Who enjoys the opportunity to be better educated than their parents?

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

Relationship between the share of upward mobility among 25-34 year olds and the likelihood of participating in tertiary education for 20-34 year olds (values in reverse order) 2012.

Over the past decades, education systems have expanded enormously. They provide opportunities for many more students than before to access and succeed in secondary and tertiary education. The rapidly increasing supply of skilled labour in the economy over the past five decades was a crucial ingredient for growth and prosperity, for the modernisation of societies, and for the success of democracy. As more young people became more highly educated than their parents, upward mobility in education became the standard of families’ aspirations and individual ambitions. Families invested a lot of resources and energy into the educational careers of their children in order to unlock a brighter future to which education seemed to be the key.

The most recent Education Indicators in Focus presents some interesting evidence on inter-generational educational mobility, based on data from the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC). On average across the 24 national or sub-national systems that participated in the survey, 39% of adults have attained a higher level of education than their parents, whereas 12% have attained a lower level. Across generations there is a slight downward trend in educational mobility: 32% of 25-34 year-old adults had a higher level of education than their parents, compared with 43% of 45-54 year-olds.

The vertical axis on the chart above shows that between-country differences in educational mobility among young adults are huge. For example, upward educational mobility in the United States and Japan has slowed, partly because these countries already had high levels of educational attainment. Upward educational mobility is racing ahead in Korea, but also in Ireland, Italy and Spain, where educational attainment, in general, was much lower.

Many policy makers and observers are concerned about slowing social mobility. If social mobility decelerates, the argument goes, the engine moving countries towards greater prosperity and less inequality would start to sputter. Social mobility, of which educational mobility is an important component, is perceived to be an intrinsic feature of cohesive and democratic societies. Therefore, social mobility is thought to be closely linked to equality of opportunity.

But can we detect a connection between upward mobility and equality of opportunity in the data? The horizontal axis of the chart above gives the relative likelihood that 20-34 year-old students will participate in tertiary education among young adults whose parents have a tertiary qualification, compared with young adults whose parents have a below-tertiary qualification. The lower the odds ratio, the more a country is approaching equality of opportunity, regardless of the educational attainment of an individual’s parents. For example, in France, students whose parents are tertiary educated are about 6 times more likely to participate in tertiary education than students whose parents have not attained a secondary education. In the United States, the odds ratio climbs to 6.8, and in Italy to 9.5. In contrast, in Canada, Korea, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, the odds ratio is below 3, thus indicating a fairly equitable access to tertiary education.

But, coming back to our question, the chart also shows no real correlation between upward educational mobility and equality of opportunity to participate in tertiary education. Countries in the lower left quadrant of the chart share greater inequality of opportunity and low educational mobility, while those in the upper right quadrant share greater equality of opportunity and high educational mobility. So they seem to confirm the hypothesis that systems that are more socially selective, in access to tertiary education, go together with less upward educational mobility, and the other way around.

But what of the countries in the upper left and lower right quadrants that seem to contradict the hypothesis? The Nordic countries and Canada combine greater equality of opportunity with moderate upward mobility. These countries already enjoy high levels of educational attainment, so the relative chance that a young person is better educated than his or her parents is lower than in countries where the expansion in higher education occurred more recently. Indeed, data on educational attainment in Education at a Glance show that these countries already have relatively high levels of education among older adults and less upward educational mobility.

France, Italy and Poland and, to a lesser degree, the Flemish Community of Belgium and England, have the opposite profile. In these countries, participation in tertiary education is highly selective, yet there is still relatively fluid upward educational mobility. These countries share a more recent history of educational expansion with below-average educational attainment among older adults. They also probably recruit their tertiary students more from the middle classes than from among the most disadvantaged segment of the population. This is observed in Italy and, to a lesser extent, France.

Decelerating educational mobility doesn't seem to be a real problem unless it is triggered by particularly selective access to higher education. In this sense, the United States seems to combine the worst of both indicators. But systems that exclude disadvantaged families from education opportunities might realise upward social mobility at the expense of social inclusion.

