Preply Ranks UK 16 out of 30 Countries for e-Learning Infrastructure

Digital learning provider Preply has examined the state of digital infrastructure, the number of digital educational courses and the market for online learning across 30 countries in order to create a new E-Learning Index, which ranks the United Kingdom 16th, partly due to poor broadband speeds.

Overall, the UK does well in terms of access to distance learning courses (rank 2nd), access to computers (rank 8th) – with 91.7% of students having access to computers from home – and education expenditure (rank 5th). However, the UK is very average for hourly salaries offered to tutors, at £14.60 per hour, compared to £26.56 an hour in Denmark and £17.17 an hour in France.

Unfortunately, where this all falls down for the UK is in terms of our fixed broadband and mobile broadband (4G / 5G) speeds, which sees most of the other countries ranking well ahead of us in the league table. However, we should point out that the speeds given are based on web-based speedtests (Ookla) and not network availability (i.e. we’re only seeing part of the story), which means that all sorts of factors (e.g. slow WiFi) could pollute the results, but that will also be true for every other country listed.

Equally it’s unclear from the report what sort of broadband speed you really need for e-Learning, although this would have to be weighed against the impact of anybody else using the same connection (problematic in a busy household). Otherwise the UK’s final score, across all categories, ends up being 51.9 out of 100 and ranks us 16th overall. You can see the full results here, but we’ve also pasted the broadband related results below.