Reforming education systems: Where to start?

by the Education Policy Outlook Team
Policy Advice and Implementation Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Today the OECD Education Policy Outlook series is publishing five new country profiles: Chile, Finland, Mexico, Norway and Turkey. Policy makers and educational professionals will gain key insights into other countries’ recent experiences in education. These summaries outline how countries have responded to common challenges and provide lessons learnt about the different policy options adopted, as well as reflections on how to make reform happen in education.

Even when countries address similar reform areas, policy options vary widely.  For example, Chile, Finland, Mexico and Norway have all made early childhood education and care (ECEC) a priority, but in different ways. Chile and Mexico have increased funding and focused on quality aiming for universal coverage; Norway has invested in increasing accessibility, funding and staff; while Finland has defined a core curriculum and moved ECEC from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health to the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Many countries are similarly concerned with responding adequately to the educational needs of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Finland has been successfully implementing a preventive approach to target low-performing students earlier on, with the support of both schools and welfare staff. Australia and Ireland targeted disadvantaged students through education strategies that identify and support schools and school communities with additional resources. On the other hand, Chile has chosen to address the needs of disadvantaged students through financial incentives, which are either targeted at schools via grants or directly at students in tertiary education with a comprehensive scholarship programme.

Ensuring that all students complete upper secondary education is another major priority for many countries: Finland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway and Turkey have aimed at improving their secondary completion rates, as well as the transition into higher education or to joining the labour market. Mexico and Turkey both have introduced reforms to lengthen compulsory education and also reform secondary education. Finland and New Zealand have implemented an initiative to increase the engagement of youth and ensure qualification completion and employment. Norway has aimed to increase the completion of upper secondary education with a specific measure that motivates low-performing students.

Research confirms what we know from experience high-quality teachers are essential for school improvement, and this is a key policy area for all countries. Looking ahead Chile, Czech Republic, Finland and Norway aim to attract a high-quality teaching workforce. Finland has developed teacher education into a selective and highly qualified profession, which is provided at university level and is research-based, having both a strong theoretical and practical content, as well as instilling pedagogical knowledge. According to selected evidence, only about 10% of candidates who apply to primary teaching studies are accepted and teachers must have a master’s degree. Chile introduced an incentives-based full scholarship to attract high-performing students into teaching. Norway introduced a new campaign that uses short films and a website to promote the teaching profession and this has helped increase applications by almost 60%.

The OECD Education Policy Outlook: Country Profiles inspire reflection and inform action: countries may use them as an opportunity to map out specific country reform processes and to explore co-operation with similar types of education systems.

More information at www.oecd.org/edu/policyoutlook.htm
More information about the Voices of Education Policy at http://www.oecd.org/edu/voices.htm

Photo credit: OECD/Sylvain Fraccola

Learning from other countries’ experiences in education

by Andreas Schleicher
Deputy Director and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary-General

The data that the OECD collects can help countries map their strengths and weaknesses in education. But what’s the best way to address those weaknesses? Rather than prescribe actions, the OECD often prefers to show policy makers what everyone else is doing and how successful those initiatives have been. A new OECD series of individual Education Policy Outlook Country Profiles does just that: each profile describes how an individual country is responding to key challenges to improve the effectiveness of its education system. The idea behind the series is to offer policy makers easily accessible profiles of countries’ education systems, and the policies adopted to improve those systems, that could inspire reforms at home.

For example, the profile on Australia reports that, while the country is a top PISA performer and has high completion rates in upper secondary and tertiary education, its PISA scores have not improved since 2000. In addition to targeting teacher and school leadership quality and evaluation and assessment, the country has been focusing on defining a more transparent and fairer funding model for schools presented recently in a national plan for school improvement.

New Zealand, also a top PISA performer, has some of the most autonomous schools and universities of all OECD countries. A key challenge for the country has been better integrating the growing indigenous population in its schools. In response, the government has adopted targeted education strategies for Maori and Pasifika Islanders, and defined national standards and a national curriculum for English and Maori schools.

In a different hemisphere, Ireland, which is an average PISA performer and has a growing immigrant population, adopted a policy in 2005 to support low-performing schools, Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, which has helped to increase the number of students who complete secondary education in participating schools. A wider national literacy and numeracy strategy was introduced more recently to increase instruction time in reading and mathematics and offer professional-development activities for teachers and school leaders. Perhaps the country’s greatest challenge now is ensuring that these programmes do not suffer as public spending shrinks as a result of the financial crisis.

In the Czech Republic, where PISA performance in reading, mathematics and science has been deteriorating, the government has introduced evaluation and assessment initiatives that include national standardised tests. To improve the quality of teachers and school leaders, it has raised the salaries of young teachers, introduced a new teacher-career system, and changed the process for appointing and dismissing school leaders.

These four examples alone show how governments around the world are trying to improve their education systems to better prepare their young citizens for full participation in the global, knowledge-based economy. Every six months, the OECD will publish a new set of education policy country profiles as part of its Education Policy Outlook series. The series can be a valuable source of information – and inspiration – for policy makers everywhere.

Links:
Education Policy Outlook
Country profiles
Image credit: © Copyright Sasha Chebotarev