Links: 
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 28, by Etienne Albiser and Gara Rojas González
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 28, French version
OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC)
OECD Skills Outlook 2013
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators 
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Chart source: © OECD (2014), Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators, Indicator A4 (www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm).

Under the radar? Professional education and training

by Simon Field
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Percentage of adults aged 20 – 45 who have short cycle professional education and training as their highest qualification

In centrally planned economies in the former Soviet bloc, apartments and housing came in rigid standard sizes - there was little choice. The same was true of cars. So households had little choice, and provision was dominated by the supply-side. 

We are quick to see the inefficiencies in those arrangements, we who have become so used to the idea of choice over everything. But oddly enough, education systems sometimes operate a bit like a centrally planned economy.  The most visible post-compulsory qualifications, come in standard sizes: two to four years of upper secondary education, and three to four years for a bachelors programme. Often this sequence is seen as the 'royal road' for a young person.

But out there in the labour market, modern economies are generating demands for skills that are every bit as diverse as our varying needs for housing or road transport. These demands come in chunks of different sizes, and quite often in the shape of demand for qualifications beyond school, but involving less time than a full three to four year bachelor's degree.  For example, a recent review of the United States concluded that in the decade to 2018, nearly one third of job vacancies will require a post-secondary qualification of some sort, but less than a four year degree.

So how are countries responding? Are they widening choice in response to demand, or, as in a centrally planned economy offering no more than a rigid and limited set of options? A new OECD report on Skills beyond School, based on 20 individual country studies, sheds light on this. 

Some countries have responded well. In the United States, around 12% of the labour force has a post-secondary certificate – typically a short vocational programme - and certificate graduation rates have tripled in recent years; a further 10% have associate degrees. In Austria, around 20% of the cohort graduate with a post-secondary qualification from a vocational college. In France more than one third of a million students are enrolled in two-year professional programmes. But in some other countries the response is weaker (see chart above).

Much of this activity is under the radar – it simply doesn’t get noticed in the way that university programmes do.With that in mind, the Skills beyond School Synthesis Report proposes a common international name for the sector – "professional education and training" – following the Swiss example. This would include all vocational post-secondary programmes requiring more than six months full-time learning (or the equivalent).

Of course these programmes are not without their challenges, and choice does not guarantee quality. Professional training sometimes needs to raise its game. Teachers and trainers need more up-to-date industry experience; qualifications need to be developed with the social partners nationally, and allow local flexibility to adapt to local labour market requirements; transition to higher education should be made easier; the needs of adults for flexible and part-time study need to be accommodated; recognition of prior learning, including informal workbased learning, also needs to be built in.

But there is also one topic that stands out. This report argues that work-based learning should be made a mandatory element of programmes, allowing employers not only to provide training, but also to strongly influence the mix and content of training provision.  As an aside, work-based learning is such a critical part of vocational programmes that a whole new OECD project will be devoted to this topic in 2015-16.

Links:

Better professional training would boost skills and job creation, says OECD

Skills beyond School Synthesis Report

Full set of OECD Reviews of Post-Secondary Vocational Education and Training: http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/skillsbeyondschool.htm
For more on OECD work on skills go to: http://skills.oecd.org/ 

Follow on twitter: #OECDSkills

Image 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 

It’s PISA time again. So?

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Results from the most recent round of PISA surveys are scheduled for release in less than one month (3 December). Why should you care?

For lots of reasons, really. This month’s PISA in Focus highlights a few. For  example, the recently published Survey of Adult Skills finds a close link between countries’ performance in the different rounds of PISA and the literacy and numeracy proficiency of adults of the corresponding age group later on. This is an important connection because the Survey of Adult Skills reveals that highly skilled adults are twice as likely to be employed and almost three times more likely to earn an above-median salary than poorly skilled adults. In other words, poor skills severely limit people’s access to better-paying and more rewarding jobs. Highly skilled people are also more likely to volunteer, see themselves as actors rather than as objects of political processes, and are more likely to trust others. And many – if not most – of these skills are acquired at school.

