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What is the relationship between literacy and single-parent families?

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By Nicolas Jonas Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills Photo credit: Alexander Dummer/ Unsplash Single parenthood is an increasingly common phenomenon across many OECD countries, and one that affects primarily (though not exclusively) women. It can also have an impact on learning, as single parents face unique challenges. The pressure of balancing work and family can limit a single parent’s professional development, the well-being of their household and the development of their children. But little is known about how a single parent’s literacy proficiency and cognitive ability are related to children’s education results. In a new working paper , we analyse data from the Survey of Adult Skills to examine the relationship between literacy proficiency and a range of family-related indicators – including fertility rates and family composition. This relationship has potentially important implications for social and education policy, as the family, together with schooling, is o...
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TALIS 2018: Why we’re asking teachers about their work

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By Pablo Fraser Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills Photo credit: Shutterstock When we launched the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) more than 10 years ago, we began with a simple question: what can teachers tell us about their work? At the time, this was a novel approach; TALIS was the first global survey to ask teachers and school leaders about their work and learning environments. But over time, it’s become clear that a better understanding of the conditions under which teachers work (and students learn) can help countries face diverse challenges and improve policies. Our first report, released in 2008, focused on the most important issues that teachers face in their careers, such as the importance of school leadership, professional development opportunities and the implementation of effective pedagogical practices. The 2013 TALIS conducted a more in-depth analysis of these topics, and broadened its scope to 34 countries. Now, we’re preparing to rel...
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PISA for Development: lessons from Ecuador

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By Josette Arévalo  PISA-D National Project Manager and Executive Director of the Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa of Ecuador and María José Guevara Duque PISA-D Lead Analyst and Director of Educational Research at the Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa of Ecuador Education has been a priority in Ecuador for more than a decade. In 2006, Ecuador approved a 10-year educational plan by national referendum, and the 2017-2021 National Development Plan sets forth an ambitious objective related to the education sector: “To guarantee a decent life with equal opportunities for all people”. Access and equality are priorities in the education sector, but the quality of education, infrastructure and the availability of resources are concerns, as well. In order to understand if we are making progress toward our objectives, we need comprehensive, reliable and rigorous evaluation processes. That is why Ecuador’s Ministry of Education decided to participate in the PISA for Develo...
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Making PISA more relevant to more of the world

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By Michael Ward Senior Policy Analyst, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate Photo credit: Duangphorn Wiriya/ Unsplash In 2014, we set out to make PISA more relevant and accessible to middle-and-low-income countries. Since launching in 2000, PISA has expanded to include more than 80 participating countries, and is today seen as the global yardstick for educational success. But as more countries joined PISA, it became apparent that the nature and methods of assessment needed to cater to a larger and more diverse set of countries.   That’s why we launched PISA for Development (PISA-D): an initiative that allows middle-and-low-income countries to use PISA assessments to monitor progress toward national and international targets. Launched with nine participating countries and several partners, PISA-D also supports institutional capacity-building, and allows countries to analyse the results to design evidence-based policies that can improve teaching and learning, and help scho...
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Why we need more financing to achieve quality education for all

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By Michael Ward Senior Policy Analyst, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate and Raphaelle Martinez Lattanzio Team Lead - Education Policy and Learning, Global Partnership for Education Photo credit: Nikhita S/ Unsplash Yesterday, representatives from multilateral organisations, civil society, philanthropic foundations and the private sector gathered in Brussels for the Global Education Meeting (GEM) – a conference, convened by UNESCO, that focuses on the most pressing issues facing education today.  For the first time since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG 4) in 2015, policy makers and education experts came together to take stock of the progress made towards achieving this goal, and the challenges that remain. Their discussions couldn’t come at a more critical time. The world today is facing a learning crisis, with more than 260 million children, adolescents and youth not in school, and 617 million (six out of ten) not being able to r...
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How to make school autonomy work

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By Marie-Helene Doumet Senior Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons School autonomy can mean different things to different people. Policy makers see it as a way to make schools more responsive to local needs and specific contexts. For school heads and teachers, it can mean gaining greater control over the management of the school and its pedagogical direction. Parents, meanwhile, may interpret it as a way to engage more directly in a school’s  decision-making processes. The truth is that school autonomy is all of these things, which makes it difficult to define. And although greater autonomy would seem like a benefit to parents, teachers and school leaders, it also raises important questions. What role should central authorities play in a newly decentralised system? To whom should schools be held accountable? And how can we ensure that the decisions made by school management align with national strategies? Because while greater autonomy ...
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What’s the best way to teach science?

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By Tarek Mostafa Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills Photo credit: Ousa Chea/ Unsplash Education experts have spent the last 50 years debating over a seemingly simple question: what’s the best way to teach science? On one side of the divide are those who support self-guided, enquiry-based approaches, under which students direct their own learning. On the other are proponents of teacher-directed instruction, who say this approach makes it easier for teachers to manage classrooms and cover a wider range of content. Complicating the debate even further is the increasing diversity of student populations, which has raised demands for science curricula to adapt to student needs through adaptive teaching approaches.   We take a closer look at each of these strategies in the latest issue of PISA in Focus . Using new evidence from PISA 2015, we found that each approach has advantages and drawbacks for learning – and that identifying the most effective strategy isn’t as clear...
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