MOVIBES

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

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

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

by Carlos González-Sancho
Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Most people see social inequities in education as stubbornly persistent. Children of wealthy and highly educated parents tend to do better in school than children from less-privileged families. Even though historic progress has been made in providing schooling that is universal and free-of-charge, disparities in families’ capacity to support their children (including by getting them into good schools) continue to translate into differences in children’s achievements. And with income inequality at its highest level in 30 years, the socio-economic disparities between families have widened. For instance, today in OECD countries, the richest 10% of the population earns about 10 times the income of the poorest 10%, while in the 1980s this ratio stood at 7 to 1. The growing gap between rich and poor can lead to greater differences in education opportunities because, as income inequality increases, disadvantaged families find it more difficult to secure quality education for their children.

Given all this, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see a change for the worse in equity in education, particularly in OECD countries, over the past decade.

But contrary to that expectation, as this month’s PISA in Focus reports, over the past ten years, equity in education improved in 11 PISA-participating countries and economies, and on average across OECD countries. Between PISA 2006 and PISA 2015, the evolution of several equity indicators was predominantly positive. Take, for example, the indicator that measures how well a student’s socio-economic status predicts his or her performance (what PISA terms the strength of the socio-economic gradient). Over the past decade, the socio-economic gradient weakened by 1 percentage point on average across OECD countries, but by between 6 and 7 percentage points in Bulgaria, Chile, Thailand and the United States, and by between 2 and 6 percentage points in Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Mexico, Montenegro and Slovenia.

PISA can also contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which equity evolves. A sign that greater equity is mainly benefiting disadvantaged students is the increasing proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who beat the odds against them and perform at high levels (students whom PISA calls “resilient”). Between 2006 and 2015, the percentage of resilient students increased by 12 percentage points in the United States, and by between 4 and 9 points in Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany and Slovenia.

You can also get an idea of how performance among children of blue- and white-collar parents has evolved by using the new PISA trends in occupations tool. The tool allows users to visualise trends in the relationship between parents' occupations and children’s performance between 2006 and 2015. Navigating this tool, you can discover, for instance, that in the United States during that period, children of blue-collar parents (e.g. craft workers, plant and machine operators) narrowed the gap in science achievement with children of white-collar parents (managers, professionals, technicians).

What lies behind this improvement in equity? Education policy. Policies that minimise any adverse impact of students’ socio-economic status on their school outcomes include targeting additional resources to schools with high concentrations of low-performing and disadvantaged students, and ensuring that high and consistent teaching and learning standards are applied across all classrooms. Broader social policies to reduce differences in early life experiences between advantaged and disadvantaged children can also promote both equity and high performance when these children enter formal education.

PISA shows that countries can move from relative inequity in education to the OECD average level of equity in the span of just 10 years – as Bulgaria, Chile, Germany and the United States did between 2006 and 2015. Rather than assuming that inequality of opportunity is set in stone, school systems can design policies with the understanding that they can become more equitable in a relatively short time.

Links:
PISA in Focus No. 68: Where did equity in education improve over the past decade?
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
In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All
PISA trends in occupations tool, developed by Przemyslaw Biecek, a former Thomas J. Alexander fellow.

by Anthony Mann 
Director of Policy and Research, Education and Employers Taskforce, London, UK
Dr Elnaz T. Kashefpakdel 
Senior Researcher, Education and Employers Taskforce, London, UK

by Gabriela Ramos
OECD Chief of Staff and Sherpa to the G20
Fifteen years ago, the OECD started evaluating education systems worldwide by testing the knowledge and competences of 15-year-old students through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Right from very first PISA exercise in 2000, we noted that although the results for France were around the OECD average, they revealed a system where children’s socio-economic status had a disproportionate influence on their school grades, and where children from disadvantaged backgrounds did not receive enough support.

The OECD PISA 2015 results are now in. Even if France’s performance hasn’t deteriorated since the last series in 2012, it has not improved much compared to previous rounds either. France’s results for science and mathematics are around the OECD average, while reading comprehension is slightly above average.

Nonetheless, the French system is still markedly two-tier. The number of high-performing students is stable and higher than the OECD average, but lower levels are not improving, with a proportion of 15-year-olds in difficulty in science higher than the OECD average.

According to PISA 2015, students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are three times less likely to succeed in performing than advantaged students. This is not only a human tragedy. It is also a brake on economic development, which can only be solid and sustainable when it is inclusive.

Reconciling educational excellence and success for all is not just the best way to tackle social inequalities at the root, but also to obtain good results.

