What teachers know and how that compares with college graduates around the world

(...) we published results from our first Survey of Adult Skills, which tested the skills of countries’ workforces – including teachers – in key areas such as numeracy, literacy and problem-solving. With a back-of-the-envelope calculation (teachers are only a small group of the 5000+ workers in each country who were tested) it is possible to compare the numeracy and literacy skills of teachers with those of other college and university graduates (see the chart above).

(..) While, in each country, teachers tend to score similarly to college graduates on our numeracy test, the numeracy skills of the workforce themselves differ substantially across countries, and so the numeracy skills of teachers vary too: Teachers in Japan and Finland come out on top, followed by their Flemish (Belgium), German, Norwegian and Dutch colleagues, while teachers in Italy, the Russian Federation, Spain, Poland, Estonia and the United States come out at the bottom.

We will all find out on 3 December when results from the next PISA round, the global metric of student performance.