The report shows that Taiwan is first in math followed by Finland, Hong Kong and South Korea; of the top ten countries five are from the Far East. The rankings reinforce the reputation of the region as a “high-technology Asian tigers.”

Reading scores saw South Korea top the list with Nordic Finland coming in second followed by Hong Kong and Canada. Turn to Science and here we find Finland leading the class followed by Hong Kong, Canada, Taiwan, Estonia and Japan. Mainland China did not participate in the survey which included 57 countries.

While school performance excels in East Asia and the Nordic states, sadly it has lagged in the United States (despite far more spending) and in much of Western Europe. Britain and France achieved only average results. Nonetheless Canada and New Zealand scored impressively in all three categories. Most importantly, the survey said that education spending in itself, is no guarantee of test success.

Another report, “Education for All by 2015” sponsored by the UNESCO was also released which underlined the need for universal primary school education. The UNESCO survey stressed the global building blocks of primary schooling and stressed that worldwide net enrollment rose from 83 percent to 87 percent between 1999 and 2005. Yet the document warns that fifty-eight out of eighty six countries that have still not reached full universal primary school enrollment, will not achieve it by 2015. In other words half of the UN’s member states are lagging even in this most basic building block!

The Education for All goals are part of a global commitment to dramatically expand educational opportunities for children and youth by 2015.

For all the global hype about India’s high-tech potential, when looking at literacy rates, there appears a different story. While India’s literacy rate stands at 61 percent and neighboring Pakistan’s holds at 50 percent, there’s an underlying gender gap in the numbers. Approximately 48 percent of India’s women are literate but in Pakistan that figure falls to an abysmal 35 percent literacy for women! Mainland China nonetheless has a 91 percent literacy rate with female literacy at 87 percent.

The report cites China as a country where efforts to reduce illiteracy have been “strong and sustained.” The illiteracy rate fell from 22 percent in 1990 to 9 percent in 2000. Citing the “near universalization of primary education,” it advises, “rapid economic growth and raising per capita income have helped.” It adds, “From the late 1970’s, the Chinese government’s efforts to eliminate illiteracy were primarily motivated by the desire for faster economic development.” This and to undo the social policy disaster of the so-called “Cultural Revolution” between 1966-1976.

The UNESCO report underscores the importance of foreign Official Development Assistance (ODA) to help reach the goals of primary and secondary education. Here France leads the list with $1.5 billion which is weighted heavily towards post-secondary education. Japan comes in second with $855 million and the United States with $744 million. Though the ODA assistance is channeled primarily to Africa and South Asian recipients, surprisingly the People’s Republic of China still received $1.9 billion in aid during 2005.

Yet even here the report concedes warily, that the amount of basic education for the low income countries in 2004-2005, an average of $3 billion annually, is now “clearly well below the estimated $11 billion required to meet goals.”

Still the world is becoming so interdependent. Recognizing the importance of the greater China economic zone in the global economy, Panama’s government has taken the impressive step to make the teaching of Mandarin Chinese compulsory in schools. The Spanish-speaking central American nation, an entrepot for commerce and transport, will make Mandarin, along with English, a school subject. It’s a small world.