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.

29/03/2018 - The OECD Working Party on Responsible Business Conduct is seeking candidates for a new Chairs to assist in implementing and promoting the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

Norway’s law enforcement institutions have demonstrated commitment and ability in combating foreign bribery using a robust legal framework. Its new Penal Code, however, could create obstacles to enforcement by potentially narrowing jurisdiction over foreign bribery committed by Norwegians abroad.

Germany continues to demonstrate a high level of anti-bribery enforcement having prosecuted and sanctioned 328 individuals and 18 companies in foreign bribery cases since 1999.

The International Partnership against Corruption in Sport (IPACS), a recently established multi-stakeholder platform, agreed to set up three taskforces to help tackle corruption in sport at its meeting at the OECD in Paris on 14 to 15 December 2017.

Mexico needs to give more priority to foreign bribery enforcement, having yet to prosecute a case involving the bribery of foreign public officials 19 years after ratifying the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

Countries must step up work to ensure that tax authorities and anti-corruption authorities can effectively co-operate in the fight against tax evasion, bribery, and other forms of corruption, according to a joint OECD/World Bank report.

In 2018, the OECD Working Group on Bribery launched its fourth phase of monitoring of Hungary and Japan's implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. To assist this evaluation process, the OECD calls for interested parties to provide written submissions on the evaluated countries.

The OECD and the Uzbekistan Government, with the support of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), has launched a project to strengthen Uzbekistan’s capacity to fight corruption and boost its implementation of OECD Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan (IAP) recommendations.

This Working Group on Bribery consultation with the private sector and civil society will focus on topics suggested by the stakeholders themselves and launch the OECD study, 'Foreign Bribery Enforcement: What Happens to the Public Officials on the Receiving End?'.

The Czech Republic has a long tradition of a highly differentiated education system. Tracking occurs very early.

Greece needs to look beyond its short-term difficulties and start to prepare for a brighter future. It is at the crossroads, but can succeed, provided that it undertakes and implements relentlessly the right reforms. The reform of education is in fact the key to Greece’s future prosperity.

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.

Without adequate investment in skills, people languish on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into inclusive economic growth, and countries can no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global society, said OECD Secretary-General.

Join around 500 higher education policy-makers, institutional leaders and academic experts active in higher education at the biennial General Conference of the OECD’s Programme for Institutional Management in Higher Education on 17-19 September in Paris.

Denmark should build on the strengths of its vocational and educational training programme to ensure that young people enter the labour market with the skills companies need and to meet the national goal of having 60% of young people enter higher education by 2020, according to a new OECD report.

Education at a Glance 2012 - Country Note for Germany (german)

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.

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.

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 seminar will provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences on issues such as the influence of accelerated commercialization of education and a knowledge-based society.

The well performing labour market has delivered low unemployment and relatively stable wage developments.

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.

The exceptional turnout at the 2013 OECD/Japan Seminar in Tokyo this week, where over 300 participants from over 20 countries discussed global strategies for higher education, shows that the seminar had exactly the right agenda at exactly the right time. I asked myself how many people would have turned up had this seminar been held five years ago; or whether five years ago, Japan would have ventured to take the lead on this theme.

Education is one OECD department that has embraced the information revolution.

The PISA-Based Test for Schools [In the United States, the assessment is known as the OECD Test for Schools (based on PISA)] is a student assessment tool geared for use by schools and networks of schools to support research, benchmarking and school improvement efforts.

Digital economies are powered by skills. People with the high-end skills needed to invent and apply new technologies are in high demand the world over. At the same time, the portfolio of basic skills needed to navigate technology-rich environments and function effectively in our connected societies has expanded. How severe is the shortage of ICT skills? And what needs to be done to fill the gaps?

How can assessment and evaluation policies work together more effectively to improve student outcomes in primary and secondary schools? This report provides an international comparative analysis and policy advice to countries on how evaluation and assessment arrangements can be embedded within a consistent framework to improve the quality, equity and efficiency of school education.

Young people from poorer families are badly underrepresented in higher education. That risks exposing them to a lifetime of reduced earnings and undermines the foundations of wider economic growth. What can be done? Economically disadvantaged students benefit from a mix of grants and loans in third-level education, but they also need better support from the earliest years of their school careers.

Flanders builds a "triangle of quality" based on extensive autonomy for schools, supported by pedagogical advisory services and monitored by government inspectors.

In a drive to raise the quality of classroom teaching and boost student performance, Dutch education authorities are encouraging teachers to learn from each other through a process of peer review.

The current crisis has continued to affect people’s lives across the world, and nowhere is this more evident than in the deteriorating labour market in many countries. Young people have been hit particularly hard and risk being permanently scarred from joblessness and even exclusion. These social milestones are fundamental to health and well-being.

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.

There are few OECD countries where vocational education and training (VET) is held in such high regard or takes so many forms as in Austria. Some 60 percent of young Austrians aged between 25 and 34 have completed a VET course below tertiary level (vocational school or technical college).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Individual secondary schools in England will from next year be able to take a version of the OECD’s PISA test in order to benchmark themselves against the world’s best education systems.

The story of Korean education over the past 50 years is one of remarkable growth and achievement. Korea is one of the top performing countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey and among those with the highest proportion of young people who have completed upper secondary and tertiary education.

Jobs, wealth and individual well-being depend on what people can do with what they know. There is no shortcut to equipping people with the right skills and to providing them with opportunities to use their skills effectively. If there’s one lesson the global economy has taught us, it is that governments cannot simply spend their way out of a crisis.

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

This book addresses the challenges linked to the introduction of financial education in schools and and provides practical guidance and case studies to assist policy makers.

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.