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by Tarek Mostafa Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills Teachers play a vital role in the lives of their students. They impart knowledge, provide pastoral care, act as role models and, above all, create an environment that’s conducive to learning. But teaching is fraught with numerous challenges that could lead to dissatisfaction and ultimately to drop-out from the profession. Science teachers are particularly vulnerable to quitting their jobs given the opportunities that exist outside the teaching profession. So what makes a science teacher satisfied enough that he or she would want to keep teaching, despite the challenges they might face? Data from PISA’s 2015 teacher questionnaire provide interesting evidence . Science teachers who reported that pursuing a career in the teaching profession was their goal after finishing secondary school are far more satisfied with their jobs and with the profession as a whole . These teachers represent about 58% of all teachers on average ac...

by Johanna Boersch-Supan Director, Vodafone Germany Foundation – think tank  Digitisation is expected to profoundly change the way we learn and work – at a faster pace than previous major drivers of transformation. Many children entering school today are likely to end up working in jobs that do not yet exist. Preparing students for these unchartered territories means that we not only have to make sure that they have the right technical capabilities but that we have to strengthen their emotional and social skills . Resilience, the individual capacity to overcome adverse circumstances and use them as sources for personal development, lies at the core of being able to successfully adapt to change and thus actively engage with our digital world. A special PISA analysis conducted by the OECD in collaboration with the Vodafone Germany Foundation shows that several countries were able to increase the share of academically resilient students with disadvantaged backgrounds over the last de...

by Anthony Jackson, Director, Center for Global Education at Asia Society Andreas Schleicher, Director, Directorate for Education and Skills In all countries, rapidly changing global economic, digital, cultural, and environmental forces are shaping young people’s lives and their futures. From Boston to Bangkok to Buenos Aires, we live today in a VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The world’s growing complexity and diversity present both opportunity and challenge. On the one hand, globalization can bring important new perspectives, innovation, and improved living standards. But on the other, it can also contribute to economic inequality, social division, and conflict. How well education systems prepare all of their students to thrive amid today’s rapidly changing world will determine the future prosperity and security of their nations – and of the world as a whole. Global competence education is what will empower students to do just that. Globally competent student...

by Andreas Schleicher Director, Directorate for Education and Skills The next generation of children will need to create jobs, not just seek jobs. They will draw on their curiosity, imagination, entrepreneurship and resilience, the joy of failing forward. Their schools will help them discover their passions and aspirations, develop their potential, and find their place in society. But that is easier said than done, and good reading, math and science skills are just part of the answer. To develop their dreams and invest the effort it takes to realise them, children need, first of all, to be aware of the world and the opportunities it offers them. We often take that awareness for granted, perhaps because schools tend to be designed and run by people who succeeded in them. But this report paints a different picture. Statistics showed previously that more than one in five teenagers are looking to secure the 2.4% of new and replacement jobs in the UK economy that are predicted to be found...

by Tarek Mostafa Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills Standardised testing has received a bad rap in recent years. Parents and educators argue that too much testing can make students anxious without improving their learning. In particular, standardised tests that could determine a student’s future – entry into a certain education programme or into university, for example – might trigger anxiety and, if conducted too frequently, might lead to poorer performance, absenteeism and lower self-confidence. But are standardised tests really used all that frequently? And do they exacerbate anxiety and undermine performance? Evidence from PISA dispels these myths . On average across OECD countries, about one in four 15-year-old students attends a school where mandatory standardised tests are never used, and three in five attend schools where these tests are used only once or twice a year . In 11 countries, including Belgium, Costa Rica, Germany, Slovenia and Spain, more than one in two...

by Andreas Schleicher Director, Directorate for Education and Skills In 2015, 193 countries committed to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, a shared vision of humanity that provides the missing piece of the globalisation puzzle. The extent to which that vision becomes a reality will in no small way depend on what is happening in today’s classrooms. Indeed, it is educators who hold the key to ensuring that the SDGs become a real social contract with citizens. Goal 4, which commits to quality education for all, is intentionally not limited to foundation knowledge and skills, such as literacy, mathematics and science, but emphasises learning to live together sustainably. This has inspired the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) , the global yardstick for success in education, to include global competence in its metrics for quality, equity and effectiveness in education. PISA will assess global competence for the first time...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Skills Beyond School Division,  Directorate for Education and Skills Education plays a dual role when it comes to social inequality and social mobility. On the one hand, it is the main way for societies to foster equality of opportunity and support upward social mobility for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. On the other hand, the evidence is overwhelming that education often reproduces social divides in societies, through the impact that parents’ economic, social and cultural status has on children’s learning outcomes. The social divide is already apparent very early in the life of a child, in the time their parents spend on parenting or in the number of words a toddler learns. It progresses through early childhood education and becomes most obvious in the variation in learning outcomes, based on social background, among 15-year-old students who participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) . And when literacy and num...

