PISA in Focus - OECD iLibrary

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Number	Date	Title
N° 28	01 May 2013	PDF READ What Makes Urban Schools Different? OECD In most countries and economies, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to perform at higher levels than other students. Socio-economic status explains only part of the performance difference between students who attend urban schools and other students. Schools in urban settings are...
N° 27	01 Apr 2013	PDF READ Does it Matter Which School a Student Attends? OECD Successful education systems are able to guarantee that all students succeed at high levels. Across OECD countries, around 60% of the overall, country-level variation in student performance can be traced to differences in how well students who attend the same school can be expected to...
N° 26	01 Mar 2013	PDF READ Grade Expectations OECD Countries vary in the way they use marks, but they all tend to reward the mastery of skills and attitudes that promote learning. Teachers tend to give girls and socio-economically advantaged students better school marks, even if they don’t have better performance and attitudes than boys and...
N° 25	01 Feb 2013	PDF READ Are Countries Moving Towards More Equitable Education Systems? OECD PISA results show that no country or economy has reached the goal of creating a completely equitable education system, but some are much closer than others. Some countries and economies have shown that improvements in equity can be achieved at the same time as improvements in overall...
N° 24	01 Jan 2013	PDF READ What Do Students Think About School? OECD Most students think that what they learned in school is useful for them or their future. Students’ attitudes towards school are associated with their reading skills. Students who report that the climate at their school is conducive to learning tend to have more positive attitudes towards school.
N° 23	01 Dec 2012	PDF READ What Do Students Expect To Do After Finishing Upper Secondary School? OECD The percentage of students who expect to complete university is highest in Korea (80%) and lowest in Latvia (25%). Many high-performing students do not expect to go to university, representing potentially lost talent to an economy and society while many low-performing students think they will...
N° 22	01 Nov 2012	PDF READ How Do Immigrant Students Fare in Disadvantaged Schools? OECD Immigrant students often have to overcome multiple barriers at once in order to succeed at school. Across most OECD countries, poor performance among immigrant students relative to other students is strongly related to social disadvantage at school, as reflected in the proportion of students...
N° 21	01 Oct 2012	PDF READ Do Today's 15-Year-Olds Feel Environmentally Responsible? OECD Most 15-year-olds in OECD countries have some understanding of environmental issues and feel that threats to the environment are a serious concern for them and/or for other people in their country. Scientific understanding of the environment is key if students are to have a...
N° 20	01 Sep 2012	PDF READ Are School Vouchers Associated with Equity in Education? OECD Privately managed schools tend to attract more advantaged student populations; but the difference between the socio-economic profiles of public and private schools is narrowed when privately managed schools receive higher levels of public funding. The difference between the socio-economic...
N° 19	01 Aug 2012	PDF READ Is there really such a Thing as a "Second Chance" in Education? OECD While the reading proficiency of Canadian 15-year-olds closely predicts reading proficiency at age 24, young adults can shape their reading skills after the end of compulsory schooling. In the transition to young adulthood, reading skills generally improve – but more for some groups than for...
N° 18	01 July 2012	PDF READ Are Students More Engaged When Schools Offer Extracurricular Activities? OECD Science project. The very phrase is nearly synonymous with hands-on learning, learning-by-doing, collaboration. Are students more engaged and do they perform better in science if their school encourages them to work on science projects, participate in science fairs, belong to a science-related...
N° 17	01 June 2012	PDF READ Are Large Cities Educational Assets or Liabilities? OECD Large cities are generally educational assets: in most countries, performance improves dramatically when only the scores of students in urban areas are considered, although this is not the case in some countries, such as Belgium, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States. When...
N° 16	01 May 2012	PDF READ Does Performance-Based Pay Improve Teaching? OECD PISA has long established that high-performing education systems tend to pay their teachers more. They also often prioritise the quality of teaching over other choices, including class size. But in the current budgetary climate, paying everybody more may not be a viable alternative. So many...
N° 15	01 Apr 2012	PDF READ How "Green" are Today's 15-Year-Olds? OECD Today's students are growing up in a precarious natural environment. Climate change and the loss of biodiversity threaten the ecosystems that support life; a lack of clean water and sanitation imperils the health of hundreds of millions of people every day. While trained geoscientists,...
N° 14	01 Mar 2012	PDF READ What Kinds of Careers do Boys and Girls Expect for Themselves? OECD When you think of someone who is an engineer, do you imagine a man or a woman wearing a hardhat? How about when you imagine a teacher standing in front of a class of schoolchildren? If you answer "a man" to the first question, and "a woman" to the second, there’s probably a reason. And the...
