The disparity in Asia's education systems may limit regional development

By ITS Education Asia

"Young Asian American schoolboy on class" by Amanda Mills, USCDCP / free images

This article from The News Lens gives some interesting views on the latest PISA rankings. ChalkFace has published numerous recent articles about these rankings over the last week or so.

According to the author, J.West, many countries see it as an Olympic Games for education. Every three years, a competition, of a sort, ranks scholastic performance across nations for mathematics, science, and reading on a variety of measures.

As much as attention focuses on Asia’s great education success stories, many gloss over the performance of other Asian countries, notably those from Southeast Asia, which wallow towards the bottom of the list. Indeed, the Philippines was the lowest-ranking of the 77 countries covered in the latest PISA survey, while Indonesia ranked 72nd and Thailand 66th. Malaysia did a little better, at 56th.

So the evidence that the PISA study provides us is that East Asia has a handful of high-quality education systems. But these very same economies also now have rapidly aging populations and are in demographic decline. China’s population could fall from 1.4 billion today to 1.1 billion in the year 2100, according to the United Nations. Over the same period, Japan’s could fall from 127 million to 75 million, South Korea’s from 51 million to 30 million, and Taiwan’s from 24 million to 16 million.

In other words, East Asia’s education powerhouses are slowly fading in importance, even if they remain large. At the same time, many of those countries with poorer education systems will see continued growth in their populations, which also limits the resources available for education.

Studies of Asia’s economic renaissance always point to the importance of education as a key factor in the region’s rapid development. And according to the PISA study, Asia’s first movers all have high-quality education systems. But these economies are in demographic decline and now have relatively slower growth. The economies of Southeast Asia and India, which are all trying to follow in their footsteps, have much lower-quality education systems which will greatly limit Asia’s future economic dynamism – and thus compromise the prospects for an Asian Century.

Do you agree? Do the poor rankings in much of Asia mean that Asia’s future growth is likely to slow?