Fig. 1. Average learning (2000–2017).

Learning scores are calculated from our HLO database as averages for a given country across subjects and levels over the time period 2000–2017. The numbers in the legend are the lowest and highest average HLO learning scores when averaged over the time period 2000–2017. Average scores by region are as follows: East Asia and Pacific (445), Europe and Central Asia (489), Latin America and the Caribbean (402), Middle East and North Africa (399), North America (529), sub-Saharan Africa (342) and South Asia (335). A few trends emerge: sub-Saharan African regions lag behind all regions apart from South Asia, with countries such as India (368) performing on par with lower-performing sub-Saharan African countries such as Uganda (369); within sub-Saharan Africa, a few countries such as Kenya (444) and Tanzania (416) lead, on par with many countries in Latin America such as Mexico (435); within Latin America, a few countries such as Chile (449) lead compared with some European counterparts such as Georgia (437); the Middle East performs similarly or worse than Latin America (as shown in summarized scores by region); many Asian countries outperform North American and European regions (for example, Japan (553) relative to the United States (521)).