New guidance from the AfDB and the OECD will help African companies of all sizes set up measures to prevent bribery and improve the quality of corporate compliance and anti-bribery policies.

This Working Group on Bribery consultation with the private sector and civil society will focus on how best to follow-up on OECD Anti-Bribery Ministerial Meeting.

Lithuania has taken significant steps to strengthen its legislative framework to combat foreign bribery. Yet further efforts are needed to ensure effective enforcement of anti-bribery laws with regard to corporate liability and imposing sanctions for foreign bribery, including confiscation, according to a new report by the OECD Working Group on Bribery.

The OECD Working Group on Bribery has just completed a review of Switzerland's enforcement of the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and related instruments. The Working Group welcomes the significant level of enforcement by the Federal Office of the Attorney General. Switzerland has cracked down on the bribery of foreign public officials in recent years.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Education has one of the highest shares of innovative jobs for tertiary graduates of all sectors of the economy in Europe, and a higher proportion than in other public sector areas such as health and public administration.

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.

The OECD Directorate for Education has launched the Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship Programme. Mr. Alexander (1940 - 2012) was the Director for the OECD’s Education, Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate from 1989-2000.

How educational resources are allocated is just as important as the amount of resources available.

Korea has made significant progress towards decentralising the management of employment and training programmes, but can still do more to create stronger links with employers at the local level, according to a new OECD report.

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.

The Indonesian economy has enjoyed strong and stable growth over the past decade and a half, leading to impressive reductions in poverty and major improvements in living standards. But challenges remain to continue to converge towards higher-income countries, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Indonesia.

The global talent pool has grown over the past decade and is expected to continue growing through to 2030. The number of young people aged 25-34 with a tertiary qualification increased by nearly 45% between 2005 and 2013 in OECD and G20 countries and is expected to keep increasing in the coming decade.

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.

The OECD’s Annual Meeting at Ministerial Level reinforced member governments’ support across a broad range of key OECD work.

The quantity and quality of resources available to schools improved significantly between 2003 and 2012, on average across OECD countries.

Research shows that programmes to improve adults’ basic skills need to use awareness-raising measures (like the adult education weeks promoted in Denmark and Finland) and national campaigns (as conducted in France and Luxembourg) to encourage interested, but reluctant adults to participate.

Did you ever wonder if education has a role to play in stemming the obesity epidemic sweeping across all OECD countries? Or what the impact of increasing urbanisation might be on our schools, families, and communities?

Parents’ level of education still greatly influences that of their children: individuals are 4.5 times more likely to attend higher education if one of their parents has a higher education degree than if both their parents have below upper secondary education.

On average across OECD countries, students’ belief that they can solve mathematics problems (mathematics self-efficacy) is associated with a difference of 49 score points in mathematics – the equivalent of one year of school.

The latest report in the OECD’s Starting Strong series reviews the monitoring systems of 24 jurisdictions and reveals that monitoring does not merely encompass regulatory compliance but is moving towards better understanding what is happening inside an ECEC setting and how a child develops in several areas.

It is difficult for us here in Paris to think about much else beside the innocents who lost their lives last week during the senseless, brutal attack that shook our city. Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones; our spirit remains firmly fixed on the values we cherish: liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Education systems are not static; they change. There have been some important changes at both ends of the education ladder recently: in early childhood or “pre-primary” education, at one end, and in tertiary or higher education at the other.

Who wants to be a teacher? As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, in many countries the teaching profession is having a hard time making itself an attractive career choice – particularly among boys and among the highest-performing students.

Archived webinar December 17 2015 - Immigrant Students at School: Easing the Journey towards Integration presented by Presented by Andreas Schleicher, Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills, OECD

In 2012, 15-year-old students spent over two hours on line each day, on average across OECD countries. The most common online activities among 15-year-olds were browsing the Internet for fun and participating in social networks, with over 70% of students doing one of these every day or almost every day.

Archived webinar - Low-performing Students: Why they Fall Behind and How to Help them Succeed (February 10, 2016) with Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, OECD, and Daniel Salinas, Analyst, OECD.

School leaders are calling the PISA-based Test for Schools one of the better indicators out there of how well students are prepared for 21st century learning.

No country or economy participating in PISA 2012 can claim that all of its 15-year-old students have achieved basic proficiency skills in mathematics, reading and science. Some 28% of students score below the baseline level of proficiency in at least one of those subjects, on average across OECD countries

The number and length of school holidays differs significantly across OECD countries, meaning the number of instructional days in primary and secondary education ranges from 162 days a year in France to more than 200 days in Israel and Japan.

Primary school is a fundamental stage in children’s education. Yet it is often neglected in education research and policy debates, somehow squeezed between the seemingly more important stages of early childhood education and secondary education.

Equality of opportunity is a lofty ideal, but some societies get closer to achieving it than others.

The Survey of Adult Skills finds that even adults with the lowest proficiency in literacy possess some basic reading skills, although the level of these skills varies considerably across countries.

If one were to ask ministers of education what they consider to be the most important factor determining the quality of their education systems, the odds are high that they would refer to the quality of the teaching work force.

OECD countries differ significantly in the way spending on tertiary education is shared between public and private sources of funding, and in the financial support they provide to students.

How are policy makers in the United States using data to help districts maximise their impact? And, what tools do districts need to work together in order to build stronger communities?

Common sense and hard evidence point to the significant impact of socio-emotional skills such as perseverance and responsibility on children's lifetime success.

Although Lithuania’s growth has been impressive, inequality is high, the risk of poverty is one of the highest of European countries, and life expectancy is comparatively low and strongly dependent on socio-economic background.

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.