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.

What makes some of the largest companies in the world successful? According to consultant Simon Sinek in a very popular TedTalk it is because they start with the ‘why’.

Greece should prioritise investment in education and training and improve the quality of teaching and educational leadership in order to boost medium and long-term growth prospects, according to a new OECD report.

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

Around one in four students in the 15 countries and economies* that took part in the latest OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test of financial literacy are unable to make even simple decisions on everyday spending, while only one in ten can understand complex issues, such as income tax.

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

Why is it that even highly educated migrants to OECD countries are less likely to be employed than native-born adults who are similarly educated, even if the migrants have lived in their host country for several years?

Education has transformed over the last 20 years from being a means to an end to becoming a change agent on the battleground to improve the life chances of all individuals, regardless of where they live, their economic status, gender, ability or religious persuasion. Education has been revitalised as the gateway for equal opportunity.

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.

As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, so do the risks we face. A disease breaking out in a village in Africa, a bank crashing on Wall Street or a protest in a distant country can all potentially “snowball” and influence the world financial, health or security order.

Join Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, and Éric Charbonnier, analyst in the Early Childhood and Schools division, who will present the main findings from Starting Strong V - Transitions from Early Childhood Education and Care to Primary Education.

Unlike earlier PISA reports, the 2015 PISA report (Volume I and Volume II) highlights differences in sample coverage – how many students were eligible to participate in PISA – between countries.

As this month’s PISA in Focus reveals, students spend considerably more time learning in some countries than in others, but this does not necessarily translate into better learning outcomes.

Quality transitions that are well-prepared and child centred, managed by highly educated staff who are collaborating professionally, and guided by appropriate and aligned curricula, can go a long way to ensure that the positive impacts of early learning and care will last through primary school and beyond.

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.

The transition from early childhood education to primary school is a big step for all children, and a step which more and more children are having to take. Quality transitions should be well-prepared and child-centred, managed by trained staff collaborating with one another, and guided by an appropriate and aligned curriculum.

What do innovative learning environments around the world look like? How might they be led and evaluated? What policy strategies stimulate and support them? For the past decade the OECD’s Centre for Education Research and Innovation (CERI) has addressed these and similar questions in an international study called Innovative Learning Environments.

Back in 2013, when we launched the OECD's first international review of school resource policies, we may not have been fully prepared for the detective-type work we were getting into. The OECD Review of School Resources covers 18 school systems and aims to shed light on a part of education policy that has been surprisingly left in the dark.

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.

There is now a widespread consensus that high-quality early childhood education is critically important for children. Research continues to find that early childhood education can compensate for a lack of learning opportunities at home, and can help children begin to develop the social and emotional skills needed for success later in life.

Local governments are the main contributors to the financing of early childhood education, particularly with regards to core goods and services such as staff salaries and school buildings. Households and other private entities bear a greater share of the cost than in other levels of education, particularly for ancillary services such as meals, school health services and transport.

Teachers enter the profession for a variety of reasons. Intrinsic motivations that have to do with the nature of the job and the intangible rewards associated with being an effective teacher play an important role.

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.

The latest PISA in Focus tells some basic facts about bullying. First, bullying is widespread. Second, all types of students – boys and girls, rich and poor – face some risk of being bullied.

In August 2015, a newspaper published a story about Sam Cookney’s commute to work. Pretty boring, one would think, as long commutes are nothing new for most of us. However, Sam’s story is not so common. He works in London and commutes, several times per month, from Barcelona!

International mobility is on the rise, and the growing number of people coming and going across borders leads to increasingly diverse communities. Education has an important role to play in developing the competencies required for our increasingly global world.

The highlights from the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

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

Costa Rica is recognised across Latin America as a leader in education. The country was among the first in the region to enrol all children in primary school and combat adult illiteracy.

Indigenous peoples are the first inhabitants of their lands, but are often poorly served by the education systems in their countries. Why? Is it necessary to wait until issues such as poverty or appropriate legal recognition for Indigenous peoples are resolved?

The challenge that youth are facing, first and foremost, is skills for employability. It is a fundamental issue. What we have realised in education is that going to school has not necessarily translated into quality learning.

Increasing the educational attainment of young adults has been the focus of much effort over recent decades. But we all know that having children spend more time in school does not guarantee that every student will learn.

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.

Moving from the world of school to the world of work is one of the most dramatic changes in the lives of young people. And for many youngsters this transition does not go smoothly.

The transition from school to work can be a difficult period associated with spells of unemployment. Data show that those who leave school early have comparatively low skills and low educational attainment and face the greatest challenges in the labour market compared to their peers who stayed in education longer.

What's new in education and skills at the OECD?

Tertiary qualifications have become the entrance ticket for modern societies. Never before have those with advanced qualifications had the life chances they enjoy today, and never before have those who struggled to acquire a good education paid the price they pay today.

Tertiary enrolment is expanding rapidly, with very strong returns for individuals and taxpayers, but new evidence shows that universities can fail to offer, and individuals fail to pursue, the fields of study that promise the greatest labour-market opportunities, according to a new OECD report.

Career decisions are wrought in complexities. Many students start by looking at their interests, selecting a career in line with their personal affinities or aspirations.

Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world.

What happened in school today?” is a question that many parents across the world ask their children when they get home. Many parents also attend school meetings in order to understand how their child’s learning is developing.

Innovative schools challenge the boundaries – in time, space, and also in curricula and learning processes – that tradition seems to impose on schools today. They often have different approaches to the learning process and especially how its pedagogical core is organised.

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.

As educators know well, there are many barriers to learning that originate outside of school, such as those that arise from socio-economic disadvantage. In many education systems, the concentration of disadvantaged students in certain schools poses an additional challenge.

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”.

Adults who lack basic skills – literacy and numeracy – are penalised both in professional and private life. They are more likely to be unemployed or in precarious jobs, earn lower wages, have more health issues, trust others less, and engage less often in community life and democratic processes.

Since Harvard economists Goldin & Katz published their ground-breaking book The Race between Technology and Education (2008), education has come face-to-face with the challenges of a world continuously altered by technological innovation. Education is generally perceived to be a laggard social system, better equipped to transmit the heritage of the past than to prepare for the future.

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.

What's new in education and skills at the OECD?