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The P-star approach has been developed by the U.S. Federal Reserve as a new indicator of inflationary pressures. This paper assesses its usefulness for 20 OECD Member countries. Regression results are presented and in-sample tracking ability and forecasting performance of the equations are compared to rival inflation models and official OECD projections ...
This report focuses on the adult learning data that was collected as part of the OECD Survey of Adult Skills between 2012 and 2016, which has been a core activity of the ongoing OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The objectives are to: present the data on adult learning made available by PIAAC; provide an international and comparative overview of the extent of adult learning of different types along with trends, where possible, for countries and economies that have so far participated in PIAAC; reveal international and comparative patterns on the distribution of adult learning within participating countries and economies, focusing on who is and who is not participating in terms of the types of jobs they work in as well as their socio-demographic profile; assess empirically the relationship between some types of adult learning and economic as well as social outcomes; discuss systemic features of adult learning systems and their relationship with selected economic and social policy instruments; and to draw out implications of the results in relation to the continued measurement of adult learning.
Over the past decade, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, has become the world’s premier yardstick for evaluating the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems. This special issue of the PISA in Focus series highlights the results of the first two volumes of the PISA 2015 initial report: Excellence and Equity in Education; and Policies and Practices for Successful Schools.
This May sees the release of the results from the third PISA assessment of financial literacy. These results are largely consistent with previous findings, but also go beyond earlier assessments in probing students’ behaviours and attitudes towards money matters (including digital money matters) and their exposure to financial education at school.
The Covid-19 crisis has lain bare the economic and financial uncertainty and precarity that many adults face; the 15-year-old students who sit the PISA assessment will soon leave compulsory education and must take this uncertainty into account as they take decisions about further education and career pathways. Proficiency in financial literacy will help students take responsible and well-informed decisions and set them up for financial resilience later in life. Policy makers are encouraged to use the findings and recommendations in this PISA in Focus to foster enhanced financial literacy and responsible financial inclusion.
Building on the experience of working with middle-income countries in PISA since 2000, and in an effort to respond to the emerging demand for PISA to cater to a wider range of countries, the OECD launched the PISA for Development (PISA-D) initiative in 2014. This one-off pilot project, spanning six years, aims to make the assessment more accessible and relevant to low-to-middle-income countries.
A key component of PISA-D was building capacity in the participating countries for managing large-scale student learning assessments and using the results to support national policy dialogue and evidence-based decision-making.
Around 37 000 students completed the school-based assessment, representing about one million 15-year-old students (in grade 7 or above) in the schools of the seven participating countries: Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Senegal and Zambia. On average across PISA-D countries, only 43% of all 15-year-olds were enrolled in at least grade 7 by age 15 and were eligible to sit the PISA-D test, compared to the OECD average of 89%. The remaining 15-year-olds were either in grades below 7 or were out of school. In Cambodia, Senegal and Zambia, only around 30% of 15-year-olds were eligible to sit the PISA-D test.
PISA for Development (PISA-D) aims to make the assessment more accessible and relevant to low- and middle-income countries. This report summarises findings from the out-of-school assessment results for PISA-D. By combining the out-of-school assessment with the in-school assessment, PISA-D has been able to achieve a unique perspective on the current skills level and on the challenges that the entire population of 14-16 year-olds face. Seven countries participated in the school-based implementation of PISA-D: Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Senegal and Zambia.1 Four of them, namely Guatemala, Paraguay, Honduras and Senegal, also participated in the PISA-D out-of-school assessment. Panama took part in the main PISA assessment in 2018 and the PISA-D out-of-school assessment. This report provides an overview of the main results of the out-of-school assessment for the five participating countries, comparing them, where relevant, with those for the in-school students discussed in PISA in Focus #91.
Many partner countries lag considerably behind OECD countries on various dimensions of social and economic development. Three OECD countries – Chile, Mexico, Turkey – also differ from higher-income OECD countries in regards to educational achievement and other indicators of social and economic development. After grouping countries based on income (GNI per capita), this paper shows that the cognitive performance of students in countries participating in PISA varies considerably not only between different country income groups but also within them. Analysis of PISA performance in relation to national wealth provides strong arguments for grouping countries according to their social and economic development when reflecting on challenges of participation and effective use of PISA. Lack of funding and governments’ fear of bad performance have been stated as potential deterrents to participation. Lack of institutional capacity and less relevant results due to a non-representative sample of 15 year-olds and clustering of students at low proficiency levels are discussed as main challenges for the effective use of PISA. The paper concludes with some considerations on how to improve the effective use of PISA results in these countries that may be particularly relevant in the context of the OECD’s recently launched initiative called PISA for Development.
An international linking study was conducted in order to link parameters of PISA-based Test for Schools (PBTS) cognitive items to PISA international scales. New booklets for the linking study were designed in which the PISA trend items were inserted as anchor items in addition to the PBTS items. Data was collected from four countries with over 95 000 students via Computer-Based Testing, and analysed with the finite mixture modelling in order to estimate the parameters of PBTS items under the constraint of fixed PISA item parameters. The estimated item parameters were validated in terms of reliability and international comparability. The linking study enabled the PBTS test to provide valid and reliable scores on PISA international scale.
This technical opinion paper provides the reader with a concise description of both the benefits and disadvantages of using probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) to analyse operational events in nuclear power plants in order to facilitate better operator feedback. The paper's objective is to present decision makers in the nuclear field with a clear technical opinion on how PSA techniques can be used to address this issue. The intended audience is primarily nuclear safety regulators, senior researchers and industry leaders. Government authorities, nuclear power plant operators and the general public may also be interested.
As populations age and the number of people with chronic conditions increases, countries need to assess how their health systems perform with regard to the management of chronic conditions. OECD's Patient-Reported Indicator Surveys (PaRIS) initiative aims to measure outcomes and experiences of healthcare as reported by patients with chronic conditions as part of the efforts to improve quality of care. The PaRIS survey, an international survey of people living with chronic conditions who are managed in primary care, is implemented in twenty countries. Following a rigorous design and development phase, the PaRIS survey was field-tested in participating countries. This paper reports on the implementation and the results of the Field Trial. The Field Trial provided important lessons which have been used to improve the survey tools and the implementation of the Main Survey.
This brief discusses policy developments and evidence on the incidence of sick leave during the first three months of the crisis. It concludes that paid sick leave can be a particularly effective tool during de-confinement, as part of a rigorous testing, tracking, tracing and isolating strategy.
When large-scale aid programmes to developing countries began in the 1950s and 1960s, new concepts and definitions were required to measure and compare donors’ efforts. One of the key contributions of the Development Assistance Committee was to codify the notion of foreign aid under the name "official development assistance" (ODA). The DAC developed the ODA definition in the late 1960s and gave it its final form in 1972. The documents below discuss what the definition means in practice, which countries are eligible for ODA, and what progress donors have made towards achieving the UN target for ODA of 0.7% of their national income...