by Andreas Schleicher Director, Directorate for Education and Skills Successes and failures in the classroom will increasingly shape the fortunes of countries.  And yet, more of the same education will only produce more of the same strengths and weaknesses. Today’s students are growing up into a world hyperconnected by digitalisation; tomorrow, they’ll be working in a labour market that is already being hollowed-out by automation. For those with the right knowledge and skills, these changes are liberating and exciting. But for those who are insufficiently prepared, they can mean a future of vulnerable and insecure work, and a life lived on the margins. In today’s schools, students typically learn individually, and at the end of the school year, we certify their individual achievements. But the more interdependent the world becomes, the more it needs great collaborators and orchestrators. Innovation is now rarely the product of individuals working in isolation; instead, it is an out...

by François Keslair Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills  Taken as a whole, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) present a mixed picture for Korea and Singapore. As their economies have grown, these two countries’ education systems have seen fast and impressive improvements; both now rank among PISA’s top performers. However, neither Korea nor Singapore do so well in PIAAC. PIAAC measures the skills of adults aged between 16 and 65, i.e. a large majority of the population, not just the 15-year-olds pupils measured by PISA. And while the skills of younger Koreans and Singaporeans are just as impressive in PIAAC as in PISA, the same cannot be said of their elders, who did not enjoy the advantages of their current successful education systems. The skills of the older population covered by PIAAC simply cannot keep pace with such change. But why exactly can we draw this conclusion? In other words, why do...

b y Andreas Schleicher Director, Directorate for Education and Skills PISA 2015 Results (Volume V) Collaborative Problem Solving – Sample Question from EduSkills OECD Late next month (21 November, to be exact) we’ll be releasing the results PISA’s first-ever assessment of students’ ability to solve problems collaboratively. Why has PISA focused on this particular set of skills? Because in today’s increasingly interconnected world, people are often required to collaborate in order to achieve their objectives, both in the workplace and in their personal lives. Working with others is not as easy as it sounds. One person might end up reproducing another’s work; poor communication and personal tensions between people might prevent a team from reaching its goal. So it’s worth finding out whether students today know what it takes to work (and play) well with others. This month’s PISA in Focus   describes what it means, according to PISA, to be competent in collaborative problem solvi...

by Simon Normandeau Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills Gender biases can be persistent. Too persistent. A simple exercise to illustrate the point: Picture a doctor or a professor. You will most likely think of a man. Now think of nurses and teachers and you are likely to imagine a woman. This unconscious gender bias is rooted in years of associating male and female attributes to specific roles in society. Inevitably, it also influences students’ career choices. Gender differences in career aspirations are set early on. Children tend to mimic the social environment in which they grew up: boys are more drawn towards male-dominated fields while girls aspire to careers held by inspirational role models of their own gender. By the age of 15, boys and girls have already been regularly exposed to one of the most strongly gender-biased professions: teaching. On average across OECD countries, 83% of primary teachers are women; and this proportion shows no sign of shrinking anyti...

by Andreas Schleicher Director, Directorate for Education and Skills Italy is the birthplace of Leonardo, Galileo and Armani. For centuries, skilled Italians have been recognised for their contributions to the world’s art, science, and culture. A relatively small country, with scarce natural resources, Italy today is among the world’s leading industrialised economies and is home to millions of firms, including many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), who play a prominent role in many key global value chains. So the skills of Italy’s population matter. Not only for their own country, but also for their contribution to the future prosperity and well-being of the global community.  Italy’s future prosperity depends upon the skills of its people Today, Italy is facing a skills gap. OECD Surveys measuring the skills of 15 year-olds ( PISA ) and adults between the ages of 16 and 64 years old ( Survey of Adult Skills, PIAAC ) have detected a significant shortfall in skills  co...

by Dirk Van Damme  Head of the Skills Beyond School Division,  Directorate for Education and Skills Since Harvard economists Goldin & Katz published their ground-breaking book The Race between Technology and Education (2008), education has come face-to-face with the challenges of a world continuously altered by technological innovation. Education is generally perceived to be a laggard social system, better equipped to transmit the heritage of the past than to prepare for the future. This perception is not entirely accurate; OECD/CERI work on Measuring innovati on in education (2014) demonstrates that education is a system that is not change-averse. From a historical perspective, education has adjusted to the needs and opportunities of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, for example by introducing natural sciences into the curriculum – although it took many years for that to happen. Will education have the luxury of time to confront the current wave of technological change...

by Rose Bolognini Communications and Publications Co-ordinator, Directorate for Education and Skills Disadvantaged students don’t have as many resources at home as their advantaged peers so ideally schools would need to compensate by providing more support. However, often schools reinforce social disparities rather than moderate them. The latest PISA in Focus brief  reveals that students in socio-economically disadvantaged schools are less exposed to learning environments and educational resources that matter most for science performance. In fact, the latest round of PISA is telling. In 50 of the 72 countries and economies that participated, advantaged schools have more access to educational resources specific to science classes. And PISA finds that students perform better in science when schools have qualified science teachers, and high-quality laboratory and other materials for hands-on activities in science classes. What's more, disadvantaged students benefit more from being e...