This morning Netherlands ousted Brazil to secure a spot in the World Cup final four. Ohio Gadfly wrongly?predicted Brazil's win, even though we know the Netherlands? is a tough contender in both futbol and in education. It has the longest average school life expectancy (16.7 years over the course of one's school life) and generally is just awesome on international tests. For those of you disgruntled you're at work right now instead of at a pub watching today's games, no worries ? there are still more great matches to come.
Tomorrow four more teams will take the turf in hopes of extending their World Cup dreams.? In what are sure to be? closely fought matches, Argentina will go against Germany and Paraguay will face Spain.
We've been hard at work creating head-to-head analyses of these nations' education systems (see yesterday's match-ups as well as a fuller analysis of statistics on the top 16 teams from the Ohio Education Gadfly). We did our best to pull out relevant education statistics, though sometimes the teams are virtually tied and so we toss in our bias to help determine a winner. What can we say ? World Cup fever gets to even the best of us.
*?A View Inside Primary Schools,? UNESCO, 2008
** PISA, 2006
Stay tuned for more analysis by Ohio Gadfly as we head into the final games. Cheers!
-Bianca Speranza & Jamie Davies O'Leary
