Teenagers from Singapore led the ranks of best-performing students in the Organization of Economic Cooperation Development (OECD)'s survey on international education, followed by Japan, Estonia, Finland, and Canada.

Launched in 2000, around 540,000 students from 72 countries or cities took part in the Paris-based Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2015, with today's results revealing the top performing countries around the world.

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PISA is undertaken once every three years and examines 15-year-olds' abilities in the core academic discipline of reading, mathematics, and science through a two-hour computer-based test.

"The fact that students in most East Asian countries consistently believe that achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than inherited intelligence, suggests that education and its social context can make a difference in instilling values that foster success in education," Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's director of education, said.

She also added that Singapore as the smartest nation is "not only doing well but getting further ahead."

East Asia dominated seven of the top spots for science and math, with this time around, having the former academic discipline as the main focus compared with the latter in 2012.

Finland, Estonia, Canada, and Ireland were steadily the top ranking non-Asian countries across the three subjects.

China slipped to 10th place after coming top in 2009 and 2012, represented by students from regions of Beijing, Jiangsu, Guangdong, and Shanghai. Only youths from the well-off city of Shanghai were included in the previous assessments, which got them questioned to what degree the city's accomplishment was exceptional.

Singapore only became an independent country in 1965, but the small Asian country's unyielding focus on education helped it develop its economy and raise living standards.

"Singapore invested heavily in a quality teaching force - to raise up the prestige and status of teaching and to attract the best graduates," Professor Sing Kong Lee, vice-president of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), said.

NTU houses the National Institute of Education where all teachers are trained to ensure quality control for all the new teachers to "confidently go through to the classroom," he added.

TagsSingapore, PISA, OECD, education, Mathematics, Science, Reading, Asia, East Asia