Education around the World

Most of us are all too familiar with the grind of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), and other Indian competitive exams, such as the IISER Aptitude Test (IAT), the National Entrance-cum Eligiblity Test (NEET), et cetera. India has the largest population in the world, and as a result, there is an absurdly high demand for seats in good colleges but an insufficient supply—the combined acceptance rate for all IITs is 1.3%, with top IITs being even more competitive.

Exams, therefore, have grown with the population, with the sole purpose of filtering out the majority. This has created more problems than solutions. It has caused a massive surge in India’s education industry, with coaching centers and ed-tech courses dominating today’s era. Some start preparing for these exams as early as Grade 6, spending all their time studying until the day of the examination, leaving little to no time for fun and games. Grade 12 board examinations have become a mere formality, with JEE rising as the real deal. Unfortunately, rote memorizing has also become a thing. This leads to larger issues in the long run, with shaky foundations eventually causing the building to collapse.

This is our education system. It led me to ask many questions - what is education like in other places? Why is Finland ranked the happiest country in the world, and how, if so, does its education system contribute? Is homework really necessary? Is our system, perhaps, too harsh?

To speculate an answer, here’s a quick glimpse of education around the world.

India:

The Indian education system has many “boards”, each with different curricula. The most common board is the state board (roughly 92% of the population, mainly from villages/rural areas), followed by CBSE and ICSE, with other boards like IGCSE/IB constituting a small minority of the population. CBSE is the board of the central government, serving as a funnel into Indian entrance exams—most exam syllabi are closely aligned with the CBSE curriculum.

By the start of their 11th grade, most students join a coaching institute where JEE/NEET preparation becomes their main focus, and meanwhile, the 12th-grade board exams are reduced to a formality. Marks are given as percentages, and unfortunately, the NCERT (CBSE) syllabus is quite easy to rote-memorize for marks. Students are locked into “streams” of related subjects (PCM, PCB, Arts, Commerce, etc.) and are given little freedom in choosing subjects, thereby often determining their path ahead.

USA

The United States of America uses a very different system from India. While Indian higher education often takes a back seat to JEE/NEET preparation, college applications in the USA occur alongside high school education. The USA uses a system known as “holistic admissions”, where they evaluate students wholly rather than only educationally, contrasting India, which evaluates applications purely based on academic merit. The standard test, the SATs, is recommended but not mandatory. Applications are evaluated on the basis of a student’s academic record (Grade-Point-Average), extracurriculars such as sports, leadership roles, club activities, and others, internships (optionally), student’s SAT score, and last but more importantly, their essays. Each college provides a set of essay topics that students must write about to convey their message to the college.

In addition to standard school classes and the SAT, the US education system offers Advanced Placement (AP) courses. These are college-level courses offered in high school. Although not mandatory, strong AP scores seem to bolster one’s application, and taking them allows someone to pursue their interests further than the average student. For instance, Ivy League colleges’ acceptance rates jump to 11% for AP students compared to 4% for non-AP students, and other highly selective colleges (NYU, UChicago, UVA, UCLA, etc) have acceptance rates of 32% for AP students, which drops to 11% for non-AP students.

UK:

The United Kingdom follows the A-Level (Advanced Level) curriculum, offered by multiple boards, including Cambridge University, Pearson, Edexcel, and OCR, each with its own variants.

Overall, A-Levels offer amazing flexibility, with a wide range of subjects (over 85 in A-Levels) and the freedom to take any combination. However, a student must commit to subjects during their IGCSEs (equivalent to Indian Grade 10) and continue to study them for their AS and A-Levels.

This system assigns letter grades (A*-U, where U is a fail grade). Unconventionally, the student’s final A-Level grade is a combination of marks from AS Levels (equivalent to the Indian 11th) and the final A2 (Grade 12) scores, which is converted to a grade.

A threshold is used for grading—it combines students’ marks to determine the minimum mark to achieve a grade, ensuring that a genuinely difficult paper does not heavily impact a student’s final grade.

