#pisa 2015

[dragoni]

Chinese parents spend on education.  American, European parents spend on consumption.

Chinese parents and grandparents tend to invest their last renminbi into the education of their children, their future. In much of Europe and North America, governments have started to borrow the money of their children to finance their consumption today and the debt they have incurred puts a massive break on economic and social progress.

— Andreas Schleicher, The Global Search for Education: More Focus on Skills

Read What Asian schools can teach the rest of us by Andreas Schleicher

[korkep-blog]

Egyre gyengébben teljesítenek a szlovákiai diákok

A gyermekek belső motivációja és önbizalma is gyengült az elmúlt években

A szlovákiai diákok iskolai teljesítménye fokozatosan gyengül és a rosszabbak közé tartozik a nemzetközi felmérések szerint. Ezt a PISA (Nemzetközi Tanulói Teljesítménymérési Program) 2015-ös felmérése is igazolta, ahol a szlovákiai tanulók átlagon aluli eredményeket értek el.

  A felmérésen 463 pontot szereztek, ez az izraeli, görög és csilei lurkók eredményével hasonlítható össze. Szövegértésben például már csak Mexikó és Törökország teljesít gyengébben Szlovákiánál.

  A PISA a matematikai, olvasási, tudományos és pénzügyi ismereteken kívül vizsgálta a csapatmunkán alapuló problémamegoldás teljesítményét is. E területen a szlovák diákok a 2012-es felméréshez képest 25 ponttal estek vissza, vagyis egyre rosszabbul teljesítenek.

  „Tény, hogy Szlovákia folyamatosan azon országok közé tartozik, ahol átlagon felüli mértékben befolyásolja a diák szociális-gazdasági háttere iskolai teljesítőképességét. Ez azt jelenti, hogy iskolahálózatunk nem karolja fel megfelelően a hátrányos helyzetben lévő gyermekeket, akik nem kapnak elég ösztönzést otthon a szülőktől. Ráadásul az ilyen diákok aránya a diáklétszám keretén belül egyre nő”

  mondta a SITA hírügynökségnek Martina Lubyová (SNS) oktatásügyi miniszter. Hozzátette, fontos tényező az is, hogy a gyermekek belső motivációja és önbizalma is gyengült az elmúlt években.

  A tudományokkal szemben például visszaesett a gyermekek érdeklődése, nem kívánnak vele olyan mértékben foglalkozni, mint korábban, mert nem „okoz nekik személyes örömet”, ha azzal foglalkoznak.

  A PISA-felméréseket háromévente tartják, összesen 72 országban, 540 ezer 15 éves diák bevonásával. Szlovákiában 292 iskola 6350 diákja vett részt benne, köztük szakközépiskolások és gimnazisták is.

  A témában számos cikk jelent meg a Körképen, íme, a leginkább ide vonatkozók:

  http://www.korkep.sk/cikkek/mindennapjaink/2017/08/01/matematika-szovegertes-es-tudomany-terkepre-raktak-a-szlovakiai-oktatasugy-teljesitmenyet

  http://www.korkep.sk/cikkek/tarsadalom/2016/12/06/lesujto-eredmenyeket-hozott-a-legujabb-pisa-felmeres

  http://www.korkep.sk/cikkek/mindennapjaink/2017/09/28/gorcso-alatt-a-felvideki-magyar-oktatasugy-iii-alapiskolak-rangsora-hihetunk-az-osszesitett-listaknak

  Körkép.sk, sme.sk

Nyitókép: sme.sk

[educationtoday2017]

Dollars and sense? Financial literacy among 15-year-olds

by Andreas Schleicher  Director of the Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD Pierre Poret Director of the Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs, OECD

