It's not about the teaching and learning.
Most successful school systems grant greater autonomy to individual schools to design curricula and establish assessment policies, but these school systems do not necessarily allow schools to compete for enrolment. In countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better. Within countries where schools are held to account for their results through posting achievement data publicly, schools that enjoy greater autonomy in resource allocation tend to do better than those with less autonomy. however, in countries where there are no such accountability arrangements, the reverse is true. ...