If there’s one lesson we’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that we cannot simply bail ourselves out of a crisis, we cannot solely stimulate ourselves out of a crisis and we cannot just print money our way out of a crisis. But we can become much better in equipping more people with better skills to collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive our economies forward.

Arriving in a new country, in a new school as an immigrant student is never easy. But the transition can be a little less damaging if the student has already spent a few of his or her earliest years in his new home country. This month’s PISA in Focus examines the “late-arrival” penalty in student performance among immigrant students who arrived in their new country at the age of 12 or older.

One thing we have learned from surveying teachers around the world as part of our Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is that teachers everywhere want more professional development.

The jobs gap between well-educated young people and those who left school early has continued to widen during the crisis. A good education is the best insurance against a lack of work experience, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Education at a Glance.

The transition from school to work in Germany is remarkably smooth. An excellent vocational education and training (VET) system ensures that young people are well-prepared when they enter the labour market and can find jobs that match their qualifications.

The United States should improve postsecondary career and technical training provisions to help students transition smoothly into education programs and the labor market, according to a new OECD report published today.

Dr Barbara Ischinger, Director of Education and Skills, OECD, France - Better Skills, Better Lives (Tackling the global talent gap - Global Skills Exchange, Leipzig Germany, 6th July 2013)

09/07/2013 - The United States should improve postsecondary career and technical training provisions to help students transition smoothly into education programs and the labor market, according to a new OECD report published today.

Students who know how to summarise information tend to perform better in reading. If disadvantaged students used effective learning strategies to the same extent as students from more advantaged backgrounds do, the performance gap between the two groups would be almost 20% narrower.

Knowing the best way to summarise information you read is key to being a proficient reader. In fact, this month’s PISA in Focus suggests that if disadvantaged students – who consistently score lower on PISA assessments than advantaged students -- used the most effective learning strategies to the same extent as students from more advantaged backgrounds do, the performance gap between the two groups would shrink considerably.

The rapidly growing demand for highly skilled workers has led to a global competition for talent. High-level skills are critical for creating new knowledge and technologies and for sparking innovation; as such, they are key to economic growth and social development.

In a global economy, the benchmark for educational success is no longer improvement by national standards alone, but the best performing school systems internationally.

This Education Indicators in Focus No. 15 sets out the changing needs of a more diverse generation of university students.

England should expand the provision of postsecondary vocational training in order to meet the changing needs of students and employers, according to a new OECD report.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría today welcomed Brazil’s further engagement with the Organisation’s world-leading global education assessment programme (PISA) during a signing ceremony in Brasilia with Brazil’s Minister for Education Aloízio Mercadante.

An OECD study published today says the United States should take concerted action to address the adult skills challenge, warning it could progressively fall behind other countries. The study argues that low-skilled populations face a bleak future, creating challenges both to equity and social cohesion.

Across OECD countries, 18% of students skipped classes at least once in the two weeks prior to the PISA test, and 15% of students skipped a day of school or more over the same period.

The three questions that this Summit will focus on are: How can high quality teachers and leaders be attracted into and retained in schools of the greatest need? What are the levers for achieving equity in increasingly devolved education systems? How are learning environments created that meet the needs of all children and young people?

This conference on 9 April 2014 will provide an opportunity for a mutual sharing of good practice in fostering the better insertion of youth into the labour market through the development of quality apprenticeships. It would also seek to foster a greater commitment by countries to take action to introduce or strengthen apprenticeship initiatives and to take stock of the progress achieved.

The OECD and the EC are inviting individual teachers and schools to submit case studies about their strategies, practices and achievements in promoting entrepreneurship in schools and VET. Participation in the Call requires a submission of an abstract of 1-2 pages by email to Joseph.Tixier@oecd.org indicating in the subject line "Entrepreneurship360- Call for case studies". Deadline for submission is 30 April 2014.

This publication offers insights and advice to teachers and school leaders on how they can improve teaching and learning in their schools. It is both a guide through TALIS and a handbook for building excellence into teaching.

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Access to education continues to expand worldwide but the socio-economic divisions between tertiary-educated adults and the rest of society are growing. Governments must do more to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to a good education early in life, according to a new OECD report.

Many countries have implemented reforms to develop and support doctoral studies and postdoctoral research, stressing the crucial role of doctorate students and degree holders in terms of economic growth, innovation and scientific research.

