Smart policies matter in education

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

Education policies are meant for the future, they target society-wide outcomes in the next generation. But constructing these policies demands foresight and planning, while simultaneously dealing with difficult trade-offs in the present. Take Korea, a remarkable success story of fast increasing educational attainment which made the country one of the highest educated nations in the world: 64% of its 25-34 year-old population has a tertiary qualification. And the PISA and Survey of Adult Skills data show that this incredible educational revolution did not cause any decline in the quality of learning. Clearly, Korea is successful in preparing its young workforce for a highly-skilled technological economy. How did they do that? A new issue of Education Indicators in Focus sheds some light on the policy trade-offs that countries face when they want to raise the tertiary attainment rate in the young generation.

Korea has invested heavily in education in the second half of the 20th Century. All levels of education combined they spent 6.1% of GDP on education already in the year 2000, climbing to 7.6% in 2010, well above the OECD average of 6.3%. On tertiary education, they spent 2.6% in 2010, a full percentage above the OECD average of 1.6%. But, due to the many students that were served, the per student expenditure was quite moderate, as can be seen in the graph above, just under USD 10 000. The graph shows that there are many countries spending a lot more, but failing to produce a high number of graduates in the young population. Korea demonstrates huge value for money from investments in tertiary education.

Money clearly matters, but there are wide differences between countries in the efficiency on how it is spent. Raising budgets for tertiary education is a hard thing to do, especially in times of economic crisis, fiscal consolidation and austerity. The considerable increases in educational expenditure seen in the past ten years will not be repeated again. And shifting the cost for tertiary education to students and families is a popular alternative, but faces resistance and drawbacks. No doubt, the imperative for efficiency resounds.

Is having more students a good strategy? The number of students as a percentage of the 20-29 year-old population is a good indicator. It combines the effect of participation rates and the time spent in education to earn a degree. Korea only has an average number of students in the 20-29 age cohort. So, probably they are very successful in their studies and they complete them in a short time. Canada, another country with a highly-skilled young population, has even less, with 25% students among the 20-29 year-olds. In contrast, Germany, a country with relatively few tertiary graduates (less than 30% in the 25-34 year-old age group) has close to 32% of students among the 20-29 year-olds. Spending a lot of time in universities is not a good way to produce more graduates.

Investing in the future comes at a high a price, and not only in monetary terms. Is the labour market following? For the time being, Korea seems unable to absorb the entirety of its well-qualified youngsters in skilled professions. With 75%, graduate employment among their 25-34 year-olds with a tertiary qualification in Korea are among the lowest in OECD countries (average 82%). It could be questioned as to whether  the inclusion of employment in Korea was  sufficiently integrated into the educational policy mix. Whereas, the small country of Belgium appears to have been able to combine the policy trade-offs better: spending is average, student participation is slightly above the average, however, it has a high tertiary attainment and high graduate employment rate.  Sometimes, ‘middle-of-the-road’ policies combined with a smart policy mix offer the best prospects.

For more information
On this topic, visit: 
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators 
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2013:  Indicators A1 and B1 (www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm) 

Skill up or lose out

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

For the first time, the Survey of Adult Skills allows us to directly measure the skills people currently have, not just the qualifications they once obtained. The results show that what people know and what they do with what they know has a major impact on their life chances. On average across countries, the median wage of workers who score at Level 4 or 5 in the literacy test – meaning that they can make complex inferences and evaluate subtle arguments in written texts – is more than 60% higher than the hourly wage of workers who score at or below Level 1 – those who can, at best, read relatively short texts and understand basic vocabulary. Those with poor literacy skills are also more than twice as likely to be unemployed. In short, poor skills severely limit people’s access to better-paying and more-rewarding jobs.

It works the same way for nations: The distribution of skills has significant implications for how the benefits of economic growth are shared within societies. Put simply, where large shares of adults have poor skills, it becomes difficult to introduce productivity-enhancing technologies and new ways of working. And that can stall improvements in living standards.

