(0.91), Malaysia (0.91), Vietnam
(0.89) and Indonesia (0.87). The value for China and India were 0.84 and 0.57.
What comes clear from the description of the results from the reconstruction of past
educational attainment is that the group of countries that were chosen are clearly determined in
investing in education. This is especially the case of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the
Philippines and perhaps also Vietnam. Indonesia is a country apart as some of its performance
in terms of enrolments and investments are rather weak. Indonesia has expanded strongly the
education system in the 1970s after the oil boom but did not manage to improve the quality of
education as well as the participation and relevance of tertiary studies. Some of the weaker
results in education outputs especially educational attainment may be due to the momentum of
education – that is the lag between educational investments and the translation into human
capita throughout the labour force. This is the case for a wealthy country such as Singapore
where some of the labour force is still illiterate, although income level is comparable to
Europe or Japan. Education does not jump and one cannot erase so easily decades of neglect in
education. Singapore has compensated its lack of human skills by opening the borders to
workers. The literature shows that the expansion of the education systems in these countries
did not go without problems related to quality or adequacy. This is the case of tertiary in
Thailand and Malaysia where most students graduate in humanities, arts, social science,
business and law and too few in science and engineering. This necessity to not only look at
number of population but also at the quality and curriculum will be kept in mind when
projecting the future educational level of the population.