The biggest ever global school rankings have been published by the OECD, comparing how well teenagers perform in maths and science tests in 76 countries.
The top five places are taken by countries in Asia, with Singapore in first place, ahead of Hong Kong and South Korea, which ranked second and third place, respectively. Japan and Taiwan were both ranked fourth. Vietnam was the next highest ranked Asian country at 12th place, ahead of Germany and Australia. The United Kingdom was ranked 20th, while the United States was ranked 28th.
Finland, Estonia, Switzerland and the Netherlands are European countries that made the top ten list which ends with Canada.
Croatia is ranked 36th, ahead of Slovakia, Ukraine, Israel, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania. Of Croatia's neighbours, Slovenia is ranked 18th, Italy 28th, Hungary 32nd, Serbia 42nd and Montenegro 56th.
The study's findings, based on maths and science scores of 15-year-olds, will only be formally presented at the World Education Forum in South Korea next week. The OECD examined 76 countries for the study, 11 more than the last PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test it conducted in 2012.
"This is the first time we have a truly global scale of the quality of education," the BBC cited OECD education director Andreas Schleicher as saying.