Two in three 15-year-old students earn money from work activity, and more than one in two hold a bank account. And yet, among students in OECD countries who took the 2015 PISA test in financial literacy, fewer than one in three of them reached Level 4 on the assessment – the level that signals the kinds of knowledge and skills that are essential for managing a bank account or a financial task of similar complexity. And the demands on their financial skills rise as students get older: 79% of Australian students took out a public loan in 2013; in the Netherlands, students graduate with an average debt of USD18 000. Being able to interpret financial documents and make financial decisions that take into account longer-term consequences, such as understanding the overall cost implications of a loan, are precisely the kinds of things that students are expected to do in the PISA test. More generally, the PISA assessment seeks to assess students’ knowledge and understanding of financial concepts and risks, and the skills, motivation and confidence to apply such knowledge and understanding in order to make sound decisions across a range of financial contexts. Among the countries with data for 2012 and 2015, only students in Italy and Russia made any headway in their performance in financial literacy. This is worrying because it’s an uphill struggle. Everywhere, people face more challenging financial choices. The spread of digital financial services opens up new opportunities for people once excluded from the financial system; but the digitised system also exposes consumers to new security threats and risks of fraud that are compounded when low financial literacy is combined with poor digital skills and ignorance of cyber security. There are also greater financial risks. More individualised pensions, and more uncertain economic and job prospects due to digitalisation, technological change and globalisation are just some of these. Last but not least, growing inequality means that those with poor skills face particular risks. We don’t expect 15-year-olds to be able to meet all of these challenges. But we should expect them to be able to define their priorities and plan what to spend money on; to remember that some purchases have ongoing costs; to be aware that they can become the victims of fraud; and to know what risk is and what insurance is meant for. Again, that is exactly what the PISA assessment of financial literacy is all about. Parents and families play an important role. PISA results show that when students discuss money matters with their parents, they have significantly higher financial literacy skills, even after accounting for differences in socio-economic background. Young people can also learn on their own by using appropriately regulated financial products in a context where young consumers are adequately protected. The trouble is that all this seems to work just for students from more privileged backgrounds. Advantaged students score the equivalent of more than one PISA proficiency level higher in financial literacy than their disadvantaged peers. That’s equivalent to the difference between being able only to identify a delivery cost that is stated on an invoice and interpreting the various elements of the same invoice to correct a mistake in the billing. This shows how important it is for schools and school systems to play a role in giving all children a fair chance to succeed. Some school systems already do this very well. Students in the four Chinese provinces and municipalities that took part in the test – Beijing, Jiangsu, Guandongand Shanghai – came out well ahead of their peers in every other country. Even more impressive, the socially and economically most disadvantaged quarter of students in these provinces did as well as the second wealthiest quarter of students in the United States, and better than the wealthiest quarter of students in Brazil, Chile and Peru. That raises the question of whether a great school system will automatically help its students to acquire strong financial skills. The answer is not straightforward. On the one hand, having a solid foundation in mathematics and reading is crucial for navigating the financial landscape, from computing percentages to reading a bank statement. On the other hand, the PISA financial literacy assessment reveals that 38% of the variation in financial literacy is not explained by mathematics and reading skills. Many features of financial literacy are unique to the subject. These include being aware that some deals really are too good to be true, understanding the role of income tax, being vigilant for fraudulent e-mails, and knowing one's rights and responsibilities in the financial marketplace. It is also interesting to see that some countries do much better in financial literacy than they do in reading and mathematics. This is the case in the Flemish Community of Belgium, the Canadian provinces that took part in the test, in the four provinces in China and in Russia, where students do better in financial literacy than predicted by mathematics or reading. Educators should not see this as a zero-sum game, where more financial education will take something away from the rigour, focus and coherence that is needed to give students strong foundations in mathematics or reading. Instead, they should look for complementarities, where financial education becomes a context that helps make learning in traditional school disciplines more relevant and interesting. We already find good examples of this in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Lithuania, Peru, the Slovak Republic and the United States. Evidence that there is a positive relationship between performance in financial literacy and holding a bank account or receiving gifts of money, all other things being equal, suggests that some kind of experience with money or financial products can provide students with an opportunity to reinforce financial literacy, or that students who are more financially literate are more motivated to use financial products, and perhaps more confident in doing so. Young people can also learn through after-school initiatives. In some countries, governments and not-for-profits are offering young people videos, competitions, interactive tools and serious games via digital and/or traditional platforms. But the more financial education initiatives are developed, both in and outside of school, the more important it is for governments and other stakeholders to evaluate and prioritise such initiatives and to scale and spread good practice. PISA tells countries how well they are succeeding; the OECD International Network on Financial Education will continue to build and share relevant international expertise and help countries provide the right combination of financial literacy and consumer protection.

