Six Minute English from BBC LearningEnglish.com.

Hello, this is Six Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Phil.

And I'm Beth.

So, Beth, we're talking about the best education systems in the world today. You went to school here in Britain.

What do you think of the British education system?

Do you think it could be the best?

I think that it's quite good.

There's probably a couple of things that I personally would change about it.

But I would say it's quite good, but maybe not the best in the world.

Well, in this programme, we're going to be talking about the PISA ranking. say it's quite good, but maybe not the best in the world.

Well, in this program, we're going to be talking about the PISA rankings.

The rankings are based on tests carried out by the OECD. That's an international organisation every three years.

The tests attempt to show which countries are the most effective at teaching maths, science and reading.

But is that really possible to measure?

Well, here is former BBC education correspondent, Sean Coughlin,

talking to BBC World Service programme, The Global Story.

When they were introduced first of all, that was a very contentious idea, because people said, how can you possibly compare big countries? How can you compare

America to Luxembourg or to, you know, or to parts of China or whatever?

Sean said that the tests were contentious. If something is contentious, then it's something

that people might argue about. It's controversial.

So at first, PISA tests were contentious because not everyone believed it was fair to compare

very different countries. Phil, I've got a question for you about them. So in 2022,

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