A recent review of the United States concluded that in the decade to 2018, nearly one third of job vacancies will require a post-secondary qualification of some sort, but less than a four year degree.

Want to get involved in shaping the future of education? As the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) reach their 2015 deadline, several international groups, including the OECD, are formulating a new set of goals and targets for sustainable development… and we’d like to know what you think.

More than 40 years ago, the former French Prime Minister Edgar Faure and his team published one of the most influential educational works of the 20th century: “Learning to Be”, better known as the “Rapport Faure”, in which he mainstreamed the idea of lifelong learning.

In Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, participation rates in adult education and learning are over 60%, but they are one-third – or below – in Italy, the Russian Federation and the Slovak Republic.

Reducing income inequality would boost economic growth, according to new OECD analysis. This work finds that countries with lower income inequality grow faster than those with higher inequality.

Latin America’s GDP growth rate has slowed down in 2014, dropping below 1.5%. This is the first time in a decade that the region grows less than the OECD average, according to the OECD Development Centre, the Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean and the development bank for Latin America. Given the projections in the past weeks, any recovery in 2015 is likely to be challenging.

This report offers a broader view of teachers and school principals across all levels of compulsory education, and all the similarities and differences in the issues they are facing.

Looking at teachers at all levels of education, we learn that the majority of teachers are women. In all countries, the percentage of male teachers is particularly low in primary schools where teaching is still seen as a women’s job. As a result young children are missing out on role models of both sexes.

Professor John Hattie is held in high esteem as an education researcher and was called “possibly the world’s most influential education academic” by the Times Educational Supplement in 2012.

The quality of an education system today shapes the economic and social prosperity of the country tomorrow. Chile has embarked on wide-ranging reform to improve the quality and equity of its education system on several fronts, including early childhood education and care (ECEC), school funding, student selection, school governance, teacher career pathways, vocational education and training (VET) and tertiary education.

Teachers can certainly face challenges in the classroom. In TALIS participating countries and economies, almost one in three teachers report having more than 10% of students with behavioural problems in their classes.

Almost one in three teachers across countries participating in the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) reports having more than 10% of potentially disruptive students with behaviour problems in their classes. Teachers with more than one in ten students with behaviour problems spend almost twice as much time keeping order in the classroom than their peers with less than 10% of such students in their class.

If there’s one word that encapsulates the desires and aspirations of education stakeholders around the world, it is improvement.

Between 2000 and 2012, the proportion of young adults (25-34 year-olds) with a tertiary qualification has grown by more than 3% per year on average in OECD countries. On average across 24 national and sub-national entities participating in the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, 39% of adults have achieved a higher level of education than their parents.

Over the past decades, education systems have expanded enormously. They provide opportunities for many more students than before to access and succeed in secondary and tertiary education.

The United Arab Emirates is identified by PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) as one of the most rapidly improving education systems in the world. However its students still perform well below the levels expected in advanced economies.

Education systems have made major strides to close gender gaps in student performance but girls and boys remain deeply divided in career choices, which are being made much earlier than commonly thought, according to a new OECD report.

The new Teaching in Focus brief shows that professional development embedded in school life has more impact on teaching practice than non-school embedded professional development.

Gender differences still exist in certain fields, with more men studying science, computing and engineering, and with women dominating education and health and welfare.

Last Saturday, 14 April, Equal Pay Day reminded the world again of the large gap between men’s and women’s wages. Eradicating unjustifiable gender inequalities in earnings seems to be very hard to accomplish.

La calidad del sistema educacional de hoy es la base para la prosperidad económica y social del país de mañana.

ISTP 2015 will be held in Banff, Alberta, on March 29–30, 2015, and will bring together education ministers and leaders of teachers’ unions and associations from a number of high-performing and rapidly improving education systems.

When choosing a school for their child, parents in all participating countries value academic achievement highly; but they are often even more concerned about the safety and environment of the school and the school’s reputation.

Analysing the efficiency of education systems and organisations is at the forefront of today’s policy and academic debate.

TALIS 2013 finds that in many countries, new teachers (with less than five years’ teaching experience) are more likely to work in challenging schools than more experienced teachers.

It’s a well-trodden path to observe that the school systems of today are not preparing children for the jobs of today, let alone tomorrow. But what changes to our school systems are necessary to address this challenge?