This book provides, for Australia, an independent analysis of major issues facing its educational evaluation and assessment framework, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches.

This book provides, for Sweden an independent analysis from an international perspective of major issues facing the evaluation and assessment framework in education, along with current policy initiatives and possible future approaches.

This book provides, for Norway, an independent analysis from an international perspective of major issues facing the evaluation and assessment framework in education along with current policy initiatives and possible future approaches.

The Czech Republic should build on the strengths of its preschool education framework to further enhance the quality of its early childhood education and care services, according to a new OECD report.

This report provides, for the Flemish community of Belgium, an independent analysis of major issues facing the educational evaluation and assessment framework, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches.

Can both less income inequality and more growth be achieved? A recent OECD study sheds new light on the link between policies that boost growth and the distribution of income.

This report for the Czech Republic forms part of the OECD Review on Evaluationand Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes. The purpose of the Review is to explore how systems of evaluation and assessment can be used to improve the quality, equity and efficiency of school education.

This spotlight report draws upon the OECD report Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools.

The report highlights strategies from other countries that could serve as a model for England as it develops its early childhood education and care programme.

The OECD has launched its Skills Strategy to help governments build economic resilience, boost employment and reinforce social cohesion. Despite the pressure on public finances, spending on education and skills is an investment for the future and must be a priority.

By Charles Fadel - Founder & chairman, Center for Curriculum Redesign It has become clear that teaching skills requires answering “What should students learn in the 21st century?” on a deep and broad basis. Teachers need to have the time and flexibility to develop knowledge, skills, and character, while also considering the meta-layer/fourth dimension that includes learning how to learn, interdisciplinarity, and personalisation.

OECD Education Newsletter

Sweden enjoys an 81.5% employment rate for all levels of education – the second highest rate of all OECD countries after Iceland (Table A7.1b).

As the spectre of another economic downturn looms large in many countries and is already a reality in others, new data from the 2012 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators – released today – provides powerful insights into the link between education, economic progress and social mobility around the world.

Indira Samarasekera, President of the University of Alberta in Canada, was one of the keynote speakers at this year’s Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) Conference, held at OECD headquarters in Paris this past September. Marilyn Achiron, Editor at the OECD’s Education Directorate, spoke with her about a variety of subjects

Did you know that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development helped to lay the groundwork for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals? Even though Development is part of our name, there are many people who don’t realise just how much of our resources are devoted to developing economies and not only to the development of the OECD’s 34 member countries.

education quality, improving education

When we think of innovation in education these days, we immediately think of technology: getting more computers into more classrooms, offering online courses to students in higher education. - See more at: http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.fr/2012/12/oecd-education-today-and-tomorrow.html#sthash.dv2MKgEf.dpuf

This interactive chart, designed by Krisztina Szucs and Mate Cziner from Hungary, condenses highly complex data on the costs and benefits of education around the world. It clearly highlights important facts showing students, parents and policy makers where the real costs and benefits lie for them in relation to education

The OECD today announced the winner of its first-ever global data visualisation challenge.

This study looks into the use of fixed term contracts and agency work in Russia during and shortly after the crisis 2009 10 with the help of an enterprise survey.

In Colombia, the beginning of a new century has brought with it a palpable feeling of optimism. Colombians and visitors sense that the country’s considerable potential can be realised, and education is rightly seen as crucial to this process. As opportunities expand, Colombians will need new and better skills to respond to new challenges and prospects.

Most of us think of education as the great leveller; but are our education systems really doing all they can to ensure that boys and girls from all backgrounds have an equal shot at a high-quality education? As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, some countries have been more successful than others in levelling the playing field for their students.

In many OECD countries, ECEC services have increased in response to a growing demand for better learning outcomes as well as growing female labour force participation. In recent years, however, the goals of ECEC policy have become more child-centred.

The higher the level of education, the higher the salary cost of teachers per student. In Belgium (Flemish Community), France and Spain, the difference in the annual salary cost between the primary and upper secondary levels of education exceeds USD 1 800 in 2010.

03/04/2013 – The OECD has developed a new tool to help individual schools benchmark their students’ proficiency in reading, mathematics and science against the world’s top education systems. It will also give educators an insight into the learning environments at schools so they can consider ways to improve student learning.

Successful education systems guarantee that all students succeed at high levels. As this month’s PISA in Focus notes, some school systems not only do well on international assessments, like PISA, they also manage to minimise the difference between the best- and poorest-performing students.

In most countries and economies, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to perform at higher levels than other students. Socio-economic status explains only part of the performance difference between students who attend urban schools and other students.

How do apprenticeships and other forms of workplace learning help people to make a successful transition from school to work? Global economic competition requires a labour force with a range of mid-level trade, technical and professional skills alongside the high-level skills typically associated with university education.

In some countries, an increasing number of young people are neither in employment, nor in education or training (NEET). A high proportion of NEETs is an indicator of a difficult transition between school and work.

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.

How are countries around the world helping youth stay in school, build skills and careers? What are they doing about youth unemployment? These case studies provide a starting point for those looking not only to learn about the problems facing youth today, but how to solve them.

NEETS - young people aged between 15 and 29 years old who are not in employment, education or training - are a potential problem both for society and for themselves. The proportion of young people neither working nor studying offers an insight into how well economies manage the transition between school and work – better than youth unemployment rates, which do not take into account the numbers in education.

30/05/2013 - OECD governments have committed to stepping up their efforts to tackle high youth unemployment and strengthen their education systems to better prepare young people for the world of work.

In most OECD countries, newly arrived 15-year-old immigrant students show poorer reading performance than immigrant students who arrived in their new country when they were younger than five.

Between 2000 and 2011, the number of international students has more than doubled. Today, almost 4.5 million tertiary students are enrolled outside their country of citizenship.

David Hoey, Chief Executive Officer of WorldSkills International spoke to us of the international skills extravaganza (WorldSkills Leipzig 2013) going on now, between 2-7 July.

International students are one of the fastest growing parts of the global education system. In just 20 years their numbers have more than doubled, and there are now over 4 million young people currently studying abroad to get their degree

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.

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.

Children are starting school at an ever younger age,OECD’s recent Education at a Glance 2013 shows that in 2011 on average over 84% of all four year-old children were enrolled in some form of formal education, which is 5% more than in 2005.

Both women and men need to be sufficiently financially literate to effectively participate in economic activities and to take appropriate financial decisions for themselves and their families, but women often have less financial knowledge and lower access to formal financial products than men. Women therefore have specific and additional financial literacy needs.

Most students enjoy orderly classrooms for their language-of-instruction lessons. Socio-economically disadvantaged students are less likely to enjoy orderly classrooms than advantaged students. Orderly classrooms – regardless of the school’s overall socio-economic profile – are related to better performance.

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

Everywhere skills transform lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. And if there’s one lesson the global economy has taught us over the last few years, it’s that we cannot simply bail ourselves out of a crisis — stimulus plans and printing money can never be a lasting solution to our economic problems.

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

This is the fourth episode of Global Education Leaders, an initiative launched by Turkish educators. The discussion revolved around global education issues and OECD's focus on skills.