As governments around the world seek to tackle stubbornly high levels of youth unemployment, new attention has been focused on the relationship between education and employment.

Most people see social inequities in education as stubbornly persistent.

The Portuguese economy is gradually recovering from a deep recession thanks to a broad structural reform agenda that has led to rising economic growth, falling unemployment and remarkable progress in export performance.

Inequality has been growing in most OECD countries since the 1980s and is currently at its highest level in 30 years. Forecasts for 2060 suggest that gross earnings inequality could continue to rise dramatically across the OECD if current trends persist.

Highly qualified and competent teachers are fundamental for equitable and effective education systems. Teachers today are facing higher and more complex expectations to help students reach their full potential and become valuable members of 21st century society.

Wales should continue its efforts to reform the curriculum and raise the standards of teaching in order to improve the quality and equity of its school system, according to a new OECD report.

How Wales can ensure the successful implementation of its reforms (OECD Education Today Blog)

Historically across the OECD, the teaching profession has been largely dominated by women. The share of female teachers has been increasing over the past decade – reaching 68% in 2014 for all levels of education combined. The gender disparity decreases gradually with the level of education, from 97% of women in pre-primary education to 43% in tertiary education.

Since its inaugural edition in 2011 in New York City, the ISTP has become an important forum for open and constructive exchange on effective teacher policies and practices. It assembles governments and teacher organisations from a number of high-performing and rapidly improving school systems, as certified by recent results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

In a rapidly changing world, having a strong knowledge base in their subject area, good classroom management skills and a commitment to helping students learn may no longer be enough to meet the expanding role of teachers.

In countries that performed above the OECD average in science, at least 80% of the students are in schools that invite specialists to conduct teacher training or organise in-service workshops for teachers or where teachers cooperate with each other. This is higher, on average, than what is observed among other countries.

PISA data reveal large disparities in achievement not only across countries, but also within countries across different subgroups of students.

Despite increased funding and many reforms, most education systems are still seeking ways to better prepare their students for a world in which technological change and the digital revolution are changing the way we work, live and relate to one another.

Developing human capital is an integral part of economic growth and social progress.

Despite the geographical distances between them, Ibero-American countries share some similarities in their educational attainment rates and private expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP.

Wales is implementing a wave of reforms designed to improve delivery of teacher education. There is a new curriculum; new teacher and leadership standards for teachers; and new accreditation standards for providers of initial teacher education.

Some rural regions benefit today from their proximity to social and economic urban centres to attract people and enhance their economic competitiveness.

Happy schools are places where children feel challenged but competent, where they work hard but enjoy it, where social relationships are rewarding and respectful, and where academic achievement is the product but not the sole objective.

This report discusses the implications of the digitalisation of finance for financial education and relevant consumer protection issues and provides an overview of digital financial services around the world.

Amid a growing debate over the benefits of globalisation, a new OECD report examines how the level and mix of skills in a country’s workforce can affect its chances of winning or losing from the globalised production chains that see workers dotted across different countries contributing to the design, manufacture and sale of a single product

In an increasingly competitive international environment, providing workers with the right mix of skills can help ensure that globalisation translates into new jobs and productivity gains rather than negative economic and social outcomes, according to a new OECD report.

Globalisation is connecting people, cities, countries and continents, bringing together a majority of the world’s population in ways that vastly increase our individual and collective potential, and creating an integrated market in products and services.

Despite people’s perceptions of us, we economists are neither futurologists, nor historians. But we do see trends that we try to interpret, by applying objectivity where subjectivity abounds, and using the (rather few) tools we have developed to address (very many) major social problems.

In most countries with available data, public educational institutions charge different tuition fees for national and foreign students enrolled in the same programme. In Australia, Austria, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, foreign students pay on average about twice or more the tuition fees charged to national students.

In 2014, over 3 million students in OECD countries – more than double the amount in 2000 – were studying outside their country of citizenship.

24 May 2017: PISA 2015 Results (Volume IV): Students’ Financial Literacy explores students’ experience with and knowledge about money and provides an overall picture of 15-year-olds’ ability to apply their accumulated knowledge and skills to real-life situations involving financial issues and decisions.

