In 2019, the OECD surveyed educational standards and achievement of its 36 member states and found that while education spending has gone up by an average of 15% over the previous decade, academic performance of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science on the PISA has largely stagnated. Students from China and Singapore, both outside of the OECD, continued to outclass their global peers. Among all the countries that sent their students to take the PISA, only Albania, Colombia, Macao, Moldova, Peru, Portugal, and Qatar saw any improvements since joining. Of these, only Portugal is an OECD country. Meanwhile, Australia, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovakia, and South Korea all saw a decline in overall performance since joining. Funding, while important, is not necessarily the most important thing, as the case of Estonia demonstrates. Estonia spent 30% below the OECD average yet still achieved top marks.