All the students you see in schools right now are supposed to be our future leaders destined to for great things. But for one country, their students are the brightest of all. With the variation in student performance within each country being associated with socio-economic status, we have a long way to go before we have a balanced education all around the world. It’s not how much money a country throws at education. The highest performing school systems are those that allocate educational resources equitably among advantaged and disadvantaged schools and that grant more autonomy over curricula and assessments to individual schools.
Here are the top 20 countries with the smartest students in the world.
| Rank | Country | Percentage of students achieving advanced scores |
| 1. | Singapore | 71.37% |
| 2. | South Korea | 66.85% |
| 3. | Hong Kong | 66.66% |
| 4. | Taiwan | 63.21% |
| 5. | Japan | 58.01% |
| 6. | Russia | 38.46% |
| 7. | China | 38.27% |
| 8. | Macao | 37.02% |
| 9. | Kazakhstan | 32.64% |
| 10. | Liechtenstein | 32.06% |
| 11. | Switzerland | 31.93% |
| 12. | Ireland | 30.03% |
| 13. | US | 29.84% |
| 14. | Hungary | 29.40% |
| 15. | Israel | 29.19% |
| 16. | Belgium | 28.76% |
| 17. | Estonia | 27.97% |
| 18. | Denmark | 27.51% |
| 19. | Portugal | 27.51% |
| 20. | Norway | 27.49% |