Proficiency in basic skills affects more than earnings and employment. In all countries, adults with lower literacy proficiency are far more likely than those with better literacy skills to report poor health, to perceive themselves as objects rather than actors in political processes, and to have less trust in others. In other words, we can’t develop fair and inclusive policies and engage with all citizens if a lack of proficiency in basic skills prevents people from fully participating in society.

The case for acquiring and maintaining literacy skills is clear, but people’s proficiency varies widely. Roughly one in five adults in Japan and Finland reads at the highest levels on our test. In contrast, in Italy and Spain just one in twenty adults is proficient at that level, and more than one in three adults perform at or below the baseline level. And even highly literate nations have significant shallow areas in their talent pools. Across the 24 countries that took the test, more than 80 million people do not possess the most basic skills needed to succeed in today’s world. On top of that, in the United States, Poland, Germany, Italy and England, a difficult social background often translates into poor literacy skills.

And yet, the Skills Survey shows that some countries have made impressive progress in equipping more people with better skills. Young Koreans, for example, are outperformed only by their Japanese counterparts, while Korea’s 55 to 64 year-olds are among the three lowest-performing groups of this age across all participating countries. The results from Finland tell a similar story. But young Brits and Americans are entering a much more demanding job market with similar literacy and numeracy skills as their compatriots who are retiring.  The share of these countries in the global talent pool will shrink significantly over the next decades unless urgent action is taken both to improve schooling and to provide adults with better opportunities to develop and maintain their skills.

What our data also show is that actual skill levels often differ markedly from what formal education qualifications suggest. For example, Italy, Spain and the United States rank much higher internationally in the share of young people with tertiary degrees than in the level of literacy or numeracy proficiency among people that age. On average, young Japanese and Dutch high school graduates easily outperform university graduates in some other countries. In fact, in most countries at least a quarter of university graduates do not score higher than Level 2 on our literacy test, and are thus insufficiently equipped for what their jobs demand of them. Conversely, in Australia, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands and Norway, more than one in four adults without a high school degree have made it to Level 3 in literacy, which shows that people can, indeed, recover from poor initial schooling. Surely there are many reasons why skills and qualifications differ; but these data suggest that we may need to update and re-define our education qualifications.

We can’t change the past; but we can do something about our future. The Nordic countries, the Netherlands and Canada, for example, have been much better in providing high-quality lifelong learning opportunities, both in and outside the workplace, than other countries. They’ve developed programmes that are relevant to users and flexible, both in content and in how they are delivered. They’ve made information about adult education opportunities easy to find and understand, and they provide recognition and certification of competencies that encourage adult learners to keep learning. They’ve also made skills everybody’s business, with governments, employers, and individuals all engaged.

All this said, skills are only valuable when they are used effectively, and the Skills Survey shows that some countries are far better than others in making good use of their talent. While the US and England have a limited skills base, they are extracting good value from it. The reverse is true for Japan, where rigid labour-market arrangements prevent many high-skilled individuals, most notably women, from reaping the rewards that should accrue to them. At times, over-reliance on qualifications also makes it harder for those who have the right skills, but who did not have the same access to education as others, to gain entry into jobs where those skills can be put to full use. The data show that this is particularly true among migrant workers. Overall, the Skills Survey suggests that we can – and should – do better in matching the demand and supply of skills.

Figuring out how to get us there will not be easy, but the Skills Survey provides a foundation to build robust policies. It takes away excuses from those who are complacent, and it allows countries to set meaningful goals in terms of what’s achieved by the world’s leading skills systems.

Links:

OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills (2013)
Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 
For more on skills and skills policies around the world, visit:
http://skills.oecd.org

Education GPS: A world of education at your fingertips

by Jean Yip,
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Today the OECD launched the Education GPS, the source for internationally comparable data on education policies and practices, opportunities and outcomes. Accessible any time, in real time, this platform gives you the latest data and analysis of countries’ performance in providing high-quality education for all.

Analyse by country

The Education GPS enables you to find, use and understand data and analysis on individual countries. Choose from a variety of themes, explore our country profiles, and create your own customised country reports. 

Explore data

The Education GPS gives you easy access to the OECD’s data on education. Choose a theme, find the related data, and compare countries.

Review education policies (coming soon...)