“Strong performers” in education, as identified by PISA 2009, are those countries and economies that are more successful at imparting those skills to their students than others. They -- Canada, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Shanghai-China -- are found in diverse regions, with different cultures and traditions, and are at different stages of development. But PISA finds that they all share a few common traits: a belief in the potential of all their students, strong political will, and the capacity of policy makers, educators, students and their families to make sustained and concerted efforts towards improvement.

Success in PISA is only partly about test scores. In fact, the most successful school systems are those that not only perform well, but ensure that every student has the chance to fulfil his or her potential. For example, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Iceland, Korea and Liechtenstein all showed above-average performance in reading in 2009 and are places where socio-economic status has less impact on performance than it does in other countries.

As a regularly recurring survey, PISA can also track progress over time. Of the 26 countries with comparable information between 2000 and 2009, half – namely Albania, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Peru, Poland and Portugal – improved their reading performance during the period. The fact that such a diverse group of countries succeeded in raising the level of their students’ performance in reading is another indication that any country can improve, irrespective of its culture, traditions, level of development or initial level of skills.

Since its first round in 2000, PISA has become the international standard for measuring the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems. And because PISA shows that improvement is possible for all, governments and educators, students and parents around the world can learn from each other to build more effective and efficient school systems. In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, and where public budgets are tight, there is little that is more important.

If you’re still unsure about why you should care about PISA results, think of your child’s future, your own abilities at school or at work, and your country’s capacity to compete in a rapidly changing global economy. You’ll find the answers there.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No.34: Who are the strong performers and successful reformers in education?
Photo credit: Pencil ladder © Shutterstock

A skilful approach to employment

by Barbara Ischinger
Director for Education and Skills

July brought some good news and some bad news. The good news is that vocational and technical skills are flourishing and I watched young people with those skills competing to find who’s best in the world at the WorldSkills Competition held in Leipzig, Germany, earlier in the month. Over a thousand young people, representing 65 countries and regions across the world, were demonstrating their skills in everything from welding to web design. Korea topped the medal table (including gold for confectionery/pastry making with chocolate sculptures too impressive to eat) with Switzerland in second place. The level of technical expertise on show was astounding, but what impressed me more than anything was the poise and self-confidence along with the commitment to excellence and professionalism of all the competitors. And it wasn’t just for the competitors — it was a big festival of vocational skills for the general public. Anyone could try their hand at a new skill at a workbench or computer while young people could also seek advice on their choice of job and planning their career.

Now the bad news: OECD announced last week that unemployment in OECD countries is expected to  remain high throughout 2014, with young people and the low-skilled hit hardest . Unemployment can have long-lasting repercussions on young people.  Even when they do eventually get a job, they are likely to face an ongoing penalty in the labour market, earning significantly reduced wages over the course of their lifetime. And the psychological impacts can also be long lasting, as young people become discouraged, de-motivated and worried about their prospects for attaining economic independence in the future. And yet…in many OECD countries, there are thousands of jobs that remain unfilled, often requiring technical and vocational skills or providing the opportunity to learn them.

What these observations imply is that we have to do more to connect employers and prospective employees together. One way to do that is through vocational education and training (VET). Germany , Austria  and Switzerland have a strong VET tradition. But many OECD countries have not developed their VET systems as extensively as they might or their VET system is not responding effectively to the needs of employers. Indeed, employer representatives’ top priority for vet reform is to encourage closer partnership with employers . Another key obstacle to overcome is that many people see VET as only a second-best option for those who are not suited to academic education, so more able students are reluctant to pursue this path towards a career or they may even be actively dissuaded from doing so.

This must change. One way we can promote such a change is by communicating to students and parents alike that a high-quality VET education can be the ticket into the labour market and a good career path, even during an economic downturn. As this year’s Education at a Glance shows, across the OECD, individuals with a vocationally-oriented secondary education are more likely to be employed (76%) than those with a general upper secondary education (70%); they are also less likely to be unemployed.  Another way to encourage students to consider vocational training is by making the pathways between general and vocational education more flexible, so that at any point a student in vocational education can transfer to an academic programme and vice versa, without finding all their options closed off.  And of course, all VET programmes need to focus providing quality skills that are relevant in the labour market – equipping young people not just for their first job but for their longer-term employability. 