College applications are strict, requiring minimum grades in A-Levels to even be considered (for instance, Imperial College London has a minimum requirement of three “A”s in subjects that depend on your major), and additionally, a personal statement about why the student wants to pursue said major.

In general, the UK education system uses rolling admissions (a fixed number of seats, with seats assigned as applications come in) to colleges, in contrast with the US, which evaluates all applications simultaneously.

Colleges may also request college-specific tests or interviews before confirming entry. Unfortunately, UK colleges are very expensive, with few to no scholarships for admitted students and tuition fees of £40,000 per annum for international students.

China

The Chinese education system is very comparable to India’s. Due to its immense population (the second-largest in the world), it also holds a very competitive examination—the Gaokao. Often regarded as the toughest in the world, the Gaokao even exceeds the difficulty level of a standard JEE-Advanced examination.

However, unlike in India, Gaokao is the common exam for virtually every university in the country, whilst India has the NEET, IAT, CMI, ISI, and many other smaller exams, each for admission to different subsets of universities. The Gaokao even determines which region the student studies in, which institution they join, and what they study, while the JEE only decides their college for the most part.

Coaching centers existed before the government banned them; however, there are still many underground/black-market tuition/cram services. The Gaokao, being a two-day exam, feels more grueling. It is so regarded in the nation that roads near exam centers are closed, construction is paused, and flights and trains are even rescheduled to avoid disruption (see www.huffpost.com/entry/china-gaokao_n_1578905/ for more details).

<rote memorization>

While the Indian system is grueling, China’s Gaokao shows an even more extreme endpoint of population-driven filtering.

Finland

Finland takes all the traditional rules and throws them out of the window. There is no standardized testing for the most part, which is very different from every other country so far - the first exam a student takes there is their 12th grade exams! OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) data shows that Finland has the lowest average weekly time spent on homework, with Finnish 15-year-olds averaging a whopping 48 minutes a week. The school hours are also lower—by Grade 9, Finnish students have an average of 6,384 hours total, while the global average is 7,600 hours.

A huge table-turner: teaching is considered a highly prestigious profession, with teachers required to have at least a Master’s degree (as opposed to a Bachelor’s elsewhere), and admission to teacher training programs is highly selective. Schooling doesn’t start until the age of 7. Schools are not ranked against each other. All these may add up to Finland being the top spot for 9 consecutive years on the UN-backed World Happiness Report, and #1 on the Worldwide Educating for the Future Index.

Rethinking the Framework: An Idea

To conclude, I wanted to share my opinions on the education system and design my own template for a slightly improved one, drawing on aspects from all these systems.

The American system already accounts well for competitiveness, with top colleges maintaining acceptance rates under 5%. Holistic evaluation allows applicants to focus on other extracurricular interests and not fully commit their lives to studying (the way we do in India to take the JEE Advanced), allowing for some fun activities and helping people discover what they genuinely enjoy.

The Finnish system values teachers, providing them with rigorous training and ensuring they are more than qualified to teach young children. I like this system, as teachers are responsible for shaping the entire future generation’s mindset. Having good teachers with a solid understanding of their subjects is very important.

Homework is important for providing practice and strengthening concepts, but not very much. An overload of homework leads to exhaustion and sometimes to hatred toward the subject or school. Therefore, a good balance has to be found and given.

The UK’s A-Level system offers immense flexibility in subject choices, allowing students to take any number of subjects in any combination they want. I would incorporate this into the Indian education system, as it allows students to explore a range of interests before choosing a college major.
And finally, in spite of major flaws in the JEE, there are some positives as well:

1. All students are treated fairly - no bias in how the exam is scored.

2. Compared to private universities abroad, Indian education is incredibly subsidized, offering quality education at a fraction of the price abroad.

3. The exam requires genuinely strong fundamentals and understanding of concepts in science. This allows a student at IISc/IITs to continue with higher education seamlessly.

In conclusion, every education system is adapted to its country’s needs and restrictions. None are inherently wrong or right - just different trade-offs between pressure, freedom, and opportunity. The real question is which trade-offs we are willing to accept and which we must fight to change.