And for comparison:
The BBC report was a global league table published by education firm Pearson.
I
think this is their Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_Education
Pearson is an education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well as directly to students. Pearson owns leading educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, BBC Active, Bug Club, eCollege, Fronter, Longman, MyEnglishLab, Penguin Readers, Prentice Hall, Poptropica and Financial Times Press.
Pearson's rankings combine international test results and data such as graduation rates between 2006 and 2010.
This composite picture puts the UK in a stronger position than the influential Pisa tests from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) - which is also one of the tests included in this ranking.
The weightings for the rankings have been produced for Pearson by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
I think in the end, you pays your money and you takes your choice.