The Education GPS provides access to OECD’s extensive research and analysis of education policy around the world. See how education policies complement or compete with each other, and which policies the OECD recommends. 

Try it for yourself and explore the wealth of OECD’s data and analysis of education policies and practices!

Links:
Education GPS 

Order in the classroom

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

There was a good reason why our teachers demanded our attention in class: it wasn’t about power; it was about performance – ours. As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, the disciplinary climate in schools is strongly related to student performance.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to the reports of students who participated in PISA 2009, most students in most PISA-participating countries and economies enjoy orderly classrooms. For example, across OECD countries, more than two out of three students reported that never or hardly ever is there noise and disorder in their classrooms. In some countries, classrooms are models of orderliness: fewer than one in ten students in Korea and Thailand reported that they cannot work well in class because of disruptions; and fewer than one in ten students in Japan, Kazakhstan and Shanghai-China reported that their teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down before they can begin class.

But orderly classrooms are not ends in themselves; they seem to be the preconditions for learning. In 55 countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009, students in schools where the classroom climate is more conducive to learning tend to perform better. True, schools with more positive disciplinary climates also tend to have other qualities that are related to better student performance. For example, the students in these schools generally come from more socio-economically advantaged backgrounds. Indeed, in 36 countries and economies, there is a positive relationship between schools’ disciplinary climate and the average socio-economic status of their students.

But PISA results show that even after accounting for the socio-economic status and other characteristics of both students and the schools they attend, including the educational resources available to the school, the way the school is governed, and how the school assesses the performance of its students and itself, in 31 countries and economies, schools with a more positive disciplinary climate tend to perform better. In other words, disciplinary climate is one of few school-level characteristics that show a significant positive relationship with performance consistently across countries. In fact, given the strong relationship between students’ socio-economic status and disciplinary climate, results from PISA suggest that a positive disciplinary climate in school can reduce the impact of a student’s socio-economic status on his or her performance. That is, in more orderly classrooms, students from all backgrounds have the same chances to succeed in their school work.

So maybe orderly classrooms really are, in the end, about power: about students being able to use their inherent power to seize opportunities to learn and work to realise their potential.

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No.32: Do students perform better in schools with orderly classrooms?
Photo credit: Children in a classroom with a teacher/ @ Shutterstock

When life means school again

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

“Non scholae, sed vitae discimus” (after Seneca)

September’s here again. For millions of kids living in the northern hemisphere September means the end of summer vacation and the start of a new school year. For some of them it means an encounter with something they haven’t experienced before, for many others it is a return to already familiar routines. But for all of them school is going to be the place where they are going to spend the greater part of their young lives.

Children are starting school at an ever younger age,OECD’s recent Education at a Glance 2013 shows that in 2011 on average over 84% of all four year-old children were enrolled in some form of formal education, which is 5% more than in 2005. In 25 OECD countries at least half of three year-old children participated in early childhood education, and in countries such as Belgium, France, Iceland, Norway and Spain 95% or more found their way to their first educational institution.

At such very young ages the school doesn’t appropriate most of the time that one is awake, but things change at ages five or six when children move on to primary school. In 2011 intended instruction time for primary school pupils averages some 800 hours per year in OECD countries, but it exceeds 900 hours in Australia, Canada, Chile, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal. Slightly more than half of the time at primary school went to instruction in reading, writing, literature, math and science. For most of the time children are grouped in classes which are on average 21.2 pupils large. The trend of school days starting earlier and ending later is reinforced by the trend of smaller classes. In 2000 an average primary school class was  1.5 pupils bigger.

When moving on to lower secondary education (around age 12) the school experience intensifies again. Total intended instruction time now reaches 924 hours per year on average. Instruction now takes place in slightly bigger classes – 23.3 students on average (coming from 24.6 in 2000) – but the ratio of students to teachers drops from 15.4 in primary education to 13.6 in lower secondary education.

