This spotlight report draws upon the OECD report Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools.

This spotlight report draws upon the OECD report Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools.

The report highlights strategies from other countries that could serve as a model for England as it develops its early childhood education and care programme.

OECD Education Newsletter

Join around 500 higher education policy-makers, institutional leaders and academic experts active in higher education at the biennial General Conference of the OECD’s Programme for Institutional Management in Higher Education on 17-19 September in Paris.

We all know how important the first years of formal education are; but what if the education provided during those years isn’t the best it can be?

Korea should reform its vocational education and training programmes to ensure that students leave college with the skills and expertise that companies need in today’s rapidly changing labour market, according to a new OECD report.

Denmark should build on the strengths of its vocational and educational training programme to ensure that young people enter the labour market with the skills companies need and to meet the national goal of having 60% of young people enter higher education by 2020, according to a new OECD report.

The relative earnings premium for those with a tertiary education increased in most EU21 countries over the past ten years, indicating that the demand for more educated individuals still exceeds supply.

L’école maternelle est ouverte au plus grand nombre en France malgré un investissement par élève moindre par rapport à la moyenne des pays de l’OCDE, ce qui se traduit par un taux d’encadrement (enseignants et auxiliaires d’éducation confondus) plus élevé en France que dans la plupart des pays de l’OCDE.

Germany’s early childhood education system is fairly well-developed: 96% of four-year-olds are enrolled in early childhood education programmes, and 89% of three-year-olds are. These levels are well above the respective OECD averages of 79% and 66%.

Although the salaries of experienced teachers in Japan are high relative to other OECD countries, their starting salaries are lower and working hours are longer. Moreover, different from the trend across OECD countries, teachers’ salaries have been declining since 2000 in real terms.

Virtually all three-year-olds in Spain are enrolled in school, most of them in public institutions. Spain’s expenditure on pre-primary education (for public institutions) amounts to 0.9% of GDP, compared to the OECD average of 0.5% of the combined GDP.

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - United Kingdom

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - United States

Education at a Glance 2012 - Country Note for Germany (german)

Australia’s education system achieves good outcomes overall - attainment of upper secondary education by adults aged 25 to 34 was 85% in 2010, above the OECD average of 82%

Canada ranks first among OECD countries in the proportion of adults with a college (tertiary-type 5B) education (24%) and ranks 8th in the proportion of adults with a university (tertiary-type 5A) education (26%).

Entry rates for higher education increased after Italy introduced a new degree structure in the early 2000s. While university-level attainment still remains below the OECD average, the gap for younger generations of Italians is expected to narrow over the next decade.

Since making pre-primary education compulsory in 2009, Mexico has achieved one of the highest enrolment rates of four-year-old children among OECD countries, but high student-teacher ratios pose significant challenges for early childhood education and care.

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - Portugal

The high educational attainment level of the Russian population continues to increase. 88% of the adult population have attained at least upper secondary education and 54% have a tertiary qualification.

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - Spain (Spanish)

Sweden enjoys an 81.5% employment rate for all levels of education – the second highest rate of all OECD countries after Iceland (Table A7.1b).

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - Japan (Japanese)

Brazil boasts one of the largest increases in expenditure on education between 2000 and 2009 among the countries for which data was available.

Education at a Glance 2012 - Country Note - Canada (French)

Korea has reduced the share of individuals without upper secondary education while the proportion of tertiary-educated individuals increased rapidly over the past 14 years.

The 2012 edition of Education at a Glance enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ educational performance.

Governments should increase investment in early childhood programmes and maintain reasonable costs for higher education in order to reduce inequality, boost social mobility and improve people’s employment prospects, according to a new OECD report.

As the spectre of another economic downturn looms large in many countries and is already a reality in others, new data from the 2012 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators – released today – provides powerful insights into the link between education, economic progress and social mobility around the world.

Whereas expenditure on education and expenditure per student increased significantly between 2000 and 2009, Estonia has seen the largest drop in education funding since the global recession, compared to other OECD countries.

A modern day Bulgarian proverb says “What money can’t buy, a lot of money can”. Sadly, the truth of this popular wisdom holds well beyond the country it comes from. Sadly too, it seems to work well in schools and universities. Year by year Transparency International (TI), an international anti-corruption NGO, publishes data on the perceptions and experience of people from around the globe...

More people than even before now reach a level of educational attainment equivalent to upper secondary education. The available evidence is very conclusive: this level of education can be considered a minimum level to ensure a job and a living wage.

Did you know that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development helped to lay the groundwork for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals? Even though Development is part of our name, there are many people who don’t realise just how much of our resources are devoted to developing economies and not only to the development of the OECD’s 34 member countries.

education quality, improving education

The U.S. is now the only country in the industrialised world in which the generation entering the workforce does not have higher college attainment levels than the generation about to leave the workforce. While that is in part due to the traditionally high levels of college attainment in the U.S, an increasing number of countries have approached and surpassed U.S. graduation levels and others are bound to follow over the coming years.

When we think of innovation in education these days, we immediately think of technology: getting more computers into more classrooms, offering online courses to students in higher education. - See more at: http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.fr/2012/12/oecd-education-today-and-tomorrow.html#sthash.dv2MKgEf.dpuf

What does the OECD have to say about the state of education today? What are the main OECD messages on early childhood education, teacher policies and tertiary education? What about student performance, educational spending and equity in education? OECD work on these important education topics and others have been brought together in a single accessible source updating the first edition of Education Today which came out in March 2009.

This interactive chart, designed by Krisztina Szucs and Mate Cziner from Hungary, condenses highly complex data on the costs and benefits of education around the world. It clearly highlights important facts showing students, parents and policy makers where the real costs and benefits lie for them in relation to education

This seminar will provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences on issues such as the influence of accelerated commercialization of education and a knowledge-based society.

In Colombia, the beginning of a new century has brought with it a palpable feeling of optimism. Colombians and visitors sense that the country’s considerable potential can be realised, and education is rightly seen as crucial to this process. As opportunities expand, Colombians will need new and better skills to respond to new challenges and prospects.

The exceptional turnout at the 2013 OECD/Japan Seminar in Tokyo this week, where over 300 participants from over 20 countries discussed global strategies for higher education, shows that the seminar had exactly the right agenda at exactly the right time. I asked myself how many people would have turned up had this seminar been held five years ago; or whether five years ago, Japan would have ventured to take the lead on this theme.

Most of us think of education as the great leveller; but are our education systems really doing all they can to ensure that boys and girls from all backgrounds have an equal shot at a high-quality education? As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, some countries have been more successful than others in levelling the playing field for their students.

Education is one OECD department that has embraced the information revolution.

In many OECD countries, ECEC services have increased in response to a growing demand for better learning outcomes as well as growing female labour force participation. In recent years, however, the goals of ECEC policy have become more child-centred.

The higher the level of education, the higher the salary cost of teachers per student. In Belgium (Flemish Community), France and Spain, the difference in the annual salary cost between the primary and upper secondary levels of education exceeds USD 1 800 in 2010.

Rather than prescribe actions, the OECD often prefers to show policy makers what everyone else is doing and how successful those initiatives have been. A new OECD series of individual Education Policy Outlook Country Profiles does just that: each profile describes how an individual country is responding to key challenges to improve the effectiveness of its education system.

The Education policy Outlook is a new publication that uses existing knowledge to review education policies and reforms across OECD countries. It will build on substantial comparative and sectorial policy knowledge and on the experience of policy outlooks already developed across the OECD.