There is, unfortunately, a high correlation between income and school completion. Even in situations where students from low income environment complete a learning cycle, they do not perform well in math, science, and reading comprehension. The recipe for effective learning is complicated and difficult to implement. The ingredients include parental input, early intervention, curriculum design, resources, school environment, healthy students, and teacher training. The appropriate mix of these ingredients is subject to and intertwined with national and regional culture.
Science education is unique and inherently more difficult.
There is an extra burden of costly equipment, laboratory space, and creative scheduling to allow ample time in the school day for experimentation. Further, teacher commitment beyond the norm to allow for laboratory preparation is required. Learning by rote in math and science lends itself to standardized testing, but students fail to develop quantitative and problem-solving skills. Further, curriculum design is typically based on a sequential pattern of biology, followed by chemistry, followed by physics, which negates integrated learning. The rapid development of scientific knowledge demands ongoing teacher training to a degree far greater than that for most other disciplines.