All significant economic growth in the modern world is the result of intelligent and well-educated engineers. If you want your nation to become wealthier and more powerful, you need to educate your populace in STEM. The Soviet Union had more engineers than the USA. What held back the Soviet Union was socialism itself. Look at all the advanced military technology they came up with, despite being such a poor country. They made it through due to having an educated populace. The more engineers you have, the more advanced and independent your military will be, and the faster you're economy is going to grow.

Math and science should be taught more quickly, with less emphasis on learning other subjects, which aren't nearly as important in the modern world, and there should be free tutoring for students lasting several hours after school ends to help younger students conceptualize all the math and science they're learning. It could simply be college students deciding to do their homework and study at a local high school, or high school students deciding to do their homework and study at a local middle school. When a younger students would get lost, they could come up to a volunteer tutor, and get some free tutoring.

Math is taught far too slowly in school. Kids go over fundamental arithmetic repeatedly, and kids typically don't even look into any algebra or geometry until the 8th or 9th grade. I remember going over PEMDAS for multiple years. PEMDAS would've began to make much more sense had I been introduced to algebra the same year. This would be equivalent to going over Ohm's law for years before even looking at a single electronic circuit. At least half of 4th graders have the mental capacity to understand basic algebra. The concept of plugging in for x in algebraic functions is not that difficult to grasp.