myedu247

  by Eric Charbonnier, Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills We are in 1961. JF Kennedy is president and has just designated Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman of the new US Commission on the Status of Women: "We want to be sure that women are used as effectively as they can to provide a better life for our people, in addition to meeting their primary responsibility, which is in the home." Fifty-seven years ago, women had to make a choice between pursuing a career or having children. Back then, access to early childhood education and care (ECEC) services was reserved for the elite and was not considered a policy priority; maternity leave was rare, while paternity leave was unheard of. This may seem strange now, but just try to think of society in the 1960s. Just think how far we have come since then: In 1961, only 38 % of women were employed in the United States. In 2015, this figure was at 70%. Don’t be fooled by the upbeat statistics though. Two generations later, ineq...

by Marie-Helene Doumet,  Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills Learning needs vary as we evolve through life. The early years of education set the stage for children’s well-being, cognitive and social-emotional development; young children starting out in the world require stability, reassurance, and encouragement, and need a warm and caring teacher. At primary school, teachers manage the class, teach all subjects, and help children develop not only basic competencies, but also emotional and social awareness. While this setting still requires a broad knowledge of many subjects, dealing directly with students’ social and emotional development also helps teachers bond with their class, which is essential to learning at such a young age. However, as children progress to high school, learning becomes more about the subject: secondary teachers focus on one or several subjects which they teach to a number of different classes. Their performance will be more strongly evaluat...

by Markus Schwabe Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills A university degree has always been considered as key to a good job and higher wages. But as the share of tertiary-educated adults across OECD countries has almost doubled over the last two decades, can the labour market absorb this growing supply of skills? At first glance, the answer isn’t encouraging: the number of unemployed tertiary-educated adults has been increasing across OECD countries for many years. However, a closer look reveals that the unemployment rate for these adults is still much lower than for those without a university degree. The latest Education Indicators in Focus policy brief analyses long-term trends in employment outcomes of adults based on their highest level of educational attainment. The figure above shows that, in all OECD countries, adults with tertiary education still enjoy higher employment rates than those without by 10 percentage points, on average, and this advantage has changed li...

by Marie-Hélène Doumet Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills It can be difficult to get your head around education finance. Who actually pays for it, where does the money come from, and how is it spent are all crucial questions to ask if you want to understand how the money flows in education. In many countries, basic education is considered a right, and governments are expected to ensure universal access to it. However, educational attainment has reached unprecedented levels, and more people are participating in education than ever before, leaving governments struggling to meet the demand through public funds alone. The role of private funding has become more significant in the past decade, particularly at the pre-primary and tertiary levels of education.  But the reality is more complex than a binary public-private model would suggest. Other financing mechanisms, involving the transfer of funds between governments, households and other private entities, are blurrin...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills Mean literacy and numeracy score, by age and education enrolment status OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), 2012 or 2015 Moving from the world of school to the world of work is one of the most dramatic changes in the lives of young people. And for many youngsters this transition does not go smoothly. Spells of frictional or longer-term unemployment, job insecurity because of low-paid or temporary contracts, and the uncertainties associated with starting to live autonomously produce a challenging phase in young people’s lives. The most vulnerable people are those who fall between the two systems: the so-called NEETs (not in employment, education or training), who are no longer in school and are either unemployed or inactive. Some 6% of 15-19 year-olds in OECD countries – in other words, half of those of that age who have left school, or around 5 million young people – are NEET...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills  Teachers enter the profession for a variety of reasons. Intrinsic motivations that have to do with the nature of the job and the intangible rewards associated with being an effective teacher play an important role. Yet when comparing a teaching career with similarly rewarding professions, the primary and secondary working conditions and material benefits probably come into play as well. To improve the quality of the candidates for teacher-training programmes and to keep them motivated to enter – and stay – in the profession, it is essential to offer competitive pay. For many years Education at a Glance has been tracking and monitoring the salaries of teachers, comparing them across countries and over time. A new Education Indicators in Focus brief has brought together the available data in order to chart the evolution of teachers’ salaries over the past ten years....

