Two striking developments show the rapid rise of Shanghai as a world-class educational center. First, the 2010 OECD report on international education attainment now ranks Shanghai's secondary education as the best in the world. Second, Shanghai's Jiao Tong University has attracted as full time professor the winner of the Nobel prize for medicine, and discoverer of HIV, Luc Montagnier.

OECD's 2010 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, published every three years, is based on a study of half a million school students, at age 15, in more than seventy economies. The report finds that Shanghai came ahead of the lead countries, South Korea and Finland, and was placed first in each of the categories of reading, maths and science – with skill in complex mathematics more than eight times the OECD average: "Shanghai, China, took part for the first time and scored higher in reading than any country. It also topped the table in maths and science. More than one-quarter of Shanghai's 15-year-olds demonstrated advanced mathematical thinking skills to solve complex problems, compared to an OECD average of just 3 percent."

In general, as is well known, Asian countries do extremely well in educational achievement, and the OECD noted that their strength, as with Shanghai's, was not based on a policy concentrating resources exclusively on "elite education" but on targeting raising broad based educational achievements. OECD education expert Eric Charbonnier notes Asia's success was a result of educational values that favor equality as well as quality and that: "In Shanghai, a city of 20 million, they followed policies to fight against social inequality, to target the schools that were in most difficulty and send them the best performing heads and most experienced teachers."

Education statistics for Shanghai are indeed now staggering. For a developing country, China's 99.4 percent enrolment in primary education is already, as the OECD puts it, "the envy of many countries" while junior secondary school participation rates in China are now 99 percent. But in Shanghai senior secondary school enrolment has attained 98 percent and admissions into higher education have achieved 80 percent of the relevant age group. That this growth is reflecting quality, and not just quantity, is shown clearly by the OECD ranking of Shanghai's secondary education as world number one in secondary educational level.

The implications of this for future economic growth are evident. OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria notes: "Better educational outcomes are a strong predictor for future economic growth… While national income and educational achievement are still related, PISA shows that two countries with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different results. This shows that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated countries is now out of date."

Turning from secondary education to the pinnacle of the academic ladder, Shanghai's Jiao Tong University has announced that Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize winner in medicine for the discovery of HIV, has accepted a full time professorship. Montagnier stated that a key attraction for him was that the University had agreed to create a research center with 20-30 staff. Shanghai Jiao Tong University is rated as one of China's top universities in physical sciences.

Evidently Shanghai's educational achievements are in the lead of, and well ahead of, China as a whole – the majority of China's population still lives in the countryside. No one in China would expect Shanghai's achievement in secondary education to be translated rapidly into equivalent success at university level – China's authorities know that building up university level research and education will take even greater resources than primary and secondary education. But the extraordinary achievement of Shanghai in secondary education shows the dynamic which is already underway.

Declaration of Interest

As the author is a visiting professor in Shanghai he needs to make a declaration of interest regarding the above article. But not evidently, in the sense that it distorts the data – the conclusions of the OECD's study clearly was not influenced by the present author! But it strongly confirms my personal observations formed through teaching in Jiao Tong University.