By Ifigenia Bakogianni and Christina Tsoupra (A Class)

Switzerland

Switzerland with a rather flexible and varied educational system is in 9^th place based on the Pearson Education Group. Both the government and a total of 26 regional cantons (subdivisions of a country established for political or administrative purposes) share responsibility for higher and tertiary learning. Not only this, but the Swiss Financial Institution and Swiss Banking School also provide advanced Ph.D. programmes for students, with an emphasis on teaching wealth management and private banking.

Canada

Canada, placing 10^th in the Pearson Group maintains a level of consistency and reliability. In fact, this level of consistency and reliability is also a significant feature of the Canadian economy, and this was most notable during the aftermath of the global recession. The Canadians follow compulsion in the education up to 16 or 18 years.

Finland

Finland is fairly enough in the first place with the single most innovative and unique educational system in the world. It has turned its back on the centralized and evaluation-driven model adopted by the majority of the western nations. It has been recorded that all students attend college and enter into a higher education in general. The most important is that most education is funded by the public, and Finnish citizens do not have to pay tuition fees at any level. Last but not least, Finnish teachers are more focused on learning rather than testing. Students undergo the national examination (matriculation) at the end of their general upper secondary education. They seek admission into institutions for higher education on the basis of their matriculation results and entrance test performance.

School children are primarily encouraged to develop their social skills. Most students rarely get homework until they are well into their teens. School days in the early years are short, and much of the time is spent on educational activities instead of academics. Teachers place a lot of emphasis on play, art, music, dramatics, and storytelling. However, at some point, Finland is not considered no#1 anymore: the premature child admission is said to be a big drawback in the system.

To cut a long story short, Education is one of those things that is considered pretty important throughout the world, but it still remains that not every country does it the same and indeed some countries are better at it than others.