Periods of compulsory education vary widely across OECD countries. In some countries, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is compulsory, as early as the age of three. In other countries, education becomes compulsory only from primary education onwards, sometimes as late as at the age of seven. Likewise, compulsory education ends as early as age 14 in some OECD countries, while it lasts until 18 in many others (Table X1.5). The age at which compulsory education ends may depend on obtaining a particular qualification. For example, in the Netherlands students can leave education from the age of 16 if they obtain a basic qualification, but otherwise have to continue until they are 18. In countries with dual systems, such as Germany, the final years of compulsory education may be partly spent in workplace-based training (European Commission, 2021[2]).

There is a growing consensus among OECD countries of the importance of high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC). Research from a variety of contexts suggests that participation in high-quality ECEC is associated with positive outcomes in both the short and long term (OECD, 2021[9]). Certain ECEC programmes have been shown to help children develop their cognitive, social, and emotional skills. The progress that children make at a young age can have a lasting impact on their academic performance, well-being, and earnings in later life (García et al., 2020[10]; Heckman and Karapakula, 2021[11]). Identifying which aspects of ECEC services constitute high-quality provision is therefore of great policy interest. The quality of ECEC provision has often been considered in terms of the structure of services and of the processes at work within settings (Slot, 2018[12]). Structural characteristics cover the infrastructure and organisation of ECEC services, such as group sizes, funding arrangements, types of staff and workforce training. Meanwhile, process quality concerns the daily interactions that occur between children and their environment as part of their ECEC programme, including their relationships with their peers, staff, families, communities, and physical surroundings (Cadima et al., 2020[13]).

An upper secondary qualification (ISCED level 3) is often considered to be the minimum credential for successful entry into the labour market and necessary for continuing to higher levels of education. Young people who leave school before completing upper secondary education tend to have worse employment prospects (see Indicators A3 and A4). For many young people, the transition from lower to upper secondary education involves deciding whether to enrol in general education or pursue vocational education and training (VET). The selection process and the factors influencing which programme orientation students enter (e.g. test results, records of academic performance or teacher advice) also vary between countries (OECD, 2016[2]). How much choice young people have in practice therefore differs across countries. An important challenge is to ensure that the decision to pursue a general or a vocational programme is driven by students’ interests and abilities, not their personal circumstances, which they cannot influence.

Tertiary education is the most flexible and diverse level of education today with a vast array of programmes on offer, from research-oriented degrees that prepare students for doctoral studies and academia, to professional courses that provide students with practical skills to enter the labour market more directly. Over the past decade, increasing proportions of adult populations across the OECD have attained a tertiary level of education. As a non-compulsory level of education, however, there are a variety of different pathways for those who wish to pursue further education after secondary school and students may engage in other personal or professional activities before their transition to tertiary education ().

This indicator presents completion rates calculated using true cohort data. True cohort completion rates correspond to the share of students from a specific entry cohort who graduate within a particular timeframe. This is the preferred methodology for analysing completion rates, but only countries with longitudinal surveys or registers are able to provide such information. Panel data may be available in the form of an individual student registry (a system including unique personal identification numbers for students) or a cohort of students used to conduct a longitudinal survey. Data in this indicator refer to completion by the end of the theoretical duration of programmes and the period three years later.

Many factors at the individual, institutional, national and global levels drive patterns of international student mobility. These include personal ambitions and aspirations for better employment prospects, a lack of high-quality higher educational institutions at home, the capacity of higher education institutions abroad to attract talent and government policies to encourage cross-border mobility for education (Bhandari, Robles and Farrugia, 2018[12]). The needs of increasingly knowledge-based and innovation-driven economies have spurred demand for tertiary education worldwide, while increasing wealth in emerging economies has prompted the children of the growing middle classes to seek educational opportunities abroad. At the same time, economic (e.g. costs of international flights), technological (e.g. the spread of the Internet and social media enabling contacts to be maintained across borders) and cultural factors (e.g. use of English as a common working and teaching language) have contributed to making international study substantially more affordable and easier to access than in the past.