Mauritius At 56th Place in PISA Math Ranking

I believe it's the first time we are participating in this serious survey. And the government is to be praised to finally giving Mauritius an opportunity to see how well our education system stacks up against those of other countries around the world. We're at number 56 in Math. Right up there with Thailand and a lot better than Qatar and Ghana. But not even in the top half of the table. 56 is also quite close to the 54th place we got in the last Global Competitiveness Report.

And here's a clip to understand why we should be talking more often about PISA.

FIFA Ranking: Does Population Size Matter?

To some extent yes if you consider that three-fifths of the Top 20 spots are occupied by countries with less than 50 million people. This proportion drops to half for the 10 best teams. Mauritius is at spot 189 in case you're wondering. In Africa, only Seychelles and Djibouti do worse than us.

Long live the Doing Business ranking!!!

76 Countries Had A Better Growth Rate Than Us in 2008

And as you recall that was supposed to be the year of the bumper crop. Still that's a 100 spots better than our ranking in 2005 a year when our textile industry completed a major contraction.