Before We Reform Education, We Should Ask Why It Was Built This Way

Are we still designing education for the problems our countries had yesterday, or for the problems they will face tomorrow?

The most revealing way to understand an education system may not be to look at its classrooms first. It may be to look at the problem the country was trying to solve when that system was created.

Education is often discussed as though there is one universal formula for success. Policymakers look at international assessments, compare curriculum structures, examine teacher training and ask what high performing countries are doing differently. One of the best known measures is PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD. It assesses 15 year old students in mathematics, reading and science so countries can compare outcomes.

But an education policy is never simply a collection of teaching methods. It is a national choice about what abilities to develop, what opportunities to create and what kind of people a society will need. Human capital, broadly understood as the knowledge and skills people accumulate, is closely connected with productivity and long term economic performance.

This makes education policy much more than a question of school performance. It becomes a question of national direction.

When a country has almost nothing except its people

Singapore makes this clear. When Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, it lost its common market and faced high unemployment, and no natural resource base. Even water was a strategic vulnerability. Its leaders faced a fundamental question: how could a small island survive?

They made human capability central to the answer. Singapore pursued rapid industrialisation while building education around the needs of a developing economy. In the latest PISA results, released from the 2025 assessment, Singapore remained one of the world's two highest performing systems across science, mathematics and reading.

The achievement is more than a ranking. It shows what can happen when education is treated as national infrastructure and people become a country's most important resource. The lesson from Singapore is not to copy its rigor. It is that education becomes powerful when connected to a clear national purpose.

When education has to rebuild a nation

Japan tells a far harsher story. By the end of the Second World War, its major cities had suffered extensive destruction. Hiroshima was struck by an atomic bomb, with an estimated 140,000 people dead by the end of that year. Three days later, Nagasaki was struck.

Education was rebuilt alongside the country itself. Postwar reforms removed militaristic elements from schooling and emphasised peace, scientific thought and equal opportunity. As Japan entered rapid economic growth, education became connected with the technical capabilities required by industry.

Japan remains one of the strongest performing education systems internationally. Yet educational success can create its own pressure. Japanese policymakers have also had to contend with student anxiety, life satisfaction, teacher workload and the pressure surrounding university examinations. The country has repeatedly revised its curriculum in response, including reforms intended to give students greater opportunity to think, judge and act independently rather than simply absorb knowledge.

That evolution matters. The same education policy that helps a country become efficient may eventually need to make more room for flexibility. A system built for reconstruction cannot remain unchanged when the country enters a completely different economic era.

When equality becomes the purpose

Finland faced a different problem. After the Second World War, much of the country was still rural, and educational opportunities varied by where a child lived. Students were also separated into different academic pathways at an early age. As Finland modernised, the question became how to give children a more equal chance regardless of background.

The answer was comprehensive schooling. Beginning in the late 1960s and expanding through the 1970s, Finland created a common school system for all children while investing heavily in teacher education and professional autonomy.

Finland became internationally admired for this model, but its later decline in PISA performance offers an important reminder. A system built for one period cannot remain unchanged forever. The lesson from Finland is that equality and trust are not fixed policies. They have to evolve with society. The challenge is therefore not simply preserving what worked, but deciding what those values need to achieve next.

When achievement cannot be measured by one test

Then there is the United States. In PISA 2025, American students performed around the OECD average in mathematics and above it in reading and science.

Yet American achievement extends far beyond what a fifteen year old can demonstrate in a classroom test. The United States invested about 937 billion dollars in research and development in 2023, while its universities and research institutions have been closely associated with Nobel recognised work across fields. On a more diverse side, American athletes also won 126 medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Together, these achievements reflect a country producing capability across science, research, technology and sport. Educational assessments matter, but they cannot capture every form of ability a society develops. The lesson is that what we choose to measure shapes what we recognise as success.

When education becomes a route to mobility

India illustrates perhaps the strongest connection between education and social mobility.

At independence, education was explicitly treated as an instrument of national development, national integration and economic progress, with science, technology and scientific research given particular importance in post independence policy.

Over time, academic credentials and competitive examinations became deeply connected with access to prestigious institutions, professional careers and social mobility. Research on India's coaching ecosystem shows how high stakes examinations have shaped student aspirations and created an enormous culture around examination preparation.

This helps explain why India's educational culture can feel so examination driven. When a test represents a scarce opportunity for upward mobility, preparation for that test can become almost as important as education itself.

India is now trying to shift that balance. The National Education Policy 2020 explicitly calls for greater emphasis on conceptual understanding, critical thinking, creativity, multidisciplinary learning and moving away from rote learning and learning primarily for examinations.

The challenge is therefore cultural as much as curricular. Changing the syllabus is one thing. Changing what families, students and institutions believe education is supposed to achieve is another.

What should policymakers take from all of this?

These countries do not give us one perfect education model. They give us different answers to different national questions. Singapore asked how a small country with few resources could build human capability. Japan asked how a devastated country could rebuild. Finland asked how opportunity could be made more equal. The United States developed a broad research ecosystem in which different forms of achievement could flourish. India used education both to build a nation and to create mobility.

None of these choices emerged randomly.

More importantly, none of them can simply be lifted from one country and placed into another. A policy works within the institutions, expectations, economy and culture surrounding it. Teacher autonomy depends on the quality and preparation of teachers. Examination systems depend on the opportunities that those examinations control. Decentralisation depends on whether local institutions have the resources to use that freedom well.

This is why perhaps the most useful thing policymakers can borrow from another country is not its curriculum or its examination system. It is the question behind the policy.

What problem was this education system designed to solve? What strengths did that choice create? What costs came with those strengths? And has the problem changed?

The education policies that shaped these countries were responses to the worlds those countries were living in. The challenge for policymakers today is that the next generation will live in a world none of those systems were originally designed for. Perhaps education reform should therefore begin not by asking which country has the best schools, but by asking something much harder:

What does our country need its education system to make possible next?

That is where the real work of education policy begins.

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