Links

PISA 2015 Results (Volume IV): Financial Literacy PISA in Focus No. 72: What do 15-year-olds really know about money? Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Register for a public webinar on Wednesday, 24 May, 1:00pm Europe Summer Time (Paris, GMT +02:00) with Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Education and Skills Directorate. Follow the conversation on twitter: #OECDPISA Join our OECD Teacher Community on Edmodo Photo credit @shutterstock

[educationtoday2017]

Learning in school as a social activity

by Mario Piacentini Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

What do 15-year-old students really need from school and what can school give them for their personal growth? The third volume of PISA 2015 results on students' well-being shows how important it is that education helps them develop not only knowledge and cognitive skills, but also the social and emotional competencies and resilience to thrive in the face of present and future challenges. Schools can attend to these needs, and making schools happy and caring communities is a feasible and worthwhile pursuit. Happy schools are places where children feel challenged but competent, where they work hard but enjoy it, where social relationships are rewarding and respectful, and where academic achievement is the product but not the sole objective. Creating happy schools is the joint responsibility of teachers, parents and students. All of us have memories of at least one teacher who made a difference in our life. My first teacher in elementary school not only taught me everything I wished to know about ancient Egypt; he also helped me to overcome some of my shyness and find my own way to express myself, in personal relationships as in writing. Emanuele, my teacher, used to hide short personal messages in our notebooks, and from these messages we all knew that he cared about us. My other good teachers had very different personalities and taught in very different ways, but all had one thing in common: they established good personal connections with students. If not every single student felt inspired in the same way, the class, as a community, was on the teachers’ side and willing to learn from them. And perhaps this is the main reason why these teachers looked so passionate and seemed so confident about their work. The data from the latest PISA report confirm something that might sound obvious but whose implications are often underestimated: teachers educate for life, and their work is more effective if they can establish rewarding relationships with students. For example, PISA data show that students' anxiety related to school assignments and tests is a big issue in all countries, and that this anxiety is negatively associated with students' achievement and their perceptions of the quality of their life. On average across OECD countries, around 64% of girls and 47% of boys reported that they feel very anxious even if they are well prepared for a test. Students who perceive that their teacher provides individual help when they are struggling were less likely to report feeling tense or anxious. By contrast, students were about 60% more likely to report that they feel very tense when studying if they perceive that their teacher thinks they are less smart than they really are. These data do not imply that teachers are not doing their job well. Rather, they confirm that teaching for the development of the "whole child" is a very difficult job. It requires that the school's objectives and how to achieve them are clearly understood and bought-into by everyone – the whole school staff, parents and students. It also demands that education policy acknowledges and supports the efforts of school communities to build positive learning environments. Positive relationships with parents are another form of social support that enables adolescents to cope with stressful life situations and thrive. PISA 2015 data show that the majority of students in all countries feel that they can rely on their parents if they have difficulties at school. But those students who do not perceive this type of support from their parents, or do not spend time just talking with their parents, are more likely to feel isolated and disengaged from school. Parents can find in teachers important partners for their children's education. Close communication between teachers and parents is essential for conveying consistent messages and supporting children and adolescents in all contexts. For this collaboration to happen, it is important that schools find ways to encourage all parents to participate in school life, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Teachers, school leaders and parents who work together can also reduce the incidence and consequences of the most dangerous threat to students' happiness: bullying. PISA 2015 shows that, in many countries, verbal and psychological bullying occurs frequently, with possibly devastating consequences on the present and future lives of too many children. On average across OECD countries, around 11% of students reported that they are frequently (at least a few times per month) made fun of, 8% reported that they are frequently the object of nasty rumours in school, and 7% reported that they are frequently left out of things. On average across OECD countries, around 4% of students reported that they are hit or pushed at least a few times per month, although this percentage varies from around 1% to 9.5% across countries. PISA does not provide simple answers to what schools, teachers and parents should do to end bullying and improve the quality of life at school. Nor does it establish a ranking of countries regarding students' well-being. This new report gives a snapshot of the life 15-year-old students around the world are living. The large differences in how students – even within the same country – describe their life send the message that well-being is not just about personality and culture, it is also about life experiences at school that teachers and students can improve, together. Learning is a social activity; let's make it work. Links

