Who is most likely to be left back at school?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

It was the kind of thing you whispered about with your classmates, while for the kid himself – and it usually was a “he” – it was an embarrassment that some tried, unsuccessfully, to dress up as a badge of honour. Being left back at school was no joke; and the practice continues to take a toll on millions of students every year – even though it does little to benefit the individual student who is required to repeat a grade.

The latest PISA in Focus highlights how successive rounds of PISA have found that grade repetition shows no clear benefit, either for individual students or for school systems as a whole. It is also an expensive way of handling underachievement, since the students who are left back are more likely to drop out of school entirely, or stay longer in the school system and so spend less time in the labour force.

Some countries have begun to realise that grade repetition is neither cheap nor particularly effective in assisting struggling students. They are rejecting the practice in favour of identifying and providing support earlier to these students. Among the 13 countries and economies that had grade repetition rates of more than 20% in 2003, for example, these rates dropped by an average of 3.5 percentage points by 2012. Rates fell particularly sharply in France, Luxembourg, Macao-China, Mexico and Tunisia.

Results from PISA 2012 suggest another good reason to end the practice of grade repetition: because disadvantaged students are more likely than advantaged students to repeat a grade, grade repetition tends to reinforce inequities in the school system. Across OECD countries, one in five socio-economically disadvantaged students reported that they had repeated a grade at least once since they entered primary school, while fewer than one in ten advantaged students reported so. In Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and Uruguay, more than one in two disadvantaged students reported that they had repeated a grade at least once since they entered primary school.

More troubling is that even among students with similar performance in mathematics, reading and science, the likelihood of having repeated a grade is often linked to socio-economic background. In 33 of the 61 countries and economies analysed, the odds of repeating grades are significantly higher among disadvantaged students than among advantaged students, after accounting for differences in mathematics, reading and science performance across students. On average across OECD countries, disadvantaged students are 1.5 times more likely to repeat grades than advantaged students who perform at the same level.

What this shows is that poor academic performance is not the only reason students are left back; other factors related to socio-economic disadvantage come into play as well. For example, grade repetition may be used not to help students who are lagging behind, but as a form of punishment to sanction misbehaviour. PISA data show that disadvantaged students are significantly more likely than their advantaged peers to arrive late for school or to skip classes. But it is unclear – at best – how repeating a grade improves behaviour in class and engagement at school. What is clear is that students who arrive late for school or skip classes miss out on learning opportunities, which, in turn, reinforces inequities related to socio-economic background.

Being required to repeat a grade adds shame and embarrassment to students who may already be discouraged and disaffected at school – and to no apparent benefit. Instead of making struggling students the focus of class gossip, isn’t it better to make them the focus of the support, extra help and encouragement they need – as soon as they need it?

Links:

PISA 2012 Findings

PISA in Focus No. 43: Are disadvantaged students more likely to repeat grades?

Photo credit:  Broken pencil  / @Shutterstock

Is expanding access to higher education worth the price?

by Dirk van Damme

Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

As Education at a Glance 2014  found, education systems continue to expand and levels of educational attainment continue to rise throughout the world. Across OECD countries in 2012, 32% of 25-64 year-olds – over 220 million individuals – held a tertiary degree. Among young adults, the proportion is even higher: 40%. Never before have so many people attained that level of education. Just 12 years earlier, only 22% of 25-64 year-olds had a tertiary education. The tertiary attainment rate among 25-34 year-olds grew by an average of 3.4% per year between 2000 and 2012, and in most countries, it is not likely to slow down anytime soon.

Such a rapid increase in both participation  and completion rates for tertiary studies puts a huge stress on countries’ education systems and governments’ capacity to support tertiary educational institutions. Indicators on expenditure show that between 2000 and 2011 countries had to allocate a higher percentage of national wealth (measured as a proportion of GDP) to tertiary education: from 1.3% to 1.6%. In general, this increase allowed countries not only to compensate for the increasing numbers of students, but also to increase, however slightly, expenditure per student. Between 2008 and 2011, in the midst of the global economic crisis, expenditure per students increased by 2.5% on average across OECD countries.