At the end of lower secondary education, when in most countries the age of compulsory education is reached, students have accumulated 7 751 hours of instruction in primary and lower secondary school. But many students naturally continue their school careers and move on to upper secondary education, to tertiary education or to some form of continuing education. 2011 enrolment patterns show that a five year-old  pupil can expect to have an average school career of more than 17 years of full-time and part-time education before the age of 40, but in Nordic countries where participation levels are high, an average school career extends over 19 years. In 2011, as a percentage of their age group, students counted for 84% between ages 15 and 19, and 28% between ages 20 and 29. Whereas in 2000 these figures were 76% and 22% respectively.

OECD societies have transformed into heavily scholarised societies, where school becomes important earlier in the life course, where children spend the major part of their time at school, where their educational experience is becoming more intensive,  where more young people stay on in education well beyond the age of compulsory education, and where average educational trajectories take longer than ever in human history. This trend is partly the outcome of public policies to improve the educational opportunities of populations, partly the result of families’ aspirations for better futures for their children. Public policies and private demand go hand-in-hand in producing more educated people. But – as PISA demonstrates – the amount of time appropriated by schools bears no strong relationship to the quality of skills with which young people have to confront the real world.

Links:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: The book is now available
For more information: Education at a Glance : www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Photo credit: Schoolchildren at home time /@ Shutterstock

Who are the all-round top students?

by Marilyn Achiron

Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Summer in the northern hemisphere is barely over and we’re already talking about doing well in school? Not only are we talking about doing well in school, we’re talking about doing verywell in school – and in all of the three subjects that PISA assesses: reading, mathematics and science. 

As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, all-rounders – students who attain proficiency Level 5 or 6 in all three assessment subjects – are rare: only 4.1% of 15-year-old students meet this high standard. Why do – or should – countries care about the number of all-rounders they produce? Knowing the proportion of students who excel in these three subjects helps countries to determine the depth of their future talent pool, which has significant implications for a country’s ability to compete and grow in an increasingly information-based global economy.

On average across OECD countries, 16.3% of students are top performers in at least one of the subject areas of science, mathematics or reading. But just because a student is a top performer in one subject does not necessarily mean that the student excels in all subjects. In Switzerland, for example, nearly one in four students is a top performer in mathematics, but only about one in 12 is a top performer in reading and one in ten is a top performer in science. The same is true for many Southeast Asian countries and economies, notably Hong Kong-China, Korea, Macao-China, Shanghai-China, Singapore and Chinese Taipei, where the likelihood of finding students who score at Level 5 or 6 in mathematics is considerably greater than that of finding students who score at that level in reading or science.

All-rounders are found in many countries and economies, but the proportion of these students varies considerably across school systems. For example, Shanghai-China has the largest share of all-rounders – 14.6% of 15-year-old students – followed by Singapore (12.3%); but fewer than 1% of students in Chile, Mexico, Turkey and 21 other countries and economies meet the criteria for being “all-rounders”. Yet all-rounders are found nearly equally among boys (3.8%) as among girls (4.4%).

What is somewhat surprising is that, among countries with similar mean scores in PISA, there are notable differences in the percentage of academic all-rounders. For example, Korea and Singapore score about the same in mathematics, reading and science; but while 12% of students in Singapore are all-rounders, only 7% of students in Korea are. This means that even the best-performing school systems are not equally capable of producing top performers in all subjects.

But it’s something to aspire to, even in late August.

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 31: Who are the academic all-rounders?
Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education
OECD work on Skills
 Photo credit: Climbing team struggle to the summit of a challenging rock mountain  / @Shutterstock

For immigrant students, early arrival is best

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

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.

An analysis of PISA data shows that there are no marked differences in reading proficiency between immigrant students who arrived in their new country before they were five and those who arrived between the ages of six and 11. In contrast, in most OECD countries, immigrant students who arrived at the age of 12 or older – and have spent at most four years in their new country – lag farther behind students in the same grade in reading proficiency than immigrants who arrived at younger ages. 

Countries and economies vary markedly in the magnitude of this “late-arrival penalty” for immigrant students. Differences tend to reflect the composition of the immigrant populations. Australia, for instance, has a large proportion of immigrants from the United Kingdom who already speak the same language as non-immigrant Australians. As a result, the average late-arrival penalty for immigrants in Australia is smaller than that in Germany, for example, where the largest groups of students who were born abroad come from the former USSR, the former Yugoslavia and Turkey.

