Education and science

Education and science on Top10Earth: Schools, universities, literacy, research and patents, ranked by the numbers. This category currently holds 15 live rankings, each one built from a single public data source, measured by one clearly named metric and refreshed on its own schedule. The most recent update in the category was on 2026-11-02.

Who leads right now: Israel tops Countries spending the most on research as a share of GDP with 6.35 % of GDP; Tokelau tops Countries with the highest adult literacy rates with 100 %; Kiribati tops Countries with the highest government spending on education as a share of GDP with 16.39 % of GDP; Moldova tops Countries with the highest pre-primary school enrolment with 99.85 %; Germany tops Countries with the highest primary school completion rates with 100 %; San Marino tops Countries with the highest share of students from abroad with 87.12 %. Open any ranking for the full top 10, the complete table behind it and a chart of how positions have moved.

No positions have changed since the previous refresh across this category, which is common for slow-moving measures and is reported exactly as found.

Metrics used here include Research and development spending, Adult literacy rate, Government expenditure on education, Pre-primary net enrolment rate, Primary school completion rate and Inbound student mobility rate. Each ranking page explains precisely what its metric counts, which source it comes from and what caveats apply, so two rankings that sound similar can be told apart. Entries link to profile pages that gather every ranking an entry appears in, and any two entries in the same ranking can be compared head to head.

Top10Earth never estimates or edits a value: each number is fetched from its source, hashed, stored and ranked by software, then checked by a quality gate before it is published. If a refresh fails the gate, the previous snapshot stays live and the problem is reviewed by a person. Want to test what you know? Every ranking in education and science has a three-minute quiz: name all ten, share your score and dare someone to beat it.