Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Grading global education
Education
March 7, 2024 – As school systems continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the global discussion about educational performance revolves around a small subset of mostly high-income countries. But, according to Harmonized Learning Outcomes, a metric from the World Bank, performance can vary widely among countries with similar levels of spending on education, find senior partners Kartik Jayaram and Jimmy Sarakatsannis and coauthors. Click through the interactive to see more.
To read the report, see “Spark & Sustain: How all of the world’s school systems can improve learning at scale,” February 12, 2024.
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Visual form
Two-panel country-ranking chart.
Layout / body structure
A two-panel presents one spending band after another, so the reader moves panel by panel through country groups instead of reading a single fixed chart.
What is being compared
It compares countries with similar annual expenditure per student and ranks them by harmonized learning outcomes, so the comparison is country versus country inside each spending bracket.
Measurement system
The spending dimension is annual expenditure per student in US dollars, grouped in $2,000 bands, and the performance dimension is harmonized learning outcomes ranked from stronger to weaker results.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The chart is organized into ordered country lists within spending ranges, with one panel covering the lower spending bands and the second extending the sequence into higher spending groups.
Main takeaway from the visual
The spread inside each spending band is the point of the chart, because countries with similar budgets still land far apart on learning outcomes.
Key standout values or extremes
Within the listed ranges, Kenya ranks above Ghana in the $0 to $2,000 band, Vietnam above South Africa in $2,000 to $4,000, Russia above Costa Rica in $4,000 to $6,000, Latvia above Saudi Arabia in $6,000 to $8,000, Estonia above Oman in $8,000 to $10,000, Slovenia above Kuwait in $10,000 to $12,000, Hong Kong above Malta in $12,000 to $14,000, and Singapore above the United Arab Emirates in $14,000 to $16,000.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The reader advances through two panels to move from lower-spending country groups to higher-spending groups while keeping the same ranking logic as the expenditure bands change.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.