Singapore topped the ranking with a score of 88.8, ahead of New Zealand (87.5) and Canada (87.0).
Within Asia, South Korea came in sixth, Japan 12th, Hong Kong 22nd and China 27th.
A key factor to this is Singapore's pool of effective teachers, which are even more central to a successful future-skills education system than in more traditional schooling environments, the study pointed out.
According to Professor David Hung, associate dean of education research at Singapore's National Institute of Education, teachers are “one of the highest leverage points a good system has”, being able to teach difficult concepts to students of different abilities, enthuse them and link those concepts to the world beyond the classroom.
Prof Hung added that raising the status of teachers in Singapore is vital for attracting the most able students into the teaching profession, and motivating them.
"The culture of Singapore has moved to a place where the profession of teaching is more highly valued by families and parents. Two decades ago this wasn’t the case. Pay is important. The substantive quality of teachers as observed by the public is important," he said.
On average, the salary for a secondary school-level teacher in Singapore is 16th in the world, according to figures by EIU. A teacher in Singapore earns significantly less than those in Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, which ranked second, third and fourth, respectively.
Singapore ranked eighth in terms of having the best teaching environment, scoring 78.7, behind the likes of Japan (86.9) and South Korea (82.0) which placed fourth and fifth, respectively.
The study added that Singapore schools developed programmes outside formal classrooms where students can choose activities such as coding or robotics.
"The guiding idea behind them is to allow students to make connections between concepts learned in the classroom and practical real-world applications of those concepts, facilitated and encouraged by teachers," it added.
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