Obviously, some countries could not follow this pattern: during the same period, 11 countries had to cut expenditure per student. Others tried to avoid putting the increasing cost of tertiary education on public budgets by boosting the share of private spending, for example by raising tuition fees. Between 2000 and 2011, the share of public expenditure on tertiary education fell from 75.3% of total spending to 69.2%. Whatever the source of funding, societies had to boost their investments in tertiary education.

But, in the end, are the additional expenses of families and taxpayers, the time and energy of students and families, and the efforts of universities to adapt their educational processes worth it? Some commentators doubt it; they point to the risk of over-schooling, of skills mismatches, of high-qualified workers stealing the jobs of mid- and low-qualified adults. Some governments want to contain the increasing numbers of students and build the case for a more selective tertiary education system. Others argue that the economic transformation in most OECD countries points towards an increased demand of the kind of skills that universities tend to supply, and that countries had better be prepared by producing a highly qualified workforce for the next decades. It is not easy to settle this debate, and realities differ across countries. But Education at a Glance provides a range of data that can inform the debate.

One way of looking at this is to compare the wage premium for tertiary educated individuals across countries and relate this to the level of tertiary attainment. The wage premium is not a perfect measure of the demand for tertiary-educated workers, since it is also influenced by the overall wage inequality in a country. Not all countries are alike in the way the market rewards highly educated people. For example, the wage premium tends to be relatively high in the more open and market-oriented economies like the United States or the United Kingdom. In contrast, more egalitarian Nordic countries have a compressed wage structure where the relative wage premium for higher educational attainment is lower.

But despite these differences, we still can investigate the overall relationship between the two indicators. Does the share of tertiary-educated people affect the wage premium for young tertiary- educated workers who are just entering the labour market? Are countries that have allowed their tertiary education systems to expand at a rapid pace, and have thrown huge numbers of tertiary-educated people onto the labour market, jeopardising the economic return of investment in a tertiary qualification for younger workers? If the labour market were to be saturated with highly schooled individuals, one would expect relatively small earnings differences between tertiary- and upper secondary-educated workers. The chart above plots countries against the tertiary attainment rate among adults and the current wage premium for tertiary-educated 25-34 year-olds.

The few countries in the lower left quadrant have relatively low rates of tertiary attainment and they also demonstrate a relatively low wage premium. In the case of Greece, it is clear that the economy is in such bad shape that the comparative scarcity of highly qualified workers does not lead to better pay. In the upper right quadrant we find countries that have high educational attainment rates and that also reward those people well, mainly because of their relatively wide distribution of wages.

In the upper left part of the chart we see countries that have seen huge increases in tertiary attainment and that might face the risk of relative overschooling. But several of these countries are welfare state-type economies with relatively low wage inequalities, and where the wage premium of tertiary education is comparatively low anyway. In the lower right section we find countries that are more hesitant to increase the share of highly educated people in the working population, but pay them well. Over time, these countries might be faced with an undersupply of highly educated people should the economy continue to develop a demand for them.

Overall, the pattern suggests that having more highly educated adults in the labour force might reduce access to higher wages for younger, tertiary-educated adults who are just entering the labour market. But the relationship is not particularly strong, and is heavily influenced by the outliers. Institutional arrangements in national labour markets also affect countries’ position on the chart. Countries have their unique ways of preparing a highly skilled workforce for the future economy. Some favour a strict approach, producing just the amount of skills the market requires now. Others try to fuel innovation and productivity by oversupplying the economy with higher-level skills. Many others refrain from steering demand for education at all; their education systems simply respond to demand. At this point, it is impossible to say who is right and who is wrong.

Links:

Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators 

• Download the publication
• Download the highlights
• Read free online
• Explore a selection of core indicators from Education at a Glance 2014 using the Education GPS

Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2014: Indicators A1; A6  

Hungry for some education data? Go no further…

by Dirk van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

The 2014 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators is released today. Find out how your country compares with others in such areas as who participates in education, and to what level; the wage premium for workers with higher education; how much of the public budget is devoted to education; what teachers earn; which countries are most attractive to international students; how education, skills and employment are inter-related; and much, much more. To whet your appetite, try our interactive data charts below.