Two in three 15-year-old students earn money from work activity, and more than one in two hold a bank account.

Many education systems around the world are looking for ways to give parents more choice over where they send their children to school.

PISA 2015 Results (Volume IV): Students’ Financial Literacy, explores students’ experience with and knowledge about money and provides an overall picture of 15-year-olds’ ability to apply their accumulated knowledge and skills to real-life situations involving financial issues and decisions.

Countries should step up their efforts to provide affordable and high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) to improve social mobility and give all children the chance to fulfil their potential, according to a new OECD report.

Small in size but not in its ambitions, Slovenia has a bold vision for a society in which people learn for and through life, are innovative, trust one another, enjoy a high quality of life and embrace their unique identity and culture.

The combined effects of policy reforms to attract and/or retain teachers, and financial constraints in the context of the economic downturn in 2008 may explain part of the recent trends in teachers’ salaries: decreases in statutory salaries and smaller salary gaps between levels of education.

Interview with Matthew D’Ancona, political columnist for the Guardian and the New York Times

Globally, enrolment in secondary education has expanded dramatically over the past decades. This expansion is also reflected in PISA data, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. Between 2003 and 2015, Indonesia added more than 1.1 million students, Turkey and Brazil more than 400 000 students, and Mexico more than 300 000 students, to the total population of 15-year-olds eligible to participate in PISA.

Disadvantaged students don’t have as many resources at home as their advantaged peers so ideally schools would need to compensate by providing more support. However, often schools reinforce social disparities rather than moderate them.

It’s an exciting time for education in Wales. This was noted by the OECD earlier this year, when it recognised that government and sector are working closely together with a commitment to improvements that are “visible at all levels of the education system”.

Full and effective implementation of recent reforms, including the Jobs Act and the Good Schools reform, would help boost growth in Italy by improving people’s skills and ensuring their more effective use across the country, according to a new OECD report.

New technologies tend to shift jobs and skills. New technologies bring new products, which shift jobs across occupations: with the arrival of cars, the economy needed more assembly line workers and fewer blacksmiths.

Gender biases can be persistent. Too persistent. A simple exercise to illustrate the point: Picture a doctor or a professor. You will most likely think of a man. Now think of nurses and teachers and you are likely to imagine a woman. This unconscious gender bias is rooted in years of associating male and female attributes to specific roles in society. Inevitably, it also influences students’ career choices.

New Delhi, India, 8-9 November 2017. This symposium looked at how to implement effective financial education policies in a changing financial landscape with a focus on financial education in the digital age.

Higher education is one of the most globally integrated systems of the modern world. There still are important barriers to the international recognition of degrees or the transfer of credits, but some of the basic features of higher education enjoy global convergence and collaboration.

Girls are much better than boys at working together to solve problems, according to the first OECD PISA assessment of collaborative problem solving.

Successes and failures in the classroom will increasingly shape the fortunes of countries. And yet, more of the same education will only produce more of the same strengths and weaknesses.

Do today’s students really know how to work well together? For the first time ever, the Programme for International Student Assessment 2015 (otherwise known as PISA) examined students’ ability to collaborate to solve problems and the necessary social skills involved in that process.

The Teaching and Learning International Survey (otherwise known as TALIS) is a survey conducted every five years that asks teachers and school leaders from around the world about the working conditions and the learning environment in their schools.

It can be difficult to get your head around education finance. Who actually pays for it, where does the money come from, and how is it spent are all crucial questions to ask if you want to understand how the money flows in education.

Despite the obvious benefits derived from education, governments face difficult trade-offs when balancing the share of public and private contributions to education.

Education systems need to prepare students for their future, rather than for our past. In these times, digitalisation is connecting people, cities and continents to bring together a majority of the world’s population in ways that vastly increases our individual and collective potential.

Recent reforms of Italy’s education system (“Buona Scuola”), labour market (“Jobs Act”) and industrial policy (“Industria 4.0”) have clear synergies and could reduce worrying imbalances between the supply and demand of skills on the Italian labour market, according to the new OECD report Getting Skills Right: Italy.

"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence”, George Orwell wrote in 1943. And in an era of ‘fake news’ and post-truth, it resembles our world today.