The Education

by Anna Choi Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills , OECD Koji Miyamoto Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills , OECD Common sense and hard evidence point to the significant impact of socio-emotional skills such as perseverance and responsibility on children's lifetime success. Empowered children are much more likely to finish college, maintain healthy lifestyles and be happy. Both parental and teacher experiences as well as emerging studies also underlie that social and emotional skills can be particularly malleable from childhood until adolescence. *Sample limited to white males with at least a high school diploma The OECD report: "Skills for progress report" shows that American high school students who were at the highest decile of social and emotional skills distribution are 4 times more likely to self-report completing college than those who are in the middle decile (median). Needless to say, a growing number of evidence indicate how these skills c...

by Montserrat Gomendio Deputy Director, Directorate for Education and Skills Activities undertaken by lower secondary teachers at least once per month, OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013 A new OECD review of the Netherlands education system offers a roadmap towards excellence. Netherlands 2016: Foundations for the Future , based on data from both PISA and the Survey of Adult Skills, confirms that the country already enjoys a high-quality and highly equitable education system. But it also identifies areas that need to be improved as the country moves its education system, in the words of Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker, “from good to great”. The Dutch school system is highly stratified, and uses early tracking extensively. For a long time the Netherlands has made this complex school system work well for students: students performed well at school, socio-economic status had a relatively weak impact on performance, and were readily...

by Bonaventura Francesco Pacileo Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills When Tim Duncan, captain of the the US National Basketball Association’s San Antonio Spurs, was spotted wearing a T-shirt saying “4 out of 3 people struggle with math”, everyone realised that he was counting himself among those who have a hard time with fractions, making the joke even funnier. What is less funny, though, is that PISA 2012 results  show that more than one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries are only able to solve mathematics problems where all relevant information is obvious and the solutions follow immediately from the given stimuli. As a professional basketball player, Tim Duncan would probably agree that hard work is a prerequisite for attaining individual goals. Working hard is also important in education. According to this month’s PISA in Focus  and the recently published report Low-performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed , most low...

by Andreas Schleicher Director, Directorate for Education and Skills How Do We Stack Up? Using OECD'S PISA to Drive Progress in U.S. Education from EdPolicy Leaders Online . How are policy makers in the United States using data to help districts maximise their impact? And, what tools do districts need to work together in order to build stronger communities?  The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in the United States has transferred a great deal of autonomy to states and districts. These local authorities are now responsible for transforming state and federal policies into strategies and practices that guide teaching and learning in the classroom. This allocated autonomy creates opportunities for states and districts to collaborate, but also adds an element of the unknown, since most decisions used to be taken at the federal level. Data are crucial to understanding the effect policies have on education systems at a local level. But, collecting the right kind of data can be challeng...