In 2015 the Lithuanian government launched an ambitious Social Model reform agenda aimed at balancing flexibility of the labour market and security provided through the system of social protection.

Today’s schools must equip students with the knowledge and skills they’ll need to succeed in an uncertain, constantly changing tomorrow. But many schools look much the same today as they did a generation ago, and too many teachers are not developing the pedagogies and practices required to meet the diverse needs of 21st-century learners.

Schools nowadays are required to learn faster than ever before in order to deal effectively with the growing pressures of a rapidly changing environment.

Even when all students, including the most disadvantaged, have easy access to the Internet,a digital divide, based on socio-economic status, still persists in how students use technology.

At the turn of this century, two different models of higher education programmes prevailed in the world.

Archived webinar of September 15,2016 with Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, OECD, presenting the findings of Education at a Glance 2016.

Archived webinar - School Leadership for Learning: Insights from TALIS 2013 (September 20, 2016)

The role of the school leader is essential for pupil and staff success, and although good practice exists, there is still room for improvement.

Instructional leadership is the set of practices that principals use in relation to the improvement of teaching and learning. It is a strong predictor of how teachers collaborate and engage in a reflective dialogue about their practice.

On 6 December, the latest results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA, will be made public.

Why women and men choose to pursue different fields of study, and why those choices vary among countries, is not easy to determine.

More and more adults are earning a tertiary qualification, but not all tertiary degrees have the same value on the labour market. In general, postgraduate degrees such as master’s and doctoral degrees are associated with higher employment rates and earnings than bachelor’s degrees.

This paper delivers a broad assessment of income inequality in Denmark.

Peru has been one of the strongest economic performers in Latin America with steady GDP per capita growth over the past decade.

High-performing education systems value teachers and invest a lot in them. And indeed, the human factor is crucial in creating effective and high-quality teaching and learning environments.

Tomorrow, the OECD will publish the 2015 PISA results. The world’s premier global metric for education will tell us which countries have the best school systems, based on the performance of 15-year-olds in science, mathematics and reading over a two-hour test.

More than half a million 15-year-olds took part in the OECD’s latest global education survey, known as PISA. The main focus was on science, an increasingly important part of our economic and social lives.

Register for a webinar "PISA 2015: Q&A Session Closing the Achievement Gap" with Andreas Schleicher (December 15th, 14h Paris time)

Since 2009, Education at a Glance (EAG) has included an indicator on education and social outcomes using data from different surveys.

Skill requirements in the labour market have significantly changed over the past two decades. The restructuring of the economy is making the labour market increasingly knowledge-based.

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines not just what students know in science, reading and mathematics, but what they can do with what they know. Results from PISA show educators and policy makers the quality and equity of learning outcomes achieved elsewhere, and allow them to learn from the policies and practices applied in other countries.

For the first time in PISA a teacher questionnaire provides valuable information on teaching practices and learning activities in the classroom. This webinar will focus on insights from the PISA findings on teacher policy and practice.

Skills are the foundation upon which Mexico must build future growth and prosperity. Mexico, being one of the youngest populations among OECD countries, has a strong demographic advantage and thus a unique window of opportunity. But it also faces common challenges to bring the skills of its population up to the requirements of the global digital economy.

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.

Modern education systems, which are open to the middle classes and the poor, not just the elites, were established during the first industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Countries have seen a major increase in the educational attainment level of their populations. In 1965, only 43% of young adults aged 25-34 had attained upper secondary education or higher on average across OECD countries. Fifty years later, upper secondary education had almost doubled with attainment levels reaching 84% in 2015.

Most people see social inequities in education as stubbornly persistent.

The persistence of social inequities in education – the fact that children of wealthy and highly educated parents tend to do better in school than children from less privileged families – is often seen as a difficult-to-reverse feature of education systems. PISA shows that, rather than assuming that inequality of opportunity is set in stone, school systems can become more equitable over a relatively short time.

China has the largest education system in the world. With almost 260 million students and over 15 million teachers in about 514 000 schools (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2014), excluding graduate education institutions, China’s education system is not only immense but diverse.

There is little doubt that in OECD countries, the chances for boys and girls to succeed and contribute to society have become more equal over the past century.

On average across OECD countries, almost one in four students – whether boy or girl – expects to work in an occupation that requires further science training beyond compulsory education. This brief highlights the kinds of science careers 15-year-olds anticipate for themselves in the future.

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.

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 2015, PISA asked students about the occupation they expect to be working in when they are 30 years old. Students’ responses were later grouped into science-related and non-science-related careers – with the former including science and engineering professionals; health professionals; science technicians and associate professionals; and information and communication technology (ICT) professionals.

Ukraine has taken ambitious steps to tackle bribery and corruption across government, including public procurement and, law enforcement. It should now step up its efforts to tackle integrity risks and violations in education, such as unmerited grades, misappropriated school funds, and preferential access to schools and study programmes - according to a new OECD report.

Bringing you the highlights from the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

The striking cross-national variation in socio-economic disparities in skills gaps among 15-year-olds, and the evolution of these gaps between the ages of 15 and 27, raises the question of what policies and institutional arrangements may explain such variability.

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.

The expectations for teachers are high and rising each day.

Sweden has one asset that few other countries in the Western world offer: a firm belief in the power of education to transform lives and promote social inclusion.

Every year in March, education ministers and union leaders of the highest-performing and most rapidly improving education systems (according to PISA) meet to seek ways to improve the status of the teaching profession. Many countries could use such guidance.

This public session will discuss the financial incentives to invest in education, with a particular focus on how tax systems impact skills development in OECD countries. The webinar will present some of the key findings from the OECD’s new report, Taxation and Skills and their implications for policy makers.

Well-designed policies could help address the outstanding issues in the ECEC profession and work environment in Kazakhstan. Some potential options for Kazakhstan are suggested in this report, based on its findings and the background report prepared by Kazakhstan and supplemented by a survey of policy options and country experiences.

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.

This public session discussed the financial incentives to invest in education, with a particular focus on how tax systems impact skills development in OECD countries. The webinar presented some of the key findings from the OECD’s new report, Taxation and Skills and their implications for policy makers.

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.

with Andreas Schleicher, Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills

The Netherlands’ economy and society are being transformed by technological change, increased economic integration, population ageing, increased migration and other pressures.

New teachers are more likely to feel prepared in the content of their subject field(s), rather than the pedagogy or classroom practice of their subject field(s).

One of the greatest challenge for new teachers, does not come from not knowing what to teach, but from not knowing how to teach what they know and how to manage a classroom in all its strange and exciting complexity.