Links:
Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators
Download the publication
Download the highlights
Read free online
Press release: Educational mobility starts to slow in industrialised world, says OECD 
Wednesday September 10 at 17h Paris time - OECD Education and Skills webinar presenting Education at a Glance: 2014 OECD Indicators (registration required. Password: OECDEDU)
Follow #OECDEAG on Twitter:  @OECD_Edu @OECDLive @EAG_Indicators
See full listing of media events
Photo credit: ©OECD

Act now to boost Norway’s skills

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills 

When Norway makes the front page, the focus is usually on the country’s vast natural resources which have generated the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. In today’s economic climate, this is definitely good news.

Yet if you look beyond the headlines there is little room for complacency. Norway faces slowing productivity growth in the mainland economy, high labour costs and modest levels of entrepreneurship and innovation.

How can these challenges be tackled? In the words of Prime Minister Solberg, “Skills are the cure”. Skills are central to ensuring Norway’s future competitiveness as well as the health, wealth and well-being of its people. The economic value of Norway’s skills could be over ten times the value of its natural resources, and while the latter are finite and declining the former are infinite. The difficulty is that skills and oil don't usually mix very well. Most of the world’s oil-rich countries could do a lot better to develop and use the skills of their people. Concerted efforts are therefore needed to connect skills with jobs, productivity, prosperity and social cohesion.

The OECD Skills Strategy Action Report: Norway, published today, identifies five key actions to strengthen Norway’s skills system. They are supported by detailed suggestions on how both government and stakeholders in Norway can deliver on these actions, and are illustrated with examples drawn from other countries’ experience. The report also includes a set of concrete proposals that were developed by stakeholders during an interactive design workshop held in Oslo this spring.

So what are the five key actions for Norway?

1. Set up a “Skills Strategy for Norway” incorporating a whole-of-government approach.
2. Establish an action plan for continuous education and training.
3. Strengthen the link between skills development and economic growth.
4. Build a comprehensive career guidance system.
5. Strengthen incentives for people to move into shortage occupations.

Taken together, these five key actions constitute a strong and coherent platform for new policy development, and better implementation of existing skills policies in Norway.

The OECD Skills Strategy Action Report: Norway reflects the many valuable contributions received from a wide range of ministries, agencies and over 60 non-governmental actors in the course of 2013-2014, as part of a collaborative project between the OECD and Norway. It builds upon the extensive analysis and findings of the OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Norway, published in February 2014, and applies the OECD Skills Strategy three-pillar framework of developing relevant skills, activating skills supply and putting skills to effective use.

Maximising Norway’s skills potential is everyone’s business. Achieving this will require a shared commitment and concerted action across ministries, counties, local governments and social partners. This report will have served its purpose as a catalyst, if it inspires action in the schools, universities and workplaces where people’s skills are developed, activated and put to use. Moreover it comes as a timely reminder that the actions Norway takes today will drive innovation, productivity and prosperity in the future, while ensuring that no-one is left behind.

So when you next spot Norway in the news, take a closer look.

Norwegian skills, rather than oil, might be making the headlines.

Links:
OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Norway
OECD Skills Strategy
Survey of Adult Skills
For more on skills and skills policies around the world, visit: http://skills.oecd.org/
See also the country page on skills for Norway
Related blog posts on skills:
Skills will power Norway’s future prosperity, by Andreas Schleicher
Skill up or lose out, by Andreas Schleicher
Let’s talk about skills, by Joanne Caddy
Photo credit: Norway High Resolution Talent Concept  / @Shutterstock

Sowing the seeds of education reform

by Marilyn Achiron, 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Plant a tree? Easy: dig up soil, insert sapling, cover roots with soil, water abundantly.

Unless the tree you want to plant is from Japan and the soil in which you want to plant it is in Paris. Then you have to negotiate with two different ministries of agriculture and arrange to have a branch of a Japanese cherry blossom tree grafted onto roots developed in France before you can follow the four simple steps above.

Who knew?