On 8 October, the OECD will release the first results from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) . The first-of-its-kind survey will give us a direct assessment of the literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills people have, together with information on the skills they use at home, in the workplace and in their communities and a great deal of background information, including their education pathways, qualifications and labour market experience. The survey results will provide countries with new evidence about the actual skill level and distribution of their 16-65 year olds as well as insights into where mismatches between skills supply and demand lie. These results will provide OECD and countries with new evidence we can use formulate better policies to help people to develop their skills, offer them to the labour market, and ultimately use them productively.

Yes, it’s going to be another tough year for a lot of people in OECD countries, particularly young people; but we must all work together – using our own unique set of skills – to turn the bad news into an opportunity to create something much better.

Links:
OECD work on skills
OECD Skills Strategy
OECD work on Vocational Education and Training
Skills Beyond School Report: United States
View Dr Barbara Ischinger’s keynote speech on Better Skills, Better Lives at the International Skills Standards Organisation conference “Tackling the Global Talent Gap”
Photo credit: WorldSkills Leipzig 2013

What makes a NEET?

by Karinne Logez
Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills

NEETS - young people aged between 15 and 29 years old who are not in employment, education or training - are a potential problem both for society and for themselves. The proportion of young people neither working nor studying offers an insight into how well economies manage the transition between school and work – better than youth unemployment rates, which do not take into account the numbers in education. It's especially illuminating when the figures are broken down into those who are still looking for work ("unemployed") and those who have dropped out of the labour market altogether ("inactive"). Particularly worrying are those in the very youngest age bracket – aged 15 to 19 – who may not have completed their secondary education and are disproportionately likely not even to be seeking work. There’s a risk they may never catch up with their better educated peers.

So what makes a NEET? And what can governments do to make sure young people successfully make the transition from education into work? The latest edition of Education Indicators in Focus suggests that there are several intertwined factors.

Is it the educational system?
As well as increasing their education participation rates, making the educational system more relevant to the labour market may help reduce NEET rates. Countries with widespread work-experience programmes, offering recognised vocational qualifications, see higher levels of young people in employment and lower NEET rates, although the effect has been more muted in this current economic crisis.

Is it the state of the economy?
NEET rates and employment-to-population ratios tend to mirror the economic cycle. When times are tough it’s harder to find a job or keep the one you have if you’re competing with more experienced workers. Fortunately, many young people react by staying on longer in education instead, so when the economy picks up, they’ve got a head start finding work. As young people are the main source of new skills in the labour force, increasing education participation rates are an encouraging trend.

Is it a cultural thing?
On average, young women are more likely to be NEET across the OECD than young men. In some countries – such as Turkey and Mexico – this effect is particularly marked. It may reflect expectations that women will be concentrating on starting a family than forging a career, particularly where young women are disproportionately inactive rather than unemployed and seeking work.

Is it an age thing?
Generally, the demographics are on the young people’s side – as the population in OECD countries age, and the proportion of young people in the population fall, both employment rates and education participation rates should increase. At the moment, economic stagnation has counteracted the effect of demographics, but once the economy picks up, young people should be well placed to forge ahead.

It’s all of these
Clearly the problem of young people dropping out of education and the labour market is a complex one with no single determining cause. However, the consequences for both individuals and society mean that it’s important to prevent young people becoming NEETs – and help reintegrate them back into work or education if they do.

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 2012: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012
OECD's Actin Plan for Youth
OECD Forum 2013: Give youth a chance
OECD Skills Strategy Spotlight: Apprenticeships and Workplace Learning
OECD Skills Strategy

Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2013:  Indicator C5 (www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm) to be released 25 June, 2013

Does it matter which school a student attends?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Successful education systems guarantee that all students succeed at high levels. As this month’s PISA in Focus notes, some school systems not only do well on international assessments, like PISA, they also manage to minimise the difference between the best- and poorest-performing students.