PISA in Focus No. 71: Are students happy? PISA 2015 Results (Volume III): Students' Well-Being Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) PISA 2015 Results (Volume I): Excellence and Equity in Education PISA 2015 Results (Volume II): Policies and Practices for Successful Schools Join us on Edmodo

Photo credit: Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

[educationtoday2017]

Country Roads: Education and Rural Life

by Marc Fuster Consultant, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

“Country roads, take me home” sang John Denver a while ago and, in fact, improvements in transportation and communication technologies have brought our cities and towns closer together. Some rural regions benefit today from their proximity to social and economic urban centres to attract people and enhance their economic competitiveness. Nevertheless, the attractiveness of rural regions, particularly those more remote, has been dropping off in many OECD countries. The trend is more severe among the young: Rural populations are ageing faster and in some cases declining. The loss of critical mass makes service delivery more difficult and puts economic and social sustainability at risk. Education plays an important role in this equation as knowledge and skills are critical drivers of individual development, community cohesion and economic competitiveness. Yet several challenges for individuals in rural communities remain, such as lower levels of educational achievement and attainment. The urban-rural divide begins in the early stages of education. Access to pre-primary programmes is more limited in rural areas, according to latest PISA data. As students advance in their education, the provision or quality of material resources, the percentage of computers connected to the internet, and the supply of extracurricular activities are all on average lower for pupils in smaller towns. This can have an impact on performance – and indeed, in PISA 2015, urban pupils outperformed rural ones in science by the equivalent of one year of schooling on average. Indeed, rural schools are quite different from urban ones. Rural schools are usually smaller and have lower student-teacher ratios than urban schools. They are also more likely to have a less socio-economically advantaged student body, experience staff shortages and have a lower proportion of qualified teachers. These differences can have both negative and positive implications.           On the one hand, smaller rural schools often combine students of different ages to make more efficient use of resources. This can also facilitate a climate of stronger co-operation and sense of belonging to the school. According to PISA 2015, teachers in rural schools support students in their learning more frequently than teachers in urban schools. On the other hand, although school size does not necessarily determine the level of education provided, larger schools might be in a better position to offer more curricular and extra-curricular options to meet a diverse range of interests and needs, as they benefit from economies of scale (size-related cost advantages). They might also be more able to support teachers to work effectively. Children’s schooling experiences largely depend on the quality of teaching. Nevertheless, teachers may feel insufficiently equipped or be reluctant to move to rural areas. Professionals need good knowledge and skills to teach multi-grade groups and a clear picture of what rurality means and rural communities can offer. Pre-service preparation with regards to rural teaching and living (rural practicums, for example), continuous in-service support, and adequate incentives to take up with work posts in smaller towns can raise both teachers' satisfaction and effectiveness. Making appropriate use of new technologies is of crucial importance too, especially in more remote regions. Multiple forms of distance support can help in meeting the diverse needs and interests of students, widening student learning opportunities and providing more tailored support. ICT may also keep teachers closer to their peers, administrations and teacher education institutions to strengthen their professional position, and even allow schools to benefit from shared instructional materials and human capital in times of school closures due to financial constraints. A new Trends Shaping Education Spotlight provides a closer look to these challenges and opportunities for education in rural regions. Rapidly growing urbanisation is undoubtedly one of the main characteristics of our time but, as Asterix would say, some small villages still indomitably hold out against it. Access to quality education is a key for them to thrive. Links

Trends Shaping Education Spotlight No. 9: Country Roads Trends Shaping Education 2016 OECD Regions at a Glance 2016

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)

Join us on Edmodo Photo source: Child goes on a country road. Sunlight. @shutterstock

[educationtoday2017]

Have emerging Latin American countries chosen quantity over quality in education?

