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.

Education at a Glance 2013 - Country notes and key fact tables

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 insight that education is valuable both to individuals and to countries is not new. Using continuously improving data and statistical tools, we have come to understand and appreciate the magnitude of education’s impact on employment, income, health and life opportunities in general.

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.

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.

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.

OECD countries must ensure mobile markets remain open and competitive in order to sustain innovation and meet rising demand for data services, according to a new OECD report.

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.

Big data is the foundation on which education can reinvent its business model and build the coalition of governments, businesses, and social entrepreneurs that can bring together the evidence, innovation and resources to make lifelong learning a reality for all.

This book suggests strategies for building an education model that could inspire other Mexican states and fuel federal reform efforts.

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.

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.

The informal meeting of OECD Education Ministers will be held in Istanbul, Turkey on 2-3 October 2013. The theme of the meeting is “Fostering Skills and Employability through Education”.

The low-skilled are more likely than others to be unemployed, have bad health and earn much less, according to the first OECD Survey of Adult Skills. Countries with greater inequality in skills proficiency also have higher income inequality.

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.

Brazil’s strong economic growth has helped cut the youth unemployment rate over the past decade to levels below those of most OECD countries. Increased investment in education and vocational training is also helping young people get a foot in the jobs market, according to a new OECD report.

Note summarising the performance of Belgium in PISA 2012

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. To date, students representing more than 70 economies have participated in the assessment.

Asian countries outperform the rest of the world in the OECD’s latest PISA survey, which evaluates the knowledge and skills of the world’s 15-year-olds. PISA 2012 tested more than 510,000 students in 65 countries and economies on maths, reading and science. The main focus was on maths.

Faits marquants sur la performance de la France lors de l'enquête PISA 2012 sur les compétences des élèves résolution de problèmes.

Note summarising England's results in the PISA 2012 problem solving assessment.

Note summarising Spain's results in the PISA 2012 problem solving assessment.

Note summarising the United States' results in the PISA 2012 problem solving assessment.

Note summarising the performance of 15-year-old students in Singapore in the PISA 2012 assessment of problem solving.

Note summarising the performance of 15-year-olds in Japan in the PISA 2012 assessment of problem solving.

Note summarising the performance of German 15-year-old students in the PISA 2012 assessment of problem solving.

Students from Singapore and Korea have performed best in the first OECD PISA assessment of creative problem-solving. Students in these countries are quick learners, highly inquisitive and able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts.

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.

Higher level vocational education and training (VET) programmes are facing rapid change and intensifying challenges. What type of training is needed to meet the needs of changing economies? How can employers and unions be engaged? The country reports in this series look at these and other questions. They form part of Skills beyond School, the OECD policy review of postsecondary vocational education and training.

Most teachers enjoy their job, despite feeling unsupported and unrecognised in schools and undervalued by society at large, according to a new OECD survey.

This report examines the sustainability of social institutions and their ability to absorb and cope with short-term shocks and longer-term trends by providing risk sharing and expenditure smoothing, focusing on pension, health care and unemployment insurance schemes.

Around one in seven students in the 13 OECD countries and economies that took part in the first OECD PISA international assessment of financial literacy are unable to make even simple decisions about everyday spending, and only one in ten can solve complex financial tasks.

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.

Public investment in education has sharply increased since 2000 and is now one of the highest among OECD and partner countries. In 2011, the Brazilian government spent 19% of its total expenditure on education, which is well above the OECD average of 13%, and is the fourth highest among all OECD and partner countries with available data.

October 5 marks the 20th anniversary of UNESCO’s World Teachers' Day, a day devoted to “appreciating, assessing and improving educators of the world”. This gives us a great opportunity to reflect again on how schools can celebrate and develop great teaching. One way to do that is through critical exchanges – building constructive feedback systems within the schools.

Across countries and economies participating in the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), a majority of teachers report receiving feedback on different aspects of their work in their schools.

Quick: Who has more up-to-date textbooks: students in wealthier schools or students in poorer schools? Actually, it depends where you live. As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, not only are some countries better than others in allocating their educational resources more equitably across schools, but students in these countries generally perform better in mathematics.

OECD Education Today - Addressing inequities in the Slovak Republic through evaluation and assessment

How big should schools be? Is bigger better? Or do all the best things come in small packages? For education systems, the question of how school size influences quality and efficiency has long been an important issue.

Countries should step up their efforts to improve the quality of post-secondary vocational training in order to meet the changing needs of today’s job market, according to a new OECD report.

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.

Higher level vocational education and training (VET) programmes are facing rapid change and intensifying challenges. What type of training is needed to meet the needs of changing economies? How should the programmes be funded? How should they be linked to academic and university programmes?

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.

Can PISA results predict the quality of a country’s labour force one decade later? To find out, we compared some of the results from the PISA 2000 and PISA 2003 tests with results from the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC).

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.