Singapore on top, Laos on the bottom – English proficiency

PHOTO: talkpoverty.org

The EF English Proficiency Index is out for the past 12 months, the seventh overview of countries where English is not the native language. Ranked from top to bottom and broken up into specific demographics.

And Thailand doesn’t fare well. Bad news, it’s #53 in the world this year. The good news, it’s risen from #56 last year and moved from the ‘Very Low’ category to just plain ‘Low’.

In Asia the proficiency scores go from Singapore at the top with 66.03 to Laos at the bottom with 37.56. Outside Asia, many European countries rank higher with places like Netherlands (top of the world rankings), Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, German, Austria and Poland ranking higher than Singapore. African countries and Latin American countries fared fairly poorly.

In South East Asia, Thailand only beat out Cambodia and Laos with all other ASEAN countries performing better in the index. Thai women also outperformed Thai men with English proficiency but that trend is fairly consistent in most Asian countries.

The average English proficiency of adults in Asia is the second highest in the world, only behind Europe. A closer look at the data, however, reveals that Asia has wider proficiency disparities than any other region.

Check out the full list HERE.