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. Conditions have not been as auspicious elsewhere. Consider Latin America. As shown in the chart above – taken from the most recent Education Indicators in Focus brief on educational attainment and investment in education in Ibero-American countries – the progress made in Chile, Colombia and Brazil between the two generations, separated by the same 30 years, is more than double the OECD average. In contrast, over 50% of 25-34 year-olds in both Costa Rica and Mexico lack an upper secondary education. The chart also offers a comparison with Spain and Portugal, with which these Latin American countries share language, history and culture. Despite their location on the European continent and their integration in the European Union, both countries do not compare favourably with their counterparts in the Ibero-American world. Still, over the past 30 years, Portugal has made impressive progress in catching up to attainment levels observed in most other European countries. These achievements are remarkable; but the obvious question is: has this change in educational attainment been matched with a similar rise in skills? Put another way: has the quality of education and learning outcomes been maintained during a time of massive expansion? As shown by the latest results from the Survey of Adult Skills for Chile – the only Ibero-American country that participated in the survey apart from Spain – 25-34 year-olds scored around 50 points higher in literacy then 55-64 year-olds did – a significant difference that is also larger than that observed in most other participating countries. However, the level of literacy proficiency remains relatively low. The younger cohort scored around 235 points, on average, on the literacy scale, while the OECD average score is around 280 points. Even with an educational attainment level close to the OECD average, the actual level of literacy skills among these younger adults is significantly lower than the OECD average. Chilean 16-24 year-olds who have upper secondary education or who are still in education scored around 235 points in literacy – which is far below all of the other participating countries and economies, except Jakarta in Indonesia. Even if limited to one country, these data suggest that achieving impressive growth in educational attainment in emerging Latin American countries is not sufficient – and, in fact, can be deceptive. The real challenge is to improve the quality of education so that young people leave the system equipped with the skills that their economies and societies need to foster sustainable progress. The scores on the PISA 2015 reading assessment (which measures the skills of 15-year-olds) for Colombia (425 points), Mexico (423 points) and Brazil (407 points) – all well below the score for Chile (459 points) – suggest that the challenges implicit in maintaining quality are even greater among those other emerging Latin American countries. The shift in focus from access and attainment to quality of learning embodied in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for education, agreed upon by the whole world, is thus very timely and much needed. The emerging economies of the world, and the developing countries in their wake, should do more than just bridge the gap with the developed world in formal education levels; they should ensure that young adults emerge from their education systems with skills that matter. The price to be paid for neglecting this political imperative is disillusion among young people when their qualifications do not deliver on their promises, and ultimately stalled economic growth and thwarted social progress. Links Education Indicators in Focus No. 50: Educational attainment and investment in education in Ibero-American countries Skills in Ibero-America: Insights from PISA 2012 Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators PISA 2015 Results

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Education Follow the conversation on twitter: #OECDEAG Chart source: OECD, Education at a Glance (database), http://stats.oecd.org

[educationtoday2017]

Doctors and nurses are from Venus, scientists and engineers are from Mars (for now)

By Francesco Avvisati  Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

There is little doubt that in OECD countries, the chances for boys and girls to succeed and contribute to society have become more equal over the past century. Every International Women’s Day, however, we are also reminded of the remaining obstacles towards gender equality. This month’s PISA in Focus illustrates both the progress that enables girls today to aspire to roles once exclusively reserved for men, and the remaining obstacles on the road to closing gender gaps. The progress can be readily seen in the health sector. Only a generation ago, in most countries, women represented only a minority among doctors; today, in many hospitals, the majority of young doctors are women. That trend is likely to continue, if you trust current patterns of enrolment in tertiary health-related programmes and in girls’ expectations for their own future careers. But not all science-related occupations saw similar progress for women. Very few women have top academic positions in physics, for instance, and the last time a Nobel prize in physics was awarded to a woman was in 1963. Meanwhile, new occupations in the emerging information and communication technology industries are often, and overwhelmingly, dominated by men. These trends are unlikely to reverse in the near future, in the absence of targeted efforts. In 2015, when PISA asked students about the occupation they expect to be working in when they are 30 years old, boys were more than twice as likely as girls to cite a career as scientist or engineering professional. Only 0.4% of girls, but 4.8% of boys, said they expected a career as software developer or information and communication technology professional. Occupational segregation – the fact that women and men work in different occupations, even in closely related fields – is a leading cause of the persistent wage gaps between the genders. Countries that support boys and girls alike in the pursuit of science-related careers may not only reduce pay gaps between men and women, but also ensure that no talent for innovation and growth is wasted – to the benefit of all. Look at the contributions to society made by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (who was involved in the work that identified the human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] as the cause of AIDS), Grace Hopper (a US Navy Rear Admiral and computer scientist who was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and invented the first compiler for a computer programming language) and Marie Curie (a pioneer in research on radioactivity and winner of two Nobel prizes – in two different science disciplines), to name just three women who were innovators in their chosen fields of science. An International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrated earlier this month, serves as an annual reminder that women do have a place in these fields and that they should be encouraged to occupy it. But wouldn’t it be more beneficial to everyone if we acted on that understanding every single day? Links PISA in Focus No. 69: What kind of careers in science do 15-year-old boys and girls expect for themselves? PISA 2015 Results (Volume I): Excellence and Equity in Education Education at a Glance 2016 Closing the Gender Gap: Act Now Health at a Glance 2015 International Women's Day