As it turns out, apart from illustrating how even the simplest and most well-intentioned act of gift-giving could turn into a bureaucratic nightmare if not properly thought out, the plan to plant a Japanese cherry blossom tree on the grounds of OECD headquarters in Paris, in gratitude for the organisation’s support of the Tohoku School, offered the Japanese students involved yet another example of why learning how to learn is as important as what one learns.

The OECD-Tohoku School project was born in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that flooded more than 550 square kilometres of land, killed more than 18,000 people, and triggered a cooling-system failure at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant that led to a partial meltdown at the plant. The idea of the project was to turn the tragedy into an opportunity.  Through a “bottom-up”, project-based approach to learning, backed by the Japanese Ministry for Education, Fukushima University and other local stakeholders, and supported by the OECD, 100 junior and senior high school students in the Tohoku region worked with their teachers and members of the community – including industry, government and academia – to draw international attention to the region’s recovery and attractions. In the process, they began to acquire the kinds of skills – collaboration, innovation, leadership – that are so essential for life in knowledge-based 21st century economies.

“In regular school, we just sit at tables. The teachers teach and we study,” says Chikato Nakamura, 17, who participated in the project. “In this project, adults and children are equal. When we say something, teachers listen. Teachers and students co-operate with each other.”

Emi Kubota, a 17-year-old whose grandparents died in the tsunami, had similar experiences at the OECD-Tohoku School: “In regular school, when I’m worried about something, a teacher will help me. At the Tohoku School, the teacher will help, but I have to try to help myself first; and other students co-operate to solve the problem.”

The two-and-a-half-year project saw its fruition last weekend at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, when 80 Tohoku School students came with exhibits and performances celebrating the customs, foods and innovative technologies of their region. Yesterday, the obstacles thrown up by international law nearly overcome (a French botanist continues work on grafting branches to roots), the students also planted a cherry blossom tree – a symbol of hope, endurance and vitality in the face of adversity. Their presence in Paris was testament to their own efforts, ingenuity and resilience – and evidence that it is possible to change the way students – and teachers – approach education.

The idea now is to plant the seeds of these new approaches to learning in schools throughout Japan – and beyond. Says Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, “These young students are the innovators and game-changers for our schools today and our societies tomorrow. They don't just have great ideas; they also have the capacity to make them happen.”

Thanks to Hikari Kunishio for her translations.

Links:
OECD-Tohoku School
The OECD Tohoku School: Moving forward together: Interview with Kohei Oyama and Yoko Tsurimaki, Students of the OECD Tohoku School Project
Lessons in learning, amid the rubble by Barbara Ischinger, former Director of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills
Rebuilding education after the tsunami - some impressions by Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills
Image: ©OECD Tohoku School

More data for better policies

by Dirk van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

As recently as 30 years ago, politicians, leaders and practitioners believed that all economic and social systems could and should be measured, and that managing these systems better would require more data. Except for education systems. Education systems were considered to be so different across countries that international data would never do justice to each system’s specificity. And what happened in the classroom was something believed to be unmeasurable. Yes, maybe you could count the number of students or calculate the years people spend in school; but that was basically it.

Some pioneers had the courage to think differently. Against the tide, and confronting a lot of resistance, they organised international network meetings to discuss the essence of what was happening in education, agree on definitions, develop measurement tools, and exchange and compare data. After all, how could it be that what seemed to be so evident in many other complex systems was impossible in education?

Back to the present. The pioneers have gone; highly professional teams are now bringing their ideas into fruition. We have come to understand that, just as in all other spheres of life, many dimensions of what happens in education can be measured and assessed in an internationally comparative way, without doing injustice to the complexity and sensitivity of education. We now know not only how to count students and the amount of money invested in education, we also know how to translate complex realities into accessible language, thanks to tools such as ISCED. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has taught us how to master the challenge of assessing the knowledge and skills that students acquire in schools. We have been able to relate education to external data on employment, earnings, health outcomes and more intangible outcomes, such as interpersonal trust, to better understand the many social purposes that education serves.

