I’ve written about school choice in Canada, Sweden, Chile, the Netherlands, and Denmark (as well as the shift toward choice in several American states), but I’ve never seen any sort of global ranking.
But now I have.
I’m at the New Directions conference in Brussels and I just listened to a presentation from Ignasi Grau of the International Organization for the Right to Education and Freedom of Education (OIDEL), which is based in Switzerland.
OIDEL publishes a Freedom of Education Index and here are the 25 best nations for school choice according to the latest version.
Congratulations to Ireland for winning the gold medal with a first-place finish. The overwhelming share of students on the Emerald Isle go to parochial schools.
And kudos to the Netherlands and Belgium for earning the silver and bronze medals.
I’m happy to see that the United States is in the top 20 and the author told me that the U.S. is improving the fastest of any nation.
For wonkier readers, here’s a description of the methodology.
We use the term “governmental schools” when referring to schools managed by the State, irrespective of the funding source. We refer to all other schools as “non-governmental schools”, such as – but not exclusively – private schools, charter schools, free schools, or independent schools.
These schools are usually established and managed by civil society. In the following pages, we will use the abbreviation “NGS” for non-governmental schools. The 2023 report covers a large number of countries, 157 in total, from all geographic regions. …We consider four indicators: (1) The legal possibility to establish and manage NGS, (2) Public funding of NGS, (3) Net enrolment rate in primary education, and (4) Enrolment rate in NGS.
If you want to know the worst countries for school choice, here are the bottom 10.
No surprise to see Cuba and North Korea doing so poorly. School choice would be the last thing you would expect to see in a communist dictatorship.
P.S. Congratulations to West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas for helping America improve.
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