In some education systems, most students have similar levels of proficiency; in others, student performance varies far more widely. Analyses of PISA results show that countries and economies can achieve high average performance without having wide disparities in student performance. In 10 out of the 17 countries and economies that have above-average performance in reading, variations in student performance are smaller than the average variation observed across OECD countries.

PISA finds that 40% of the variation in student performance is found between schools within an education system. What accounts for that variation?  A variety of factors. In Germany, large differences in the expected performance of students who attend different schools are related to the education systems’ policies of selecting students for different pathways through education, usually vocational or academic, based on students’ marks. In Italy, these variations are often related to differences in the profiles of the communities the schools serve, such as the socio-economic differences between students who attend urban schools and those who attend rural schools, and/or differences between the policies of federal and regional education systems. Variations can also be linked to characteristics of school systems that are more difficult to quantify, such as differences in the quality or the effectiveness of the instruction provided. Among high-performing countries, considerable between-school variation is found in only three countries: Belgium, Japan and the Netherlands. Between-school differences account for as little as 8% of the variation in student performance in Finland, 10% in Norway, and less than 20% in Estonia, Iceland and Poland.

PISA also tracks how variations in student performance have evolved over time. Across OECD countries, the average variation in student reading performance narrowed by 3% between 2000 and 2009, because most of the countries that improved their performance during that period did so by improving the performance of low-achieving students. Of the countries that saw improvements in performance during that period, only Poland recorded a marked decrease in between-school variation, while Sweden recorded a large increase.

We all know that students have different abilities, talents, interests and potentials (and vive la difference!). But the most successful and highest-performing school systems know how to elicit the best from every one of their students.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 27: Does it matter which school a student attends?
Photo credit: School coat rack / Shutterstock

A Women’s Day Challenge

by Barbara Ischinger
Director for Education and Skills

On a recent visit to New Zealand, I attended a memorial service for the 185 people who lost their lives when the earthquake of 22 February 2011 struck Christchurch. What I took away from that gathering was less the still-fresh grief but rather the sense of purpose that followed the tragedy. Kay Giles, chief executive of Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT), for example, who was already devoted to assisting young people – most of them boys – who had dropped out of the education system, put her passion and expertise to work by calling on people involved in apprenticeship programmes to help those who had lost their livelihoods to the earthquake. Stakeholders from local businesses, industry and education worked together quickly to develop long- and short-term training modules to put people back to work – sometimes in entirely different careers – as soon as possible.

I met, too, with New Zealand’s Education Minister, Hekia Parata, who is part Maori, and a vocal champion of indigenous culture and rights. She told me she is particularly concerned about Maori boys who are increasingly falling out of the education system and, in doing so, are dooming themselves to a very uncertain future.

On this International Women’s Day I’d like to be just a bit provocative and suggest that we start paying a little more attention to boys. Boys are getting lost in today’s life and we don’t really understand why. A recent study finds that boys’ behaviour costs them dearly in school marks (our next PISA in Focus, due out on 14 March, has a few other interesting things to say about how teachers award marks to girls and boys); and a school in Shanghai, China – which was the best-performing school system in the 2009 PISA survey  – has just introduced boys-only classes  in an effort to turn around the decline in boys’ performance in university entrance exams. (I was interested to read that some of the boys interviewed said that they felt shy answering teachers’ questions in front of girls. Didn’t many girls used to say that the presence of boys made them reluctant to participate in class?)

How do we make sure that our education systems – and labour markets – are equitable, and create good opportunities for both boys and girls?

We have done a lot for girls, and we see the positive results of this in everyday life. Girls are, on average, doing better in school than boys, and more women now graduate from university-level education than men. Of course, there is still a lot of room for improvement: just look at the salaries of women versus those of men. And I am irritated when I attend board meetings in the private sector and note that women are still a minority.

