Pearson launches The Learning Curve

New global education research from Pearson identifies key lessons for education reform

• Finland and South Korea top the table of education 'superpowers'
• New global education data bank drawn from fifty nations offers new insights into the “black box” of educational outcomes

Pearson is today publishing The Learning Curve: a new landmark report designed to help policymakers, school leaders and academics identify the key factors which drive improved educational outcomes.
The global study, carried out independently by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), includes a new Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment, drawing on existing data from the international OECD-PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS assessments*, as well as data on literacy and school and university graduation rates.

• Finland and South Korea top the new Index
• Perennial high-performers Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore are close behind
• Of the forty countries with sufficient data to include, the swiftly emerging economies of Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia are placed lowest on the Index.

The Learning Curve also provides policy lessons and internationally comparable data on education alongside economic and social data from 50 countries in a new publicly accessible, open-source database - the Learning Curve Data Bank -published online at http://thelearningcurve.pearson.com.

The Data Bank will enable researchers and policymakers to connect education inputs and outcomes with wider social and economic outcomes more easily than ever before. The Data Bank includes factors such as:

• Education inputs: governmental spending on education, school entrance age, teacher salaries and degree of school choice
• Education outcomes: literacy rates and graduation rates from school and university
• Economic and social outcomes: national unemployment rates, GDP, life expectancy and prison population