Results from around the globe illustrate various best practices applied to improve the equity and performance of the education system. Portugal’s TEIP programme for example (Priority Intervention Education Territories) targets investment in geographical regions where the population is socially disadvantaged and where school dropout rates are higher than the national average. Singapore, first in the PISA science rankings, has a comprehensive teacher evaluation system that includes, in particular, the contribution to students’ personal and academic development, as well as the quality of parent-teacher relations.

In short, the capacity of a system to help students in difficulty and those from disadvantaged backgrounds to improve raises the general quality of the system and thus its overall performance.

In France however, investments in education do not always reach these groups. I had some personal experience of this malfunctioning when I arrived in France and asked people to recommend primary schools for my own children. The answer was: “Don’t pick a school, pick a neighbourhood”.

How can we ensure that success at school isn’t the result of a postcode lottery? France has already implemented reforms going in the right direction.

As recommended by the OECD, more resources, teachers, scholarships and support have been made available for disadvantaged students. The July 2003 Education Act (Loi d’orientation et de programmation pour la refondation de l’école de la République du 8 juillet 2013) designed to tackle school drop-out and failure from the earliest age marks an important step. The recent implementation of numerous reforms inspired by the Act at primary and junior high levels, could, depending on their practical application, respond to certain ongoing challenges and help to improve students’ learning and outcomes.

Of course it is too early to see any impact of these reforms on PISA 2015 scores. However, they were necessary and should be strengthened and evaluated regularly.

In France, as elsewhere in the past, teachers will play a key role in the reforms and will have to take ownership of the main objectives. Reform of teacher training should therefore be continued and made a priority.

It is important to stress that contrary to a commonly-held belief in France, the PISA 2015 results do not show that reforms designed to reduce social and educational inequalities result in a lowering of the overall level. On the contrary. In countries that carried out such reforms, the number of failing students dropped in the following decade, while the good students got even better. OECD countries that have managed to achieve high performance in science along with equity in terms of educational outcomes include Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Japan, Korea, Norway and the United Kingdom according to PISA 2015.

We chose science as the focus of PISA 2015 because a good understanding of science and the technologies derived from it is indispensable, especially in our age of digital revolution. This is not only a necessity for those whose career depends directly on science, but for every citizen who wants to take an enlightened position on any number of questions facing society today, from health to sustainable development or climate change. Today, everyone should be able to “think like a scientist”.

More generally, education is fundamental in these troubled times, when populism is on the rise, when France has been shaken by several terrorist attacks, and social inequalities in the world have left by the wayside a number of citizens who no longer have any trust in institutions.

More than ever, we have to invest in our children’s science education, to respond to the “post-fact” era with an open and informed dialogue. More than ever, we have to strengthen our education systems to face up to the challenges that increasingly threaten to divide us.

Links:
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
PowerPoint (in French)
PISA 2015 - Compare your country by OECD
Photo credit: © Iakov Filimonov / Shutterstock

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

The latest results from PISA are released today. Before you look to see how well your country performed on the triennial test of 15-year-olds students around the world, consider this: only 20 short years ago, there was no such thing as a blog. If it weren’t for science and technology, not only would you not be reading this right now, but there wouldn’t be the device on which you’re reading it – or countless other gadgets, medicines, fibres, tools… that have become all but indispensable in our lives.

Obviously, we don’t all have to be scientists to live in the 21st century. But an understanding of some basic principles of science – like the importance of experiments in building a body of scientific knowledge – is essential if we want to make informed decisions about the most pressing issues of our time (or even if we just want to choose the “healthiest” option for lunch).

PISA 2015 focused on students’ performance in and attitudes towards science. More than half a million 15-year-olds (representing around 29 million students) in 72 countries and economies sat the test. Today is the day we find out whether students around the world can take what they have learned in school and use it to solve problems they might encounter in “real” life.



So tap into the world’s most comprehensive set of data on learning. You’ll probably learn something, too.

Links:
PISA 2015 Results (Volume I): Excellence and Equity in Education
PISA 2015 Results (Volume II): Policies and Practices for Successful Schools
PISA 2015 Results in Focus
PISA 2015 Résultats à la loupe
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Tomorrow, the OECD will publish the 2015 PISA results. The world’s premier global metric for education will tell us which countries have the best school systems, based on the performance of 15-year-olds in science, mathematics and reading over a two-hour test. 

PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment) was introduced in 2000 and held every three years since. The test is of skills, not knowledge: what you can do with what you know is what counts. But over time the emphasis has shifted. The focus today is whether students can think like a scientist, reason like a mathematician and distinguish between good and bad arguments in a written text. We live in an era of unimaginable technology breakthroughs, conflicting values and threatened political norms. Literacy, in all three of the foundational domains, is the key to making sense of the world and shaping it for the better - for everyone, not just elites.

