#pisa 2012

[educationtoday2017]

New insights on teaching strategies

by Pablo Fraser Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Education’s purpose is to prepare children for a fast-moving, ever-changing world. Teaching faces the additional challenge of classrooms becoming increasingly more culturally diverse. Now, more than ever, this requires an adaptation of current teaching strategies. The recent OECD working paper Teaching strategies for instructional quality: Insights from the TALIS-PISA Link data seeks to be a contribution to this debate, by providing information about the teachings strategies used by mathematics teachers in eight countries. What is the TALIS-PISA link database? In TALIS 2013, participating countries and economies had the option of applying TALIS questionnaires to a PISA 2012 subsample with the purpose of linking data on schools, teachers and students. We call this option the "TALIS-PISA Link" database. The TALIS-PISA Link provides us with valuable information about teaching strategies and their relationship with the characteristics of the school, the classroom and student's outcomes. A better understanding of these relationships can help teachers, schools, education policy makers to design more effective policies with the aim of improving the learning achievements of all students. What are the most common used strategies used by teachers? The analysis of the data showed that teaching practices can be classified in three groups:

Active learning strategies, which consist of promoting the engagement of students in their own learning. They typically include practices such as group work, use of information and communication technology, or student self-assessment.

Cognitive activation, which consists of practices capable of challenging students in order to motivate them and stimulate higher-order skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving and decision making.

Teacher-directed instruction, which encompasses practices based on lecturing and rely to a great extent on a teacher’s ability to deliver orderly and clear lessons.

It would be inappropriate, however, to favour one form of strategy over another, since all of them contribute towards student learning – depending on the student’s skills and the context. For example, data has shown that students exposed to teacher-directed strategies are slightly more likely to respond to the less complex items in the PISA mathematics evaluation, while cognitive activation strategies seem to be moderately related to solving more complex maths items. However, these associations appear to be tenuous and further explorations on the association of these strategies with student learning are needed. The results of the report showed that teacher-directed practices and cognitive activation practices are the strategies more often reported. Three out of four teachers reported presenting “a summary of recently learned content” (teacher-directed practice) or that they “go over homework problems that students were not able to solve” (cognitive activation practices). However, only around one-third of teachers reported engaging frequently in active learning strategies. Indeed, the frequency in which active learning practices are used seems to be particularly low for mathematics teachers. The lack of engagement in these strategies may indicate that the necessary support and policies that would allow teachers to develop these strategies are not in place. What are the policies and the support that could foster the use of active learning strategies? The working paper evaluated the association of active learning with a myriad of factors located at the school, the classroom and the teacher levels. One of the most interesting results is that in all the eight participating countries, teacher self-efficacy showed as being positively associated with the implementation of active learning practices: the more the teacher feels confident in his or her ability to provide quality instruction, the more likely he or she will be to engage in active learning strategies. Indeed, teachers must feel confident in their abilities in order to implement relevant teaching strategies. Also, when teachers dialogue, support and exchange materials with their colleagues, they are more likely to engage in active learning practices. Teachers should not work as isolated agents, but rather to engage in professional networks and in collaboration with colleagues. What education policies can best support teachers’ self-efficacy? Results from TALIS 2013 have shown that the level of self-efficacy among teachers in a country is highly correlated with teachers’ participation rates in professional development. The more teachers participate in training activities, the more confident they feel about their ability to teach, and the more they use active learning strategies. If professional development is not available at the school, school leaders could try to foster other types of initiatives, such as mentoring programmes. What can schools do to promote collaboration among their teachers? School leaders can provide opportunities for fostering relationships among their staff in school by giving them a physical space where teachers can meet, or allowing time away from administrative work for teachers to meet and develop a relationship with their colleagues. Teachers everywhere are committed to helping their students achieve the best they are capable of. The OECD, through the study of the TALIS-PISA Link data, seeks to provide guidelines on how to support them. The study findings can inspire teachers and school leaders to co-operate using a wider palette of techniques to meet the needs of students with varying abilities, motivation and interests. The insights provided here can also inspire education policy makers to design teaching policies that could foster the implementation of innovative teaching strategies. Links: OECD Education Working Paper No. 148: Teaching strategies for instructional quality: Insights from the TALIS-PISA Link data OECD Education Working Paper No. 130: How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school OECD Education Working Paper No. 115: Examining school context and its influence on teachers: linking TALIS 2013 with PISA 2012 student data Teaching strategies for instructional quality: Insights from the TALIS-PISA Link data brochure Asia Society (2016), Teaching and leadership for the twenty-first century: The 2016 International Summit on the Teaching Profession TALIS 2013 Results: An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning A Teachers’ Guide to TALIS 2013: Teaching and Learning International Survey Ten Questions for Mathematics Teachers ... and how PISA can help answer them Icon credit: teacher by Hadi Davodpour, CC0 1.0, table source: OECD.

