I have just enjoyed a wonderfully stimulating week with my fellow Heads of United World Colleges in Costa Rica.  The UWC Heads meet twice each year, in March to coincide with a UWC board meeting, and in October to coincide with a UWC Council meeting.  Although the UWC Board is still meeting, the Heads’ meetings have just finished and I am about to start the long journey home.

As well as being an opportunity for sharing professional insights and challenges, each Heads’ meeting provides an opportunity to visit and spend time on the campus of one of the United World Colleges.  This time it was the United World College of Costa Rica’s turn to host the meeting, and the Head of UWCCR, Mr Mauricio Viales, did a superb job in making us all feel extremely welcome in his very beautiful country.  I have come away with a very strong sense of assurance that the students we select in Hong Kong to study at UWCCR are having a truly sensational two-year experience.

The Heads’ meeting provided an excellent venue to explore many issues in true depth.  In some cases it was a mutually beneficial sharing of ideas and experiences (awareness raising as well as a deepening of understanding), while in several other instances the discussions initiated the long journey to develop more uniform approaches to various academic, residential, co-curricular and administrative issues within the United World Colleges.  Among the many matters discussed were the draft uniform student code of conduct, progress towards the development of a UWC Diploma, devising a common statement on the guiding principles of a UWC education, the needs-based scholarships pilot program, outreach to the wider community, staff appraisal and professional development, considering concerns that UWC create a ‘brain-drain’ from some countries, the philosophy and practice of project weeks, staffing CAS (Creativity, Action, Service), improving working relationships with UWC National Committees, and lots more.

Costa Rica provided the perfect environment to consider all these issues - it is indeed a very special place.  In January this year the World Database of Happiness, compiled by a Dutch sociologist on the basis of answers to surveys by Gallup and others, placed Costa Rica in first place on a list of 148 countries.  Costa Ricans, it seems, are the world’s happiest people!

When they were asked to rate their happiness on a 10-point scale, Costa Ricans averaged 8.5. Denmark came second with 8.3, the United States ranked 20th with 7.4, and Togo and Tanzania tied for last place with scores of 2.6.  Hong Kong is almost in the middle of the list with a score of 6.0, a little behind Mainland China with 6.4.

I wonder if it is just a coincidence that Costa Rica is also the only country in the world to have abolished its army.  The decision to do so was made in 1949, and ever since then, Costa Rica has been devoting the money that it would have otherwise put into the military into economic development and social welfare programs, especially education.

This investment in education has in turn boosted the economy by creating a well educated workforce that stands in stark contrast to its poverty-stricken near neighbours.  Costa Rica’s emphasis on education has enabled the nation to become a major exporter of computer chips, and it has brought a high level of English-language skills that have helped attract income from significant numbers of European and American eco-tourists.

International comparisons of happiness are controversial and riddled with uncertainty.  Nonetheless, it seems clear that Costa Rica’s national decision to invest in education rather than the military has paid rich dividends in terms of economic development, internal peace and stability, gender equality, environmental awareness and - happiness.