So we must not look at the great strides girls and women have made in recent decades and think that the battle is won. But I would also add: We don’t gain much if we gain on one side and lose on the other.

Am I focusing too much on boys on what is supposed to be the day we celebrate the girls and women of the world? I don’t think so. It’s all about empowerment: having equal opportunities to realise our individual potential. And that is something that should not be gender-specific.

Links:
OECD work on Gender: www.oecd.org/gender and www.oecd.org/gender/data for data on International Women's Day
OECD Feature: Growing more equal
OECD Insights: Born a girl: bad karma?
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
Photo credit: Boy with apple on head in classroom / Shutterstock

The more the merrier

by Tracey Burns
Analyst, Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education

Who is responsible for successes and failures of schools? A new Education Working Paper says  involving parents and students can help improve education systems by including them in accountability and school achievement processes. The traditional approach where central government provides the resources and made the majority of decisions has given way in many OECD countries to greater autonomy and control over decision-making for schools and local governments. This greater freedom has developed hand in hand with the rise of benchmarking and international assessments, and has made accountability a hot topic for policy makers and communities alike.

But what about other voices? Parents, community leaders, and others are taking an increasingly active role in governing their local schools. This trend, called “multiple accountability”, aims to provide more localized and nuanced feedback and guidance that schools and education systems can use in addition to standardized test results. It is a promising concept that builds on successes from other public policy areas such as environment and health. There is also fascinating evidence from the business world that suggests that enabling shareholders in private corporations to vote on the pay policy of the company’s executive officers appears to lead to large increases in the company’s market value, profitability and long-term performance. These “Say-on-Pay” regulations, promoted in the US and UK, allow more people within the corporation to have a say in decisions – and crucially, this shared responsibility can result in benefits to the whole company.

In education, multiple accountability is still a fairly new concept, and the amount of available research on how to make it work is modest. Three lessons, however, can be learned from existing models in The Netherlands and the United Kingdom:

1. You must identify the key stakeholders. This is more difficult than it sounds, and schools must make efforts to involve less powerful or inactive voices.
2. You must build capacity for this new role. Some stakeholders might not have the knowledge and language needed and may inadvertently be excluded in accountability processes. Providing them with the tools to interpret and analyse benchmarking data and other evaluation processes (e.g., value added measures) is an important part of giving them the expertise they need to take part.
3. You must be ready and open to assess your school’s quality and processes . School leaders play a key role in empowering staff to be involved and open to parents and members of the local community.  

Including the voices of parents and other stakeholders could be one of the most relevant shifts for education policy today. But unforeseen challenges may arise: it turns out that market mechanisms such as school competitiveness and parental choice in education can actually be disincentives for making multiple accountability work. In a competitive market, transparent discussion of the weaknesses of a school can threaten the image and competitiveness of the institution. In such contexts, it is strategically important to highlight the successes and avoid talking about room for improvement. The real question is: which approach is best-suited to improving our schools and education systems?


Links:
Education Working papers
OECD'S Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Governing Complex Education Systems (GCES)
Photo credit: Talk in colours speech bubbles /Shutterstock

What the D in OECD stands for

by Barbara Ischinger
Director for Education

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.

The focus of this year’s International Economic Forum on Africa, held at the OECD’s Paris headquarters in early October, was youth employment, but this issue cannot be separated from another one just as important:  education. The African Economic Outlook 2012 notes that in Egypt, for example, about 1.5 million young people are unemployed at the same time that private-sector firms cannot fill 600 000 vacancies. And in South Africa, there are 3 million young people who are neither in education nor employed and 600 000 unemployed university graduates, yet 800 000 jobs are vacant. At the Forum itself, I heard many participants ask themselves whether they were equipping their students with the skills their economies needed.

This is exactly where the OECD’s expertise in collecting and analysing data can help. Already, many of the countries and economies that participate in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are in the developing world; but we think all countries would benefit from even greater participation by developing countries. By participating in PISA, countries can see whether the skills they are teaching their 15-year-olds are relevant to “real life”. They can also learn from other countries’ experiences how to improve their own education systems, and can benchmark their progress over time. The assessment, itself, benefits by gaining a deeper understanding of student performance in a broader range of countries and cultural contexts.