[educationtoday2017]

What can maths teachers learn from PISA?

by Andreas Schleicher

Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

When we think back on schools in the 20th century, we imagine rows of students facing the front of the classroom and listening to the teacher lecture. Even though more and more education policies over the past 20 years are encouraging teachers to give students the chance to actively participate in their learning, in 2012, only one in four students across OECD countries reported that their teacher asks them to break out into small groups to work out a problem on their own. Of course, teachers want students to enjoy the learning process but they also want students to focus on the topic at hand, keeping disorder in the classroom to a minimum. OECD’s newest report, Ten Questions for Mathematics Teachers… and how PISA can help answer them, based on PISA 2012 data, delves into diverse teaching and learning methods and what works for different types of classrooms around the world. When it comes to learning mathematics, certain teacher-directed learning strategies, such as asking questions to check whether students understand what has been taught, has proven to work well when solving basic mathematics problems. And research does show that student-oriented strategies, such as allowing students to collaborate and direct their own learning, can have a positive impact on their learning and motivation. But teacher-directed strategies, and in fact all teaching strategies, work best when teachers also challenge students and encourage them to focus more on the process rather than the answer. These types of strategies, known as cognitive-activation strategies, ask students to summarise, question and predict – requiring students to link new information to information they have already learned and apply their skills to a new context where the answer to a problem is not immediately obvious or can even be solved in multiple ways. In fact, PISA data indicate that across OECD countries, students who reported that their teachers use cognitive-activation strategies more frequently in their mathematics classes score higher in mathematics. Depending on the classroom environment, teachers understand that they need to combine different strategies to ensure that students grasp the basic concepts but are also able to advance further when ready, tackling more challenging problems on their own. Ten Questions for Mathematics Teachers explores these topics along with others that are relevant for mathematics teachers today. The report takes findings based on PISA data and organises them into ten questions encompassing teaching and learning strategies, curriculum coverage and various student characteristics, looking at how they relate to student achievement, mathematics instruction and to each other. Ten Questions aims to give teachers timely evidence-based insights that will help them reflect on their teaching strategies and how students learn. Links: Ten Questions for Mathematics Teachers… and how PISA can help answer them Equations and Inequalities: Making Mathematics Accessible to All

OECD Education Working Paper No. 130: How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school 

PISA 2012 Results

Webinar - Friday, October 7, 2016 9:30 am – 10:45 am ET

Ten Questions for Mathematics Teachers… and How PISA Can Help Answer Them Presented by The Alliance for Excellent Education and OECD. 

Register here.

Photo credit: © OECD

[educationtoday2017]

