Countries With the Lowest Education Scores

Every country with a figure for education score, ranked from lowest to highest. The top three are Somalia, Fed. Rep. (-2.1), South Sudan (-1.86) and Central African Republic (-1.65). The middle country of the 199 has 0.584.

What this measures

Education score, in typical gaps (standard deviations). Source: PlaceStats. For this measure, higher is better.

The average of 10 measures from 3 publishers. Each measure is first put on a common scale: 0 is the average country in an average year, and 1 is a typical gap between countries (a standard deviation). Each is turned so that higher is better. Measures are averaged within each publisher first, so a publisher with many measures does not count for more. Members: Primary completion, Expected schooling, Mean years of schooling, Adult literacy, Pupil-teacher ratio, Primary enrollment, Out of school, primary, Secondary enrollment, Tertiary enrollment, Researchers.

A standard deviation is a typical gap between places.

This measure mostly follows how rich a country is, so this ranking is close to a ranking by national income. Each country’s page also ranks it against countries with similar incomes, which is often the fairer comparison.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2010–2025. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on education score

• Countries With the Highest Education Scores
• Education score by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Lowest PISA Maths
• Countries With the Lowest PISA Reading
• Countries With the Lowest PISA Science
• Countries With the Lowest Primary Completion
• Countries With the Lowest Expected Schooling
• Countries With the Lowest Mean Years of Schooling
• Countries With the Lowest Education Spending
• Countries With the Lowest Primary Enrollment

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.