Education First releases global survey on the state of worldwide English proficiency

North African and Middle Eastern adults find themselves towards the bottom of the ranking. Worldwide, most countries with strong English skills continue to improve, while countries with weaker English skills are often stagnating or declining.

The report also shows that English proficiency remains a key indicator of a nation’s economic competitiveness, with strong correlations between English proficiency and income, quality of life, ease of doing business, and international trade.

“English is a powerful platform for professional, cultural, and economic exchange. The EF EPI has inspired conversations about the importance of language education around the world and continues to do so”, said Christopher McCormick, EF senior vice president of Academic Affairs.

Some key findings of the EF EPI are that Nordic countries are still the most proficient in English; women speak better English than men worldwide and in nearly every country surveyed; and Asian countries have a wide range of proficiency levels, from high to very low, with dramatic progress alongside persistent stagnation.

The report also shows that three Southeast Asian countries –Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam – have shown some of the fastest gains in English ability in the world.

The EF EPI Report for Companies (EF EPI-c) was released concurrently, providing a country ranking of workforce English proficiency as well as insights into how English skills have become a strategic requirement for businesses.

EF is already collecting data for next year’s report, which will use data from test takers of the new EF Standard English Test (EFSET), the world's first free standardised English test.

The EFSET was launched in September of this year to serve the world’s two billion English language learners, who often lack a free, high-quality self-assessment tool. The EFSET will also be useful to schools, companies, and governments, which to date have found large-scale testing prohibitively expensive.

With 500 schools and offices in over 50 countries, EF is also the official language training supplier of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics. The EF English Proficiency Index is published by EF Learning Labs, EF’s innovation and research division.

The global survey covers 750,000 adults across 63 countries and territories.