N° 13	01 Feb 2012	PDF READ Does Money Buy Strong Performance in PISA? OECD This issue will show that strong performers do not invest scarce resources in smaller classes, but in higher teachers' salaries. They are neither the countries that spend the most on education, nor are they the wealthiest countries; rather they are the countries that are committed to providing...
N° 12	01 Jan 2012	PDF READ Are Boys and Girls Ready for the Digital Age? OECD Information and communication technologies revolutionise not only the speed at which information can be transmitted, but also how information is conveyed and received. Technological innovations have a profound effect on the types of skills that are demanded in today's labour markets and the...
N° 11	01 Dec 2011	PDF READ How Are School Systems Adapting to Increasing Numbers of Immigrant Students? OECD Whether in flight from conflict, with the hope of building a better life, or to seize a social or economic opportunity, people have been crossing borders for as long as there have been borders to cross. Modern means of transportation and communication, the globalisation of the labour market,...
N° 10	01 Nov 2011	PDF READ What Can Parents Do to Help Their Children Succeed in School? OECD Most parents know, instinctively, that spending more time with their children and being actively involved in their education will give their children a good head-start in life. But as many parents have to juggle competing demands at work and at home, there never seems to be enough time. Often,...
N° 9	01 Oct 2011	PDF READ School Autonomy and Accountability OECD In recent years, many schools have grown into more autonomous organisations and have become more accountable to students, parents and the public at large for their outcomes. PISA results suggest that, when autonomy and accountability are intelligently combined, they tend to be associated with...
N° 8	01 Sep 2011	PDF READ Do Students Today Read for Pleasure? OECD Students who are highly engaged in a wide range of reading activities are more likely than other students to be effective learners and to perform well at school. Research also documents a strong link between reading practices, motivation and proficiency among adults. Proficiency in reading is...
N° 7	01 Aug 2011	PDF READ Private schools OECD At some point in their child’s education, many parents have considered whether it would be worth the expense to enrol their child in a private school. For parents, private schools may offer a particular kind of instruction that is not available in public schools. If private schools also attract...
N° 6	01 July 2011	PDF READ When Students Repeat Grades or Are Transferred Out of School OECD School systems handle the challenges of diverse student populations in different ways. Some countries have non-selective and comprehensive school systems that seek to provide all students with similar opportunities, leaving it to individual schools and teachers to meet the particular needs of...
N° 5	01 June 2011	PDF READ How Do Some Students Overcome Their Socio-Economic Background? OECD Are socio-economically disadvantaged students condemned to perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of poor academic achievement, poor job prospects and poverty? Not if they attend schools that provide them with more regular classes. Resilient students in the 2006 and 2009 PISA surveys displayed...
N° 4	01 May 2011	PDF READ Has Discipline in School Deteriorated? OECD Classrooms and schools with more disciplinary problems are less conducive to learning, since teachers have to spend more time creating an orderly environment before instruction can begin. Interruptions in the classroom disrupt students’ concentration on, and their engagement in, their lessons....
N° 3	01 Apr 2011	PDF READ Does Investing in After-School Classes Pay Off? OECD With all the competition to get into the right universities to secure the best jobs, secondary school students are often encouraged to take after-school classes in subjects already taught in school to help them improve their performance – even if that means forsaking other fun and interesting...
N° 2	01 Mar 2011	PDF READ Improving Performance: Leading from the Bottom OECD Since the PISA 2000 and 2009 surveys both focused on reading, one can track in detail how student reading performance has changed over that period. Among the 26 OECD countries with comparable results in both assessments, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Korea, Poland, Portugal, and the partner...
N° 1	01 Feb 2011	PDF READ Does Participation in Pre-Primary Education Translate into Better Learning Outcomes at School? OECD It’s elementary: students benefit from pre-primary education. The OECD’s PISA 2009 results show that in practically all OECD countries 15-year-old students who had attended some pre-primary school outperformed students who had not. In fact, the difference between students who had attended for...

In most countries and economies, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to perform at higher levels than other students. Socio-economic status explains only part of the performance difference between students who attend urban schools and other students. Schools in urban settings are...

Successful education systems are able to guarantee that all students succeed at high levels. Across OECD countries, around 60% of the overall, country-level variation in student performance can be traced to differences in how well students who attend the same school can be expected to...

Countries vary in the way they use marks, but they all tend to reward the mastery of skills and attitudes that promote learning. Teachers tend to give girls and socio-economically advantaged students better school marks, even if they don’t have better performance and attitudes than boys and...