Country pillars
The ESI measures countries’ “distance to the ideal” performance. This ideal performance is chosen as the highest achieved by any country over a period of 7 years. The ideal performance is scaled to be 100 and the scores of all countries are then computed and compared to that. Basis of the ESI are 15 individual indicators from various international datasets. The scores are calculated across countries at the indicators’ level. The scores are then averaged at the various layers and finally the Index score is formed. To illustrate, an Index (or pillar, sub-pillar etc.) score of 65 suggests that the country has reached 65% of the ideal performance. Thus, there is still 35% (100-65) room for improvement. A score of 100 corresponds to achieving the ‘frontier’, that is an aspirational target performance for that indicator. A score of 0 corresponds to a lowest-case performance. This page shows specific information on the scores achieved by the chosen country across pillars, sub-pillars and indicators. Below, you can find a short commentary on country’s skills system performance over time and the ESI 2024 scores.
Iceland: 2024 scores and progress over time
Iceland ranked 5th of 31 countries in the European Skills Index in 2024, with a total score of 65.7. At the pillar level, it ranked 6th in Skills Development (score: 63.5), 2nd in Skills Activation (score: 83.1) and 17th in Skills Matching (score: 58.1).
The highest-ranking indicators of Iceland, in comparison with other countries, are Pre-primary pupil-to-teacher ratio (4.5, rank 1st) and Long-term unemployment (0.5%, rank 1st). On the other hand, its weakest indicators are VET students (29.5%, rank 27th) and Reading, maths & science scores (aged 15) (447, rank 27th).
Over the last seven years the overall rank of Iceland has increased from 6th place in 2017, an increase of 1 places. In that time, its overall score has increased from 60.7 to 65.7. The indicators that have improved the most (in terms of their normalised scores, and accounting for indicator directions) are Underemployed part-time workers (5% in 2017 to 2.6% in 2024), and Upper secondary attainment (and above) (67.5% in 2017 to 74.7% in 2024). The indicators that have shown the greatest declines are Reading, maths & science scores (aged 15) (480.9 in 2017 to 447.3 in 2024), and Activity rate (aged 25-54) (91.2% in 2017 to 89.6% in 2024).
Note that these figures may refer to imputed data points.