This chapter draws together four documents emerging from the Meeting of OECD Education Ministers held in Athens on 27-28 June 2006. The first document is the chair’s summary of discussions at the meeting. It describes how ministers agreed to go beyond growth by making higher education not just bigger but also better. Reforms are needed in six areas: to improve funding, to make higher education more equitable, to gain a clearer focus on what students learn, to promote responsiveness and diversity, to support research and innovation, and to devise an effective response to growing migration and internationalisation.

Only twenty years ago, countries often saw student mobility as a way of reaching out to the world, hoping thereby to create elite international networks. Universities welcomed international students but rarely went out of their way to recruit them. Today, cross-border education is more often perceived as a lever for economic development. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of foreign students in the OECD area rose by 70% to reach 2.3 million students. Increased competition between countries and between institutions to attract foreign students and academics, as well as the emergence of new forms of cross-border education, represent a new context for policy. In addition, the benefits, particularly economic benefits arising from cross-border education, appear to have growing importance. This chapter looks at policies for the internationalisation of higher education, taking into account this new context and objectives.

Positive attitudes among teachers are a key priority for policy-makers given evidence that teaching performance is perhaps the main driver of student learning. Teacher motivation is also important for promoting school reform. This chapter investigates what matters to teachers and how best to motivate them. Research on work motivation is used to shed light on how both “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” motivation can promote work outcomes such as performance, satisfaction, and well-being. The analysis stresses that motivation underpins the success of both teachers’ work and the introduction of any renewal in schools. The central message is that teachers’ actions need to be self-motivated, resulting from their acceptance of and identification with the values and objectives of practices and regulations in schools.

This chapter examines how formative assessment – frequent, interactive assessments of student understanding and progress to identify learning needs and shape teaching – can help countries realise both quality and equity in educational outcomes. Between 2002 and 2004, the OECD examined formative assessment policy and practice in exemplary classrooms in lower secondary schools in eight systems (Australia [Queensland], three Canadian provinces, Denmark, England, Finland, Italy, New Zealand and Scotland). Formative Assessment: Improving Learning in Secondary Classrooms (OECD, 2005) also included reviews of English-, French- and German-language literature on formative assessment.

Great advances have been made in gender equality in education. In all OECD countries, younger women today are far more likely to have an upper secondary or tertiary qualification than women a generation ago. University-level graduation rates for women now equal or exceed those for men in two-thirds of the OECD countries. However, women remain persistently under-represented in areas such as mathematics and science. This chapter suggests that action in this area needs to be targeted at youth and, indeed, children.