It’s a matter of self-confidence

by Francesca Borgonovi Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills A sense of self-efficacy is essential if students are to fulfil their potential. Yet too many students, particularly disadvantaged students, do not have confidence in their ability to tackle mathematics tasks. This month's PISA in Focus reveals that mathematics self-efficacy is strongly associated with mathematics performance, and that disadvantaged students are less likely to feel confident about their ability to tackle specific mathematics tasks than advantaged students, even when comparing students who perform similarly in mathematics. Countries with higher mean performance in mathematics are those where students are more likely to report feeling confident about being able to solve a range of pure and applied mathematics problems. However, a positive relationship can also be seen within countries: students who have less mathematics self-efficacy perform worse in mathematics than students who are confident about their ability to handle mathematics tasks. On average across OECD countries, mathematics self-efficacy is associated with a difference of 49 score points in mathematics – the equivalent of one year of school. In 23 countries and economies, the difference in mathematics performance that is associated with students’ self-efficacy is 50 points or more; in Liechtenstein, Chinese Taipei and Viet Nam, the difference is at least 60 points. The relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance is mutually reinforcing: better performance in mathematics leads to greater self-efficacy. But students who have less mathematics self-efficacy are at greater risk of underperforming in mathematics, regardless of their actual abilities. Why? Because when students do not believe in their ability to accomplish particular tasks, they do not exert the effort needed to complete the tasks successfully. How can education systems and families encourage students to be proficient and self-confident in their abilities in mathematics? First, families can help students to become confident learners by giving them support and encouragement. In 2012, 11 education systems distributed a questionnaire to the parents of students who took the PISA test. The responses to this questionnaire reveal that, when comparing students with similar academic performance and socio-economic status, those whose parents expected that they would enter university generally reported greater mathematics self-efficacy than those whose parents did not hold such high expectations for them. Second, PISA reveals that there is a strong connection between how confident students feel about being able to solve specific pure and applied mathematics problems, and whether or not they were exposed to similar problems in class. However, while almost all students who reported that they had frequently encountered pure mathematics problems feel confident about solving such problems, task exposure is less strongly associated with self-efficacy when it comes to applied mathematics. This difference could be due to the fact that applied mathematics problems are, by nature, more ambiguous and diverse, and solving applied mathematics problems generally requires a good understanding of both the underlying problem and the context in which the problem is set. What PISA tells us is that, in mathematics, seeing (mathematics tasks at school) is believing (in yourself). Links: PISA in Focus No. 56: How confident are students in their ability to solve mathematics problems? Francesca Borgonovi PISA á la loupe No. 56: Quelle confiance les élèves ont-ils en leur capacité à résoudre des problèmes de mathématiques? PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn (Vol. III) Student's Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) PISA 2012 Results Photo Credit: Schoolgirl with glasses solving math problem on blackboard @Shutterstock

[educationtoday2017]

Are the world’s schools making inequality worse?

by William Schmidt Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University

The answer appears to be yes. Schooling plays a surprisingly large role in short-changing the most economically disadvantaged students of critical math skills, according to a study published today in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. Unequal access to rigorous mathematics content is widening the gap in performance on a prominent international math literacy test between low- and high-income students in countries worldwide. Using data from PISA 2012, researchers from Michigan State University and the OECD confirmed not only that low-income students are more likely to be exposed to weaker math content in schools, but also that a substantial share of the gap in math performance between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students is related to those curriculuar inequalities. The authors—William H. Schmidt, Nathan Burroughs, and Richard Houang, all of Michigan State University, and Pablo Zoido, from the OECD - found that in almost every one of the 62 countries examined a significant amount was added to the social class-related performance gap because of what students studied in schools. The 2012 PISA was the first international study to include student-level indicators of exposure to math content. The authors relied on data from more than 300,000 students, who ranged in age from 15 years and 3 months to 16 years and 2 months. “Our findings support previous research by showing that affluent students are consistently provided with greater opportunity to learn more rigorous content, and that students who are exposed to higher-level math have a better ability to apply it to real-world situations of contemporary adult life, such as calculating interest, discounts, and estimating the required amount of carpeting for a room,” said Schmidt, a University Distinguished Professor of Statistics and Education at Michigan State University. “But now we know just how important content inequality is in contributing to performance gaps between priviledged and underpriviledged students.” On average, across the 33 OECD countries studied, roughly a third of the relationship of socio-economic status (SES) to math literacy was due to inequalities in math coverage, with sizeable variation across countries, ranging from nearly 58 percent in the Netherlands to less than 10 percent in Iceland and Sweden. There are striking differences in how countries group their students and structure their instructional opportunities, meaning that in countries like Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States there are greater within-school inequalities in content coverage, while in other countries such as France, Germany, and Japan inequalities are larger between schools. Regardless of whether unequal learning opportunities for lower-income students were found within or between schools, they exacerbated inequitable student outcomes. “Because of differences in content exposure for low- and high-income students in each country, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer,” said Schmidt. “The belief that schools are the great equalizer, helping students overcome the inequalities of poverty, is a myth.” Andreas Schleicher from the OECD and the Director of PISA, confirmed the results. He said: “The research confirms what PISA’s international test results have been telling us for more than a decade: in order for every child to perform to the best of his or her ability in school, teachers and schools have to believe that all children can succeed – and act on that belief.”

Support for this work was provided through the Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship which was funded by  the Open Society Foundations. 