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills  There is now a widespread consensus that high-quality early childhood education is critically important for children. Research continues to find that early childhood education can compensate for a lack of learning opportunities at home, and can help children begin to develop the social and emotional skills needed for success later in life. Few policy makers would now question the benefits of high-quality early childhood education. As a result, early childhood education systems have expanded. As documented in Education at a Glance 2016 , on average across OECD countries enrolment in pre-primary education among 3-year-olds rose from 54% in 2005 to 69% in 2014, and among 4-year-olds from 73% to 85%. Expansion policies include the extension of compulsory education to younger children, free or universal early childhood education, and the creation of programmes that integr...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills  In 2014, over 3 million students in OECD countries – more than double the amount in 2000 – were studying outside their country of citizenship. International students go to study in countries with reputations for academic excellence; but they are frequently also seen as seeking economic and social opportunities in the host country. As many countries seek to restrict immigration, international students are becoming a targeted population. One of the policies that aim to reduce the number of incoming international students is charging higher tuition fees for international students compared to national students (“national” meaning outside the European Economic Area [EEA] in the case of European countries). Countries also hold the view that national resources and taxpayers’ money should not be spent to subsidise international students, so they increasingly aim to charge the ful...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills  Developing human capital is an integral part of economic growth and social progress. Mature, developed economies in Europe, North America and Australasia expanded their education and skills systems mainly after the Second World War in a context of unbridled economic prosperity and the modernisation of their social and political institutions. The conditions were favourable for increasing the share of tertiary-educated workers, ensuring that upper secondary education gradually became the minimum level of educational achievement for large parts of the population, and for reducing the numbers of people without an upper secondary education. These countries also benefitted from the luxury of time. It took OECD countries 30 years, on average, to halve the share of people without an upper secondary education – from 32% among current 55-64 year-olds to 16% among 25-34 year-olds. C...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills  It is well known that the share of women in the teaching force is growing. According to the latest  Education Indicators in Focus brief , the average share of female teachers across OECD countries increased from 61% in 2005 to 65% in 2010 and to 68% in 2014, in all education levels combined. Around 82% of primary school teachers and 63% of secondary school teachers are women. Some policy makers see this trend as a cause for concern, citing, among other things, that the lack of male teachers and role models might play a role in the decline of learning outcomes among young boys. But it seems fair to say that few people would be concerned about a similarly skewed gender imbalance in other professions if it benefited men. The statistics on the age distribution of male and female teachers show that the gender imbalance in the teaching profession will increase even more in...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills Modern education systems, which are open to the middle classes and the poor, not just the elites, were established during the first industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. The growing demand for elementary literacy and technical skills during that period prompted an expansion of school systems and the adoption of the first pieces of legislation on compulsory education. Popular education continued to grow during the first half of the 20th century, corresponding to the so-called “second industrial revolution”, which was ignited by advances in science and technology. In the early 20th century, attainment of primary education became nearly universal, and the system of secondary education began to grow.  But the great surge in the expansion of education in developed nations, specifically in secondary education, occurred in the wake of World War II, and more specif...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills Knowing, for example, that tobacco is bad for one’s health influences smoking behaviour much less than being able to control one’s own lifestyle. Schooling, together with non-formal and informal learning experiences, has been found to foster the acquisition of skills that matter for health behaviour. It is one of the great insights of recent educational research that education is a very important driver of social progress, and that this happens through the transfer of knowledge and the development of cognition, but probably even more so through fostering the social and emotional skills that allow people to control and change their behaviours. Traditional economics measure the benefits of education and skills in its economic gains in employment or earnings. These measures include for example the ‘rate of return’ of an individual’s investment in educational attainment or skills ...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills High-performing education systems value teachers and invest a lot in them. And indeed, the human factor is crucial in creating effective and high-quality teaching and learning environments. On average across OECD countries, the compensation of staff involved in education counted for 77% of total expenditure on secondary education in 2013 (Indicator B6 of Education at a Glance 2016). In monetary terms, the annual salary cost of teachers per student at the lower secondary level reached USD 3 389, on average across OECD countries in 2014, but this amount ranged from USD 1 000 in Mexico to USD 5 379 in Austria. However, we also know that it is not the amount of money invested that counts, but the way it is used. PISA reveals that, above a certain threshold, more money invested in education does not necessarily lead to better outcomes. Countries that may spend the same per student ...

by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills Fields of education are ranked in descending order of the share of men who studied in this specific field. Although we’ve observed for a long time that young men and women tend to choose different fields of study – young men are more apt than young women to pursue a degree in engineering while more women than men opt for a teaching career, for example – until recently, we have had no reliable data to support this perception. Nor could we measure the impact of these choices on employment and earnings. But recent data collections, such as the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), finally offer some quantitative evidence on these crucial issues. The latest Education Indicators in Focus brief summarises the available evidence from the Survey of Adult Skills on gender differences across fields of study. The data are mind-blowing. As shown in the figure above, across the countries and su...