The value of PISA lies in comparison. Countries look beyond their borders for evidence of effective policy and PISA provides a yardstick for evaluating success. It ranks the performance of countries on quality, equity and efficiency. And by picking out the characteristics of high-performing systems, it allows educators to identify successful policies and adapt them to local contexts.   

In the last PISA round, in 2012, the best performing countries were in Asia. Asian countries took the top five spots in both mathematics and reading and the top four in science (with Finland in fifth place). But behind the headlines lie important insights. In Estonia and Finland there were only small variations in student scores, showing that quality can go hand-in-hand with inclusion. In Canada, Macao and Hong Kong, socio-economic disadvantage among students had relatively less impact on individual performance: poverty is one thing, destiny quite another.  

So what will we learn from PISA 2015? For the first time in a decade, the report concentrates on science. Has science education improved? Around the world, have 15-year-olds got better at explaining phenomena scientifically, designing scientific enquiry and interpreting data scientifically? Is the gender gap in science education closing? Have poorer students caught up? And where countries have maintained high performance or improved from where they were, what were the factors? Where should the balance lie between additional investment, great teaching and coherent long-term leadership?

The global stakes are high, first because of growing demand for scientists in the workplace, second because every one of us needs a scientific perspective. The demand for scientists comes from the transformational impact of science and technology. Given the accelerating pace of invention and innovation, its vital that countries prepare more young talent for more jobs in hard science - and for many other jobs with a science dimension. The broader need for scientific literacy stems from the centrality of science to everyday decisions. Whether buying toothpaste, recycling household waste or attending a meeting on the local effects of global warming, we are all subject to science-based claims and counter-claims. Can we separate substance from spin, identify misrepresentations and assess levels of uncertainty and trustworthiness?  Post-truth politics is the neologism of the year and in some quarters expertise itself has become a dirty word. It is time to stand our ground – to insist on education as the key to civilised societies.

In many countries, educators are talking not only about skills but also values and attitudes. Singapore, Australia, Canada, Estonia and Finland – all of them among the top performing countries in previous PISA cycles - are rebuilding curricula around new forms of competence, such as critical and inventive thinking, global awareness and collaboration. They see values such as tolerance and respect as foundational. PISA too is developing rapidly. Next year we will publish the results of an additional 2015 assessment of collaborative problem solving, and we have advanced plans for assessing inter-cultural sensitivity in 2018. Creativity, entrepreneurship and ethical thinking are all under consideration for future cycles.

But with the seventy PISA countries and economies, the OECD believes that the bedrock of a good education should continue to lie in science, mathematics and reading. Literacy in all three offers prosperity, fulfilment and a chance to contribute to the well-being of others. Tomorrow, PISA 2015 will tell the world about its progress.  

PISA 2015 Global launch events

The OECD and Education Policy Institute will host a global launch event in London at the Institute of Directors with OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills.

The event will be live streamed from 09:45 – 12:20 GMT

This will be followed by on online public Q & A session starting at 2:00 GMT with Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills. Questions in advance of the session will be welcome, using the #OECDPISA hashtag on Twitter and via the OECD PISA Learning Community

Links:
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Sorry, we can’t divulge the results (those will be announced on 6 December); but now that we have your attention, we thought you might like to learn a little more about the test, itself, so that when the results are finally announced, you’ll have a better idea of what those results mean.

PISA 2015 focused on science, with the understanding that, although not every student is interested in becoming a scientist, all of us now need to be able to “think like a scientist” sometimes – to be able to weigh evidence and come to a conclusion, and to understand that scientific “truth” may change over time, as new discoveries are made. This month’s PISA in Focus walks you through a typical question in the PISA science test and explains what it can show about students’ proficiency in science. Each question is designed to reveal a certain skill or set of skills. In PISA 2015, these skills included explaining phenomena scientifically (based on knowledge of scientific facts and ideas), evaluating and designing scientific enquiry, and interpreting data and evidence scientifically. 

If you’re curious to see how you might do on the PISA science test, you can test yourself on a few sample science questions at www.oecd.org/pisa. And if you want a broader idea of how PISA works – which schools and students get to participate, what PISA really aims to do, and how participating countries and economies might use PISA results – take a look at the short, animated video, “How does PISA work?” at the same address.

Now, we know that you really want to find out the results of the PISA 2015 test, so…

Come back on 6 December!

Links:
PISA in Focus No. 66: How does PISA assess science literacy? Francesco Avvisati
PISA à la loupe n° 66: Comment l'enquête PISA évalue-t-elle la culture scientifique ? 
Find out more about PISA: oecd.org/edu/pisa
Photo credit: © Hero Images Inc. / Hero Images Inc. / Corbis.