Chart: Percentage of total socio-economic inequality contributed by unequal access to rigorous mathematics © 2015 AERA. http://er.aera.net  

Links: The Role of Schooling in Perpetuating Educational Inequality OECD Education Working Paper no. 95: Schooling Matters: Opportunity to Learn in PISA 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can Do (Volume I) PISA 2012 Results: Excellence through Equity (Volume II)

[educationtoday2017]

Tough choices in school choice

by Marilyn Achiron Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

For those parents who have the opportunity to do so, choosing a school for their child is one of the most important decisions they will make as parents – a decision that could have a lasting impact on their child’s life. What do parents look for when choosing a school for their child? This month’s PISA in Focus reports on the criteria that parents consider before making this decision. Eleven countries and economies distributed a questionnaire to parents of 15-year-olds who sat the 2012 PISA test that asked them to report on the importance they ascribed to several criteria, including school quality, the distance from home to school, the school’s philosophy and financial considerations. Not surprisingly, the quality of the school – including such factors as academic achievement, reputation, environment and safety – comes first among parents. Yet, PISA finds that many parents value certain indicators of school quality – such as the school’s reputation or safety at the school – more highly than they do academic achievement. While disadvantaged parents are more concerned than advantaged parents about low expenses and the availability of financial aid when choosing a school, PISA results show that disadvantaged parents often ascribe greater importance to these considerations than to criteria that focus on school quality. That is an important finding, because PISA results also show that the children of parents who consider academic achievement very important score 46 points higher in mathematics, on average, than the children of parents who consider it not important. Although the score-point difference shrinks to 32 points after students’ socio-economic status is taken into account, that difference is still equivalent to nearly an entire year of school. A previous edition of PISA in Focus noted that competition for students among schools – or school choice, from the schools’ perspective – is related to greater socio-economic segregation among students. As this month’s edition makes clear: learning for some students, particularly disadvantaged students, could suffer tremendously in school systems where parents have to choose between affordability and quality. Links: PISA in Focus No. 51: What do parents look for in their child's school? PISA in Focus No. 51 (French version) PISA Home PISA 2012 Results: What makes schools successful? PISA in Focus No. 42: When is competition between schools beneficial? Photo Credit: Empty Checklist with copy space/ @Shutterstock

[educationtoday2017]

Got a math problem?

by Marilyn Achiron Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills Some 37% of students in the Netherlands reported that they often worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them. In Argentina, 80% of students reported the same worry. What is the percentage-point difference between the two countries in the proportion of students who worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them?* While reading the above mathematics problem, did you:

start hyperventilating and repeat to yourself “I  can’t do this; I can’t do this; I can’t do this”

grab your mouse with the intent of clicking off this page

feel as though you have never encountered such a confusing jumble of words and numbers before

all of the above?

If you answered a, b, c or d, you’re in good company: on average, about one in three students feels anxious when confronted with a mathematics problem, and more than one in two students reported that they often worry that it will be difficult for them in mathematics classes. Those are alarming statistics – especially because PISA finds that greater anxiety towards mathematics is strongly related to lower scores in mathematics. As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, on average across OECD countries, mathematics anxiety is associated with a 34 score-point decline in mathematics performance – the equivalent of almost one year of school. In New Zealand, Norway and Poland, the decline associated with anxiety towards mathematics is even larger: at least 45 score points. More worrying still, in almost all countries and economies that participated in PISA 2012, girls reported greater anxiety towards mathematics than boys. Only in Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates did boys report greater anxiety than girls. PISA finds that students’ anxiety towards mathematics is not just about the subject, itself. Students are more anxious towards mathematics when their schoolmates get better marks than they do, on average. In Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands and Slovenia, students who attend schools where the average student performs better than they do in mathematics tend to be considerably more anxious towards the subject than students who earn similar marks in mathematics, but attend schools where the average student performs as well as they do or worse. So how can students learn to adopt a more Zen attitude towards mathematics? The answer may lie in their teachers. In 39 countries and economies, among students who performed equally well in mathematics, those students whose teachers consistently tell students how well they are doing in mathematics, give students feedback on their strengths and weaknesses in mathematics, and/or tell students what they need to do to improve in mathematics reported less anxiety towards math. Knowledge is power; and when staring down a mathematics problem, it can relieve stress too. * There is a 43 percentage-point difference between the Netherlands (which has one of the smallest proportions of students who worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them) and Argentina (which has one of the largest proportions of these students). Links PISA 2012 Findings PISA in Focus No. 48: Does math make you anxious? PISA in Focus No.48 (French version) Full set of PISA in Focus PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn (Volume III) : Students' Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs Photo credit: The Scream / @Wikimédia

