is one of the problem countries that's underperforming relative to its GDP per capita. Others that are not doing so well in the same terms are Romania. Romania is a big outlier in Europe, scoring more than 15 points worse than its poor non-European neighbour Moldova. Turkey is also a major underperformer. So is Iraq. Less extreme underperformers, interestingly, are China and Brazil. But the worst performer in absolute terms? Well, that dishonour goes to Afghanistan. Well, if you refuse to educate half your population, what do you expect? Keeping girls out of school is going to hold back Afghanistan for decades to come.