International Day of Women and Girls in Science photo credit: 1950's COMPUTER @shutterstock

[educationtoday2017]

Mind the Gap: Inequality in education

by Tracey Burns Senior Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … we had everything before us, we had nothing before us "... 

Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in 1859. Almost two centuries later, his words remind us of what a very serious challenge inequity is.

Inequality has been growing in most OECD countries since the 1980s and is currently at its highest level in 30 years. Forecasts for 2060 suggest that gross earnings inequality could continue to rise dramatically across the OECD if current trends persist.

The widening income gap between the rich and the poor raises economic, social and political concerns. High inequality hinders GDP growth and reduces social mobility. Unequal opportunity results in a talent loss for the individual as well as for society. It also gives rise to a sense of injustice that can feed social unrest and decreasing trust in institutions and political systems. 

Inequality in education plays out in many ways. Disadvantaged students are three times as likely to be among PISA’s poor performers as children from socio-economically advantaged backgrounds. Students from advantaged families are more likely to come from home environments that are conducive to learning, including a quiet place to study and access to the Internet. In addition, their parents are more likely to have the time and ability to help them with their homework and encourage them to study. Students without these opportunities are thus disadvantaged before entering school, and continue to be disadvantaged as they go through the education system.

It has been said before but it bears repeating: greater equity in education does not come at the expense of excellence. Some of the top performers in PISA 2015 had the highest levels of equity, such as Estonia, Hong Kong (China) and Macao (China). Working to improve the educational opportunities of all students, regardless of background, is an important element in the fight against inequality. 

So what exactly can be done? An important first step is providing access to high quality early childhood education (ECEC) for all children. There is now a wealth of evidence, including longitudinal studies, that investing in ECEC yields high returns in boosting cognitive and non-cognitive skills, as well as later success in the labour market, especially for disadvantaged children.

Once in school, the quality of instruction and available resources matter. Improving the performance of disadvantaged schools is crucial: On average, advantaged schools in the OECD have lower student teacher ratios, meaning more individualised attention to each student. They also tend to have more qualified and more experienced teachers. This means that novice teachers are more likely to be placed in lower achieving and more challenging schools. 

This is a real concern. In addition to being in the classroom for the first time, new teachers can find themselves faced with the highest needs students and in the lowest achieving schools. This can lead directly to frustration and burn-out. Mentoring programmes can play a key role in supporting new teachers and school leaders on the job. But so does addressing systemic biases that work against disadvantaged schools.

The latest Trends Shaping Education Spotlight looks at what education providers can do to create school systems that provide equal opportunity for all students, regardless of their background. It offers interesting examples of how systems and schools tackle the inequality challenge. It also identifies where more effort is needed, and some common policies that should be avoided or fine-tuned, such as grade repetition and certain kinds of early tracking.

Education is and will continue to be a critical tool to ensure growth and inclusiveness in our societies. Workers’ skills, educational attainment and ability do not only determine employment and income but are also crucial for health, social and political participation and living standards. Our education systems need to ensure that all students, irrespective of social background, have equal access to opportunity in schools and in the labour market. This means shifting the focus of our schools to academic excellence as well as strengthening equity, because only when excellence and equity go hand in hand will we be able to reduce inequality.

Links:

Trends Shaping Education 2016 PISA 2015 Results (Volume I) : Excellence and Equity in Education  2015 PISA Results in Focus  OECD (2015):  In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 

Photo credit: Boy jumps through hula hoop at the park @shutterstock