[educationtoday2017]

The efficiency of Italian schools in an international perspective

by Tommaso Agasisti, Politecnico di Milano School of Management, and TJ Alexander Fellow at OECD

Performance in PISA and (Data Envelope Analysis) efficiency scores

Budget cuts in public services are today common across countries. For schools, as everywhere else, we constantly hear calls for ways to do more with less. Efficiency, it seems, has crept up to the top of the policy agenda. The question is whether the quality of learning is suffering due budget cuts, and if the quality of learning is compromised by fewer resources.

In most countries, educational results have not progressed in line with the increases in resources used by schools. Large scale international assessments, such as PISA, opens the door to new research on efficiency. Using PISA 2012 data, we estimated efficiency for almost 9 000 schools operating in 30 countries. In this context, efficiency is defined in a technical sense: inputs are the number of teachers per student, the number of computers per teacher (measures that provide us with an idea of the amount of human and material resources available to the school) and students’ average socio-economic background (a measure of the environment the school operates and the family background of the students that attend the school), while outputs are measured by the average test scores in mathematics and reading of the students in the school. Using international data, the efficiency at school level is not determined only by national efficiency standards in a particular country, but by schools in all countries.

The results highlight that among the 30 countries being examined, the average efficiency of school stands at 0.73. This means that PISA test scores could be raised by 27% if resources were used at the optimal level of efficiency (those attained by top performing schools for each combination of resources). For Italian schools, the average efficiency score is 0.71, which implies that on average, the PISA scores could be raised by 29%. By way of comparison, the country in which efficiency scores are the highest is Singapore (0.84), followed by two other Asian countries (Korea and Japan), then Poland and Estonia (see Figure above).

The empirical analysis compares Italian schools with a sample of schools in other countries Many Italian schools are comparable with the best schools in the world, while others struggle with underwhelming results (both with regards to achievement and efficiency). One of the most striking findings of this research is the amount of variation in efficiency across schools within each country. In this sense, the “typical, average” Italian school simply does not exist.

The PISA data allows less efficient schools to observe the characteristics of more efficient ones, by studying their organisation and activities, regardless of the country where they operate. Drawing inspiration from these data, each school can adopt the mix of resources, practices and processes that they consider most suitable for improving their operations (in terms of achievement scores and efficiency). In addition, by collecting information at different points in time, schools can monitor improvements and its determinants, eventually adjusting activities and strategies if satisfactory results are not achieved.

An evaluation system of this kind is no substitute for the experience of teachers and principals, rather it can stimulate them, and other stakeholders, into considering the measurable characteristics of their work without renouncing to the more intangible aspects such as cultural and educational values.

Links:  PISA 2012 findings PISA 2012 country note - Italy

Original version of this article, published in Italian Chart source: @OECD

[educationtoday2017]

