How successful are the OECD nations at expanding education opportunities to their residents? How is investing in education beneficial for individuals and societies - financially, socially, and culturally? How equitably are learning and job opportunities being distributed within countries?
And over all, how are countries placed to meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals in education by 2030? Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators offers a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators measuring the current state of education internationally. As this edition shows, considerable progress has been achieved in the last years but accessible education remains a challenge for all countries:
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A selection of indicators from Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult Skills .
Adults who are highly proficient in literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments, as measured by the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), are likely to be able to make the most
of the opportunities created by the technological and structural changes modern societies are going through. Those who struggle to use new technologies are at greater risk of losing out.
Adults with a higher proficiency tend to have not only better outcomes in the labour market than their less-proficient peers (in terms of employment and wages), but they also report better
results in many aspects of individual well-being. Individuals with a higher proficiency in literacy report to be healthier, believe to have more impact on the political process, trust more
in others, and participate more in volunteer or associative activities.
Skills measured in the survey are far from being equally distributed. In almost all countries/economies, around one in five adults has poor reading skills, one in four adults has no or
only limited experience with computers or lacks confidence in their ability to use computers and nearly one in two adults have a low proficiency in problem solving in technology-rich environments.
Various factors are associated with lower skills. One is age, older adults (55-65 year-olds) score lower in literacy than 25-34 year-olds. Moreover, gender gaps in proficiency –
which are negligible in literacy and are slightly in favour of men in numeracy – are also more pronounced among older cohorts. Parents’ educational background, a proxy
for socio-economic status, also exerts a significant influence on adults’ proficiency in literacy.
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A selection of indicators from The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence,
Education at a Glance 2015,
PIAAC and
TALIS.
Gender inequality
in education and in the
labour market
is a reality and a challenge in various OECD countries. While girls perform better than boys in reading, they score lower in math, and lack self-confidence in scientific subjects. Such differences cannot be explained by differences in ability as girls in top-performing education systems score much higher in math than boys in most other OECD countries; the same is true for boys in reading. On the labour market, even though women outnumber men among university graduates, their employment rates and earnings lag behind those of men. Gender differences reported in student performance, graduation rates, employment rates, and earnings highlight the challenge faced by many governments to create
more equal opportunities
for boys and girls on many fronts. Policies that can help promote gender equality include: better
teaching practices
that encourage girls to be interested in science and maths and boys to read more;
affordable childcare
to allow more women to work full-time; and
investment in education
that translates into more equal
employment conditions.
A selection of indicators from PISA 2012 results: Low-performing students: Why they fall behind and how to help them succeed
About 13 million 15-year-old students in the 64 countries and economies that participated in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
did not attain a baseline level of proficiency in at least one of three subjects: mathematics, reading and science. The share of low performers was 23% in
mathematics and 18% in reading and science. Some 12% of students were low performers in all three subjects. Students who perform poorly at age 15 face a
high risk of being trapped in a vicious cycle of poor performance and disengagement that may lead to school dropout with serious consequences for individuals
and societies. The new PISA report describes how different risk factors, such as gender, having an immigrant background, a disadvantaged socio-economic
profile, having repeated a grade, lacking pre-primary school or living in rural areas accumulate over the years to gather a perfect storm of low performance among young students.
Lacking the knowledge and the
skills
to enter a
labour market
that values high-skilled workers, low-performing students are set on a road to compounded
risk in adult life. The good news is that the path to low student achievement can be reversed. In fact, this is an effective way to improve an education
system’s overall performance
and
equity .
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(or browse more
indicators from PISA 2012
)