On 9 September the OECD will publish its 2014 edition of Education at a Glance, the world’s most extensive and authoritative data source of international educational statistics and indicators. This year’s edition includes no less than 30 different indicators and over 100 000 pieces of data. Policy makers, education leaders, practitioners and a wide variety of stakeholders will try to find out how their system is doing compared to that of other countries. How educated have our societies become? Have the investments in our schools decreased as a consequence of the economic crisis? How large is the earnings premium from which tertiary graduates benefit over their lifetime? Do pupils in private schools perform better than in public schools? Is social mobility a reality or just an aspiration? How well do we pay our teachers? How many students now travel over the globe to study elsewhere? These questions emerge not just out of curiosity. The data and the evidence increasingly serve to underpin and improve policies. A system as complex as education cannot be managed and steered without reliable and comparable data. Better and more data result in better policies.

This year’s edition is particularly rich because the OECD has been able to benefit from three main sources of survey data: the PISA 2012 database on learning outcomes of 15-year-olds, the data from the Survey of Adult Skills (a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC), and data on teachers from the 2013 OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Combined with the data collected from administrative sources, we now have the largest database in education ever brought together in human history.

Does this mean that the mystery of the educational encounter between teacher and learner has been sacrificed on the altar of numbers? No, just as the sophisticated data-monitoring systems in the health sector have not destroyed the genius of the medical act. In both cases the data have helped to create better conditions for the magic to happen.

Launch events:
Live streaming of launch event in Brussels with Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director of Education and Skills, and Xavier Prats Monné, European Commission Deputy Director-General for Education and Culture
OECD Education and Skills webinar presenting Education at a Glance: 2014 OECD Indicators (registration required. Password: OECDEDU)
Follow #OECDEAG on Twitter:  @OECD_Edu @OECDLive @EAG_Indicators
See full listing of media events
Links:
OECD Education at a Glance
Education GPS - the OECD source for internationally comparable data on education policies and practices
Photo credit: © OECD

How do teachers really feel about their job?

by Katarzyna Kubacka
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

September marks the return to school for many students, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, and the return to classrooms for many teachers. It is difficult to know exactly what teachers around the world are thinking as they walk into their classrooms. However, the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) provides us with some useful insights into how teachers feel about their profession and its standing in society.

Media often paints a picture of dissatisfied teachers who are unhappy with their jobs. TALIS findings offer a different view: most of teachers enjoy their job and see the advantages of being a teacher as clearly outweighing the disadvantages. This is good news for education systems around the world:  job satisfaction has important implications for teacher attrition as well as teachers’ attitudes about their job. Teachers who are satisfied with their jobs are more likely to stay in their profession, and feel confident in their skills as teachers.

At the same time, TALIS data show that some teachers do not see their profession as appreciated by society. Less than one in three teachers across TALIS countries believe that teaching is a valued profession in their country. Such a negative perception is likely to affect not only teachers who are currently at the start of their teaching career, but also those considering teaching as a career path. This is an alarming discovery, as building effective education systems requires securing the most qualified candidates for the teaching profession. Indeed, results show that teachers from high performing education systems are more likely to report that they believe their profession to be valued within society. What is it that these countries are doing right?

There are policies and practices that can support teacher job satisfaction. Empowering teachers is one such method: the extent to which teachers can participate in decision-making within their schools has a strong positive association with their perception of being valued. The results also show that the social connections teachers build in schools make a big difference. Positive relationships between teachers, as well as between teachers and students, are related to higher job satisfaction. Collaboration between teachers is another factor that is positively associated with teachers’ job satisfaction, as well as opportunities for professional development. These and other findings from the TALIS 2013 report can be helpful for policy-makers and education leaders in their efforts to build better teaching and learning environments.

To learn more about this topic, take a look at the Teaching in Focus brief. Look out for further Teaching in Focus briefs in the coming months via our website, http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/talis.htm, that will be discussing topics relevant to the experience of teachers, based on the TALIS 2013 report.

Links:
Teaching and Learning International Survey
Teaching In Focus No. 5: What helps teachers feel valued and satisfied by their jobs? by Katarzyna Kubacka
A Teachers' Guide to TALIS 2013
Photo credit: Young business woman writing question mark  / @Shutterstock