Excellence through Equity

by Max Rashbrooke Journalist, SGI News In social terms, it’s essential to invest in education.  A recent OECD report How was Life?, looking at global well-being since 1830 finds that, in terms education, there has been a massive improvement.  A lack of educational opportunities creates a vicious circle, in which those unable to get a decent education are denied opportunities for social betterment, the socially disadvantaged then struggle to access education, and so on. Breaking this vicious circle not only improves the lives of individuals; it helps maintain the social fabric. At the same time, it makes good economic sense to nourish every child’s talent, so that they grow up to be productive members of the workforce. In its assessment of equitable education, the Bertelsmann Stiftung new study “Social Justice in the EU – A Cross-national Comparison" has ranked all 28 European Union countries’ educational policies in several dimensions. The extent to which children’s socio-economic status determines their school results is a key measure. But the report also looks at spending on early childhood education, and countries’ success in lowering the rates of students leaving school early. Finally, it includes an expert assessment of countries’ overall educational policies. In general, those doing best in the rankings are three Nordic European Union member states (Denmark, Finland and Sweden), two Baltic countries (Estonia and Lithuania), and a European Union new entrant (Croatia). Britain’s ranking is slightly below average. The very worst performers are Malta, Portugal, Slovakia and Greece. The biggest improver has been Luxembourg, while the worst slide down the rankings has come in Slovakia. Countries should not focus on excellence per se but on equity Several of the top-ranked countries in terms of equitable access to education such as Estonia and Finland are also the best performers when it comes to reducing the influence of students’ social background on their educational performance. What lies behind this success? If Finland is anything to go by, the answer is that if a country wants high achieving students, its best bet is – counter-intuitively – to focus not on excellence per se but on equity. Finland’s school system, which is dominated by public schools and has no national testing, has some of the best-performing students in the European Union, as shown in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Despite these excellent results, the Finns don’t relax their focus: their latest four-year education plan places a special emphasis on preventing poverty, inequality and exclusion. Estonia can boast a similar record: top school results, with little influence of social background on students’ performance. This shows that a high degree of social justice and a well-performing school system are not incompatible goals; in fact, emphasising one often delivers the other. Investing heavily in the early years also pays dividends. Students who have been in pre-primary education do better than those who have not, especially when they have been in it for several years and its facilities have small pupil-to-teacher ratios. Some countries have picked up on the importance of the early years. Poland, for instance, is making big strides by insisting on compulsory preschool education. Overall, Bulgaria, Denmark and Hungary invest the most in early childhood education. This is especially important in the latter two countries, where the link between social background and academic achievement has historically been very strong. In contrast, Germany, despite having recently increased public spending on early-childhood education, is still only spending at about the average level for the EU, and does not place sufficient emphasis on high-quality early education. Early school leavers rates are declining across the European Union – yet not evenly Reducing the number of students leaving school early is another important objective. Early school leaver rates are declining across the EU, but some countries are doing much better than others. Spain has the worst early leaver rates, at nearly one in four of all students, a situation being made worse by austerity policies that are cutting spending on education. Countries such as Croatia and Slovenia, by contrast, have exceptionally low rates of early leavers. However, there are fears that many of their students are parked in low-quality vocational courses that do not provide the skills employers need and therefore do not lead to good job opportunities. There are, in contrast, few question marks over Germany’s justly famous vocational system. It is hugely important to the country’s functioning, with over half of all young workers having gone through the system. Helping reduce youth unemployment, it is well-calibrated to employers’ needs, and leads to strong job and income prospects. It is, however, situated within a wider education system that is highly selective and segregated. Children are pushed down a particular path, whether it is academic or vocational, at a relatively early age. This tends to create a ‘twin-track’ approach, in which a child’s ability in early life – which tends to be heavily influence by their background – pushes them into a path that, to some extent,determines their fate for the rest of their life. Avoiding early selection in schools is essential In countries with early selection, educational success depends strongly on a child’s origin and socioeconomic background, and children from disadvantaged and immigrant backgrounds have much less chance of doing well at school than they would in other European Union countries. In short, to advance social justice and equal access to educational opportunities, avoiding early selection is essential. Over and over, countries with early selection are marked out as having poor opportunities for the most disadvantaged. Luxembourg, for instance, has this issue, despite spending more per student than any other European Union country. In Austria, experts have criticised the early division of children into multiple educational tracks. This policy means that parents’ social status very often influences whether children go onto higher education. PISA results highlight another aspect of this issue. The earlier children are tracked and separated according to performance, the more influence their background has on their educational success. But the countries that do this early separation do not see their overall results rise. In other words, it is not possible to say that even if some children’s prospects are damaged by this approach, most children are better off. The lesson to be drawn here is not too different from that provided by the Estonian and Finnish systems, which, as above, focus on equity and – as a by-product – also deliver excellence. School systems that don’t separate children out early seem to do better both on educational justice and in terms of learning success. And this exemplifies that social justice and economic progress, far from being competing ideas, are actually entirely compatible. In other words, you really can have your cake and eat it. A forthcoming OECD Education Policy Outlook will provide policy makers with the policy options to deliver equity and quality in education,  such as investing in early childhood education and care (ECEC), tackling system-level policies that may hinder equity (such as grade repetition, unsupported school choice or early tracking) and supporting students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Links: Education Policy Outlook How was Life? PISA 2012 Results OECD work on Early Childhood Education and Care Equity, Excellence and Inclusiveness in Education : Policy Lessons from Around the World Related blog posts: OECD educationtoday: Building the knowledge economy Photo credit: Toys seesaw wooden blocks / @Shutterstock