We have completed a review of Egypt’s system of higher education and have also reviewed the education systems of South Africa, Gabon and Mauritius. These in-depth analyses – conducted in close collaboration with local actors, regional organisations and other international partners – can guide countries in reforming their education policies so that students leave school with the skills needed to participate productively in the economy. We also stand ready to work with our partners – in Africa and elsewhere – to build stronger links between labour markets and education systems. That would help to avoid the situation, seen in so many countries, where universities train students to become civil servants when what the country or region really needs are engineers and health workers – and also people with the mid-level trade, technical and professional skills that can be acquired through well-designed vocational programmes. At the moment, vocational education accounts for only 5% of training among African youth.

As the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals approaches, the international community has begun to consider a framework for goals beyond 2015. For the first set of goals, progress in education is measured by access; I hope that future goals will complement such measures by looking at learning outcomes. Again, this is one of the OECD’s specialties, and we’re keen to offer our work and expertise to an even larger number of countries. I thought you’d want to know.

Links:
OECD Development home page
The OECD and the Millennium Development Goals
OECD Strategy on Development
The OECD Strategy on Development: Giving fresh impetus to a core mission
2012 International Economic Forum on Africa
OECD Skills Strategy
Photo credit: Orphan students in Swaziland / Shutterstock

All that money can’t buy

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education 
                                                    

We can now add something else to the growing list of things money alone can’t buy: love, happiness–and strong performance in PISA. Results from PISA 2009 show that there is a threshold beyond which a country’s wealth is unrelated to its overall score in PISA.

Among moderately wealthy economies whose per capita GDP is up to around USD 20 000 (Estonia, Hungary, the Slovak Republic and the partner country Croatia, for example), the greater the country’s wealth, the higher its mean score on the PISA reading test. But PISA results indicate that above this threshold of USD 20 000 in per capita GDP, national wealth is no longer a good predictor of a country’s mean performance in PISA. And the amount these high-income countries devote to education also appears to have little relation to their overall performance in PISA. PISA looked at cumulative expenditure on education–the total dollar amount spent on educating a student from the age of 6 to the age of 15–and found that, after a threshold of about USD 35 000 per student, expenditure is unrelated to performance. For example, countries that spend more than USD 100 000 per student from the age of 6 to 15, such as Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland and the United States, show similar levels of performance as countries that spend less than half that amount per student, such as Estonia, Hungary and Poland. Meanwhile, New Zealand, a top performer in PISA, spends a lower-than-average amount per student from the age of 6 to 15.

So what is it that makes a country a strong performer in PISA? Its decisions on how it spends the money that it does invest in education. PISA results show that the strongest performers among high-income countries and economies tend to invest more in teachers. For example, lower secondary teachers in Korea and the partner economy of Hong Kong-China, two high-performing systems in the PISA reading tests, earn more than twice the per capita GDP in their respective countries. The countries that perform well in PISA tend to attract the best students into the teaching profession by offering them higher salaries and greater professional status. They also tend to prioritise investment in teachers over smaller classes.

Successful PISA countries also invest something else in their education systems: high expectations for all of their students. Schools and teachers in these systems do not allow struggling students to fail; they do not make them repeat a grade, they do not transfer them to other schools, nor do they group students into different classes based on ability. Regardless of a country’s or economy’s wealth, school systems that commit themselves, both in resources and in policies, to ensuring that all students succeed perform better in PISA than systems that tend to separate out poor performers or students with behavioural problems or special needs.

So when it comes to money and education, the question isn’t how much? but rather for what?

For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus N°13: Does money buy strong performance in PISA?
Full set of PISA in Focus: www.oecd.org/pisa/infocus
Video Series: Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education

Video: Singapore: Building a strong and effective teaching force
From the series of videos on Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, produced jointly by the OECD and the Pearson Foundation