New abilities and data can spark a lifetime of change. The best stage of education that individuals complete is another frequent measure of educational attainment. This measure is used as an input to calculating years of schooling, and allows clear comparisons across levels of education. Measuring learning outcomes in a means that allows us to make comparisons across international locations and time is tough.
As we are able to see, learning outcomes are usually much larger in richer international locations; but differences across international locations are very massive, even among international locations with related earnings per capita. This scatter plot compares national average learning outcomes in 1985 and 2015 (or closest years with obtainable information).
Here we see that those international locations where a larger share of students attain minimum proficiency, are inclined to also be international locations where a larger share of students attain advanced proficiency. Less than half …