Green, Andy; Phan, Hao Phuong; (2025) Culture, context and East Asian high performing education systems. Research Papers in Education 10.1080/02671522.2025.2567396.. (In press).

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Abstract

This article examines the education system characteristics associated with high performing education systems (HPES) in East Asia, and the role of socio-economic contexts and culture in supporting these. Despite the growing interest in why East Asian systems perform so well in international tests, few studies deal the effects of contextual factors, except in passing. This study seeks to rectify this by building on the mixed-method comparative study the authors conducted previously for the Institute for Adult Learning in Singapore. Drawing on the indicator dataset compiled for the previous study, we use a ‘macro-causal’ logical comparative analysis which employs the ‘Most Different Systems Design’ approach. We find that only a few of the system characteristics associated with HPES worldwide are shared by all East Asian education systems, and that these are clearly underpinned by the socio-economic contexts and Confucian legacy culture that are indisputably common across all the HPES in East Asia. As such, we conclude that these contexts are ‘necessary’ - but not ‘sufficient’ - pre-conditions of high performance in these cases. The identification of such necessary conditions can help policy makers avoid the ill-judged ‘policy borrowing’ that can occur where the ‘borrower’ country lacks the contextual and system conditions which enable the policy to work effectively in the ‘lender’ country.

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