UK pupils "near top of world league"

UK pupils "near top of world league"

British teenagers have achieved their best performance against their overseas counterparts. A report published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development places the UK seventh of 32 industrialized countries in tests of 265,000 15-year-olds. The UK teenagers were fourth in science, seventh in reading and eighth in mathematics. The questions were designed to reveal pupils'ability to apply their skills to real-life problems, rather than their mastery of the subjects themselves. The UK was behind Finland, Japan and Korea, but ahead of Germany. In particular, the UK emerged as having one of the most effective school systems when performance was measured against spending per pupil.

The report shows that the "long tail of underachievement" which has traditionally characterized education in the UK has all but disappeared. The disparity between boys' and girls' results is less marked in the UK than in many other countries. But the influence of social background remains important in the UK. Education and skills secretary Estelle Morris said the results showed that the UK's schools were "on the way to being world class".