Shanghai education ahead of countryside

Broad view | John Lydon

A delegation of British education officials visited Shanghai in February on the first stop of a tour of Chinese cities. They were looking for pointers on how the United Kingdom could raise the quality of its secondary schools.

The group's leader, Elizabeth Truss, the UK Parliament undersecretary of state for education and childcare, said Shanghai was an important stop because of its students' impressive achievement on the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment in mathematics. Shanghai placed No 1 - the UK trailed at a distant 26th.