The article presents the results of a study of the effectiveness of management of national educational systems by the example of the North American, European and Scandinavian models of higher education as the most successful in accordance with the data of leading world rankings. The study took place in two stages. At the first stage, the main factors affecting the efficiency and competitiveness of the educational system were ranked, such as: high government spending on the education system, continuous increase in accessibility of higher education for the population, ensuring high quality educational services, export orientation, and others. At the second stage of the study, a system of indicators was formed to evaluate the effectiveness of managing national educational systems, which are presented by the example of the leading countries - representatives of the North American, European and Scandinavian models of higher education (the USA, the UK and Sweden). In addition to quantitative indicators, such as the number of students or government spending on education, which may have a rather large variation of values, since they are related to objective parameters: the total population of a country or occupied territories. We also identified quality indicators: mobility ratios, enrollment in higher education, etc.