Australia
The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: ‘The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: From leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet’.
This chapter evaluates the extent to which the Australian workplace contributes to good mental health and offers a supportive environment to those people who are confronted with mental health problems. It looks at the relationship between working conditions, mental health and productivity and then considers policies to prevent psychosocial risks at work, to promote mental health, and to support workers with mental disorders. The chapter ends with a review of sickness management and return-to-work strategies, and particularly the roles of employers, governments, and general practitioners.
This paper outlines the need for adopting a more scientific approach to specifying and assessing academic standards in higher education. Drawing together insights from large-scale studies in Australia, it advances a definition of academic standards, explores potential indicators of academic quality and looks at approaches for setting standards. As learner outcomes need to be placed at the forefront of work on academic standards, this paper concludes by exploring the implications of this position for student assessment and institutional change.
This chapter first looks at trends in the labour market and the demand and supply of skills in Australia. It assesses the degree to which mid-career adults participate in training or change jobs – both possible responses to changing demand for skills. Finally, it reviews survey evidence on the use and inclusiveness of career guidance by mid-career adults in Australia.
This policy brief was developed by the Secretariat of the OECD Network of Economic Regulators (NER) and is based on examples of practice submitted by members of the NER. It reviews emergency measures taken by economic regulators during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure continuity of services in network sectors, as well as to adjust regulatory practices and adapt governance arrangements. It identifies long-term questions and implications of the crisis with regard to market structure, infrastructure investment and the role of regulators.
Measures of student learning are playing an increasingly significant role in determining the quality and productivity of higher education. This paper evaluates approaches for estimating the value added by university education, and proposes a methodology for use by institutions and systems.
The paper argues that value-added measures of learning are important for quality assurance in contemporary higher education. It reviews recent large-scale developments in Australia, methodological considerations pertaining to the measurement and evaluation of student learning, and instruments validated to measure students’ capability, generic skills, specific competencies, work readiness and student engagement.
Four approaches to calculating value-added measures are reviewed. The first approach computes value-added estimates by comparing predicted against actual performance using data from entrance tests and routine course assessments. In the second approach, comparisons are made between outcomes from objective assessments administered to cohorts in the first and later years of study. Comparisons of first-year and later-year students’ engagement in key learning activities offer a third and complementary means of assessing the value added by university study. Feedback on graduate skills provided by employers is a fourth approach which gives an independent perspective on the quality of education.
Reviewing these four approaches provides a basis for their synthesis into a robust and potentially scalable methodology for measuring the value added by higher education. This methodology is advanced, along with its implications for instrumentation, sampling, analysis and reporting. Case studies are presented to illustrate the methodology’s potential for informing comparative analyses of the performance of higher education systems.
Quelle différence ? Un modèle pour mesurer la valeur ajoutée de l’enseignement supérieur en Australie
L’évaluation des connaissances acquises par les étudiants est désormais un outil indispensable pour déterminer la qualité et la productivité de l’enseignement supérieur. Ce rapport examine les différentes approches permettant d’évaluer la valeur ajoutée de l’enseignement supérieur et propose une méthode utilisable à la fois au sein des établissements et à l’échelle des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur.
L’idée centrale qui sous-tend ce rapport est la suivante : la mesure des acquis des étudiants est l’un des piliers de l’assurance qualité au sein des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur modernes. L’auteur passe ainsi en revue les tendances majeures observées récemment en la matière en Australie, analyse les problèmes méthodologiques inhérents à la mesure et à l’évaluation des acquis des étudiants, et enfin étudie les instruments couramment employés pour mesurer les capacités, les compétences génériques et spécifiques, l’aptitude au travail et l’implication des étudiants.
Quatre méthodes de calcul de la valeur ajoutée sont ainsi passées en revue. La première consiste à estimer cette valeur ajoutée en comparant les performances escomptées et les performances réelles des élèves, à l’aide des résultats des tests d’admission et de ceux des évaluations réalisées en cours de cycle. La deuxième approche compare les résultats d’évaluations objectives d’étudiants pour chaque année d’étude (première année et suivantes). La troisième méthode utilisée pour évaluer la valeur ajoutée de l’enseignement secondaire, de nature complémentaire, consiste à comparer l’implication des étudiants dans certains modules d’apprentissage clés durant la première année et au cours des années suivantes. Enfin, la quatrième méthode étudiée envisage la qualité de l’enseignement supérieur selon une perspective différente, puisqu’elle tient compte des retours d’expérience de certains employeurs sur les compétences des jeunes diplômés.
L’examen de ces quatre approches permet ensuite de les synthétiser et d’obtenir une méthode fiable pour évaluer la valeur ajoutée de l’enseignement supérieur, ladite méthode consolidée offrant en outre le potentiel de s’adapter à différentes échelles. Il s’agit d’une approche sophistiquée, aux implications complexes en termes d’instrumentation, d’échantillonnage, d’analyse et de présentation des résultats. Une série d’études de cas permet à l’auteur de démontrer le potentiel offert par cette méthode pour étayer l’analyse comparative des performances de différents systèmes d’enseignement supérieur.
This paper reviews evidence on the interplay between professional standards for teachers, the content of teacher education and educational sciences, and provides three case studies to illustrate these interactions from Estonia, Australia and Singapore. In particular, it investigates what aligning teacher education programmes to standards really mean; and what conception of educational sciences is reflected in the standards and the curriculum. Analyses suggest that alignment, as an explicit, direct and consistent correspondence, is difficult to achieve, in part due to different conceptualisations of professional knowledge. However, this paper argues that the main value of standards as policy tools lies in their capacity to create mutual dialogue between different artefacts (standards’ requirements, curriculum, course descriptions, accreditation standards, etc.), as well as among stakeholders. Regularly renegotiating the standards as a result of such dialogue and reflections should be a crucial part of the policy process.
This chapter elaborates on what constitutes high-quality career guidance for mid-career adults. Taking into account their unique needs, the chapter considers how career guidance services for mid-career adults should be delivered, how to motivate mid-career adults to seek out career guidance, who should provide the services, and how to fund them.
Do students’ school marks shape their expectations about their future? This chapter examines the relationship between school marks and students’ expectations of completing a university education. It also discusses how marks can reduce – or reinforce – inequalities in those expectations between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged students, and between girls and boys.