An examination of age-at-arrival profiles for the major immigrant groups in selected countries confirms the importance of language barriers. In Luxembourg, French children do not suffer a late-arrival penalty; and age-at-arrival seems to make no difference to the reading performance among German students who immigrated to Switzerland. In contrast, 15-year-old students from the former Yugoslavia or Portugal who arrived in Switzerland or Luxembourg within the previous few years fare much worse in reading than immigrant students from the same countries who had spent all their school years in their new country.

But language may not be the only factor involved. Differences in educational and living standards between the origin and destination countries may also be relevant. Overall, an analysis of PISA data finds that immigrant students are particularly at risk of suffering a late-arrival penalty if they arrived at lower secondary-school age from less-developed countries where the home language is not the same as their new language of instruction. These students have to quickly acquire language skills and catch up with the higher levels of attainment achieved by their peers – while simultaneously coping with the difficulties of adjusting to a new school and social environment.

These findings can be used to inform immigration policy: Where late arrival is the result of migration policies that delay family reunification, the intended benefits of these policies should be carefully weighed against the costs of remedial assistance. More immediately, though, targeted help with language skills for those foreign-born students who arrive when they’re in their teens can limit the need for future assistance;and flexible arrangements to defer tracking can help to ensure that students perform at their full potential when decisions are taken about further education. Both measures will have a direct impact on these students’ employment prospects later on.

Links:   
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/

PISA in Focus No. 29: Do immigrant students’ reading skills depend on how longthey have been in their new country?

Photo credit: Children in school, from kindergarten, preschool, elementary / Shutterstock

The “urban advantage” in education

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Nearly half the world’s population now lives in urban areas. What does that mean for education? Results from PISA indicate that that could be good news for students who go to school in those areas. As the latest edition of PISA in Focus points out, an “urban advantage” in student performance is evident in nearly every country and economy that participated in the PISA 2009 assessment. 

PISA has shown that while large cities can be a challenge to educators, they are mostly a boon, particularly when all students can take advantage of the wealth of cultural and social opportunities that big cities offer. PISA results also show that schools in urban areas differ from schools in less-populated areas – in ways that are usually associated with better student performance.

On average across OECD countries, students who attend schools in cities of more than 100 000 people perform better in PISA than students who attend schools in villages, rural areas, or towns with up to 100 000 inhabitants. This difference in performance translates to about 20 PISA score points – the equivalent of half-a-year of schooling. In many countries and economies, the performance difference between the two groups of students reflects families’ decisions about housing and employment, which, in turn, influence how students’ socio-economic status is distributed geographically.

In all countries and economies except for Austria, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, students who attend schools in urban settings come from more advantaged socio-economic backgrounds. In Denmark, on the other hand, students whose parents have high levels of education and high-status occupations are more likely to attend schools in rural locations or in towns of up to 100 000 people. 

But the socio-economic status of students is only one of the factors that is associated with the better performance among students who attend school in cities. These schools have certain characteristics that PISA shows are positively related to performance. Urban schools are usually larger, enjoy greater responsibility for resource allocation, are less likely to experience staff shortages, are more likely to have a higher proportion of qualified teachers, and have higher student-teacher ratios than schools in rural areas and towns, especially in partner countries and economies.

An analysis of questionnaires distributed among students participating in PISA 2009 also finds that in Australia, Dubai (UAE), Estonia, Iceland, Israel, Montenegro, New Zealand, Qatar and Sweden, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to enjoy a better disciplinary climate in their classes than students who attend schools in less-populated areas (in Brazil, Mexico, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Tunisia, the opposite is true). In 15 countries, students who attend schools in urban settings are more likely to be able to choose from among a greater number and wider range of extracurricular activities.

What this tells us is that some of the conventional wisdom about big city schools may be a little off. Given the heterogeneity of the student population, large schools might actually offer students more, not less, stimulation and inspiration; and with more autonomy in allocating resources, urban schools may be better able to meet the needs of all their students.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 28: What makes urban schools different?

Photo credit: Urban Globe/ Shutterstock