China and the United States of America, 21st Century

The boy attends a local elementary school that takes him an hour and half to walk to and, together with his younger brother, is looked after by his grandparents.

What do we know about the largest education system in the world? A system that is educating 260 million young
people, and that employs 15 million teachers? Not very much. This paper aims to change that. It provides a broad
overview of how China’s education system is organised and operates, and how reforms, both past and current, have
reshaped education in China over time.

NCES activities are designed to address high-priority education data needs; provide consistent, reliable, complete, and accurate indicators
of education status and trends; and report timely, useful, and high-quality data to the U.S. Department of Education, the Congress, the
states, other education policymakers, practitioners, data users, and the general public. Unless specifically noted, all information contained
herein is in the public domain.

The PISA test scores did not bring great news about the American education system, as the United States continues to hover around the international mean for reading and science literacy. On the mathematics literacy section, the U.S. even notched its lowest score to date at 470

UNESCO; UNESCO Institute for Statistics; UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Population figures from World Bank: (1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects, (2) United Nations Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Report (various years)

Chinese teens leaving the test-driven, high-pressure world of schools back home for the U.S. — more than 23,000 at last count, according to the Institute of International Education. Their goal is to better their children's chances of getting into an American college; a degree earned in the U.S. carries a lot of weight.

Since 2009, China’s preschool enrollment rate has jumped from 50.9 percent to 64.5 percent. As of 2012, China’s preschool system boasted 181,600 centers serving approximately 36 million children aged 0 to 6. With two-thirds of the country’s children in preschool centers, the Ministry of Education in China has set goals to reach universal access for one year of preschool before primary school, almost universal access for two years before primary, and if necessary, a third year to the families who can afford it.

Wu Pei began teaching her 6-year-old son to code this year, thinking he’d enjoy learning a skill that might boost his future job prospects in an increasingly digitized world. Now, she runs classes in Nanjing, China, and is helping more than 100 parents introduce their children to coding.