By Dirk Van Damme. When societies move forward, not everyone benefits in the same way or to the same extent. Some social groups change faster than others, while other groups risk falling behind. Change in education is no exception. In understanding social change it is critically important not only to look at the average change, but also to look at how change affects the entire population. Read more...
Are we getting returns on our investments in education?
By Daniel Salinas. Countries and economies participating in PISA have invested substantial resources and used a wide variety of strategies during the past ten years to improve the quality of their schools. Have these efforts paid off? Yes and no. As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, schools are better-staffed and better-equipped today than they were a decade ago, and the learning environment in schools has improved as well, particularly when it comes to teacher-student relations. Read more...
What computer skills can do for you
By Andreas Schleicher. Our new OECD report, Adults, Computers and Problem Solving: What’s the Problem? provides first-of-its-kind answers to such questions. Based on results from the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the report demonstrates the impact of the ability to use digital devices to solve problems in everyday life and at work on the likelihood of participating in the labour force and on workers’ wages. Read more...
It's a matter of trust
By Andreas Schleicher. The world is rapidly becoming a different place, with globalisation and modernisation imposing huge challenges to individuals and societies. Schools need to prepare students to live and work in a world in which most people will need to collaborate with people of diverse cultural origins, and appreciate different ideas, perspectives and values; a world in which people need to decide how to trust and collaborate across such differences, often bridging space and time through technology; and a world in which their lives will be affected by issues that transcend national boundaries. Read more...
Lessons learned in Lyon
By Andreas Schleicher. At the OECD, we tend to look at French education through the lens of statistics. These show one of the largest gaps between the learning outcomes of children from poor and wealthy families. And the opportunity gap keeps widening. Read more...
Are schools ready to join the technological revolution?
By Andreas Schleicher. When it comes to technology, education seems stuck in the age of chalkboards. But at an international conference on technology in education, held in Qingdao, China, last week, I got the feeling that educators and education ministers might finally be ready to join the technological revolution. Read more...
Young people are our future: invest in their skills
By Andreas Schleicher. The OECD Skills Outlook 2015: Youth, Skills and Employability, launched today, asserts that this unacceptable waste of human potential stems partly from the fact that too many young people leave education without having acquired the right skills (according to the 2013 Survey of Adult Skills, 10% of new graduates have poor literacy skills and 14% have poor numeracy skills); and that not enough young people have experience in the world of work (less than 50% of students in vocational education and training programmes, and less than 40% of students in academic programmes in the 22 OECD countries and regions covered by the Survey of Adult Skills participate in any kind of work-based learning). Read more...
The Impact of Mega-Ships
By Olaf Merk. Ever bigger container ships inspire awe and fascination, and are one of the hottest topics in maritime transport. They are also a headache for ports and terminals – mainly because of their vast size. More...
Assessing corporate respect for human rights is powerful but challenging
By Damiano de Felice. According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), business enterprises are expected to act with due diligence to avoid infringing on the rights of others and to address adverse impacts with which they are involved. Since 2011, key elements of this corporate responsibility to respect human rights have diffused across international organizations, standard-setting bodies, governments, civil society organizations and companies themselves. More...
Triple- and quadruple-play bundles of communication services: Towards “all-in-one” packages?
By Agustín Díaz-Pinés. Bundles of services or products are part of our daily lives: having a set menu in a restaurant (starter, main dish and dessert), opening a bank account with a set of financial services (credit cards, cheques, deposit), or buying a laptop with a number of pre-installed software applications. Communication services are not an exception. Most communication bundles today are a combination of the following services: fixed telephony, fixed broadband, pay-television and mobile services (already a bundle of mobile telephony, SMS and data). More...