Browse by: "S"

Universities and other tertiary institutions maintain buildings, sites and communications infrastructure worth many millions of dollars. A more strategic approach to asset management is essential for success in a new environment, where tertiary education is becoming increasingly competitive, direct public funding is being cut back and technology and globalisation are bringing new challenges. What impact will new information technology have on space requirements? What steps can institutional managers take to manage risks in rapidly-changing circumstances? In what ways is the role of facilities managers changing, and what skills and tools will be required for them to do their job more effectively in the future? This book provides some answers to these questions and shows how the resources invested in facilities can be made to work more efficiently in the pursuit of institutional objectives. It is based on the proceedings of an international workshop that examined current trends in tertiary education policy: a more open market, student-centredness and user choice, lifelong learning and the blurring of sectoral differences.

School libraries and resource centres are constantly changing in response to the emergence of new technologies and new ways of learning. How should the library of the future be designed? What role will it play as a school facility, within the educational system and in society as a whole? This book addresses these questions through examples from diverse OECD countries.

This book describes the instruments underlying the PISA 2000 assessment. It introduces the PISA approach to assessing reading, mathematical and scientific literacy with its three dimensions of process, content and context. Further, it presents a sample of PISA 2000 tasks, and explains how these tasks were scored and how they relate to the conceptual framework underlying PISA.

How widespread is student disaffection with school in different education systems? What policies and practices are most effective in fostering students’ sense of belonging and participation in school? These questions are of great concern to educators in many countries, not only because of the interrelationship between student engagement at school and learning outcomes, but also because student engagement represents a valued outcome in itself. The OECD PISA provides not only information on students’ literacy skills, but also on their attitudes and values, their social backgrounds, and on important features of the schools they attend.

Based on the survey results of OECD's PISA 2000 programme, this report looks at: the extent to which the schools that students attend make a difference in performance; the relative impact of school climate, school policies and school resources on quality and equity; the relationship between the structure of education systems and educational quality and equity; and the effect of decentralisation and privatisation to school performance.  It concludes with a summary of how school factors relate to quality and equity, and the implications for policy.  The analysis and data cover almost all OECD countries and 14 additional non-OECD countries.

Skills are key to a better job and a better life. Yet acquiring them is often most difficult for the people who need them most: those trapped in low-paid jobs with hard working conditions. Innovative experiments throughout OECD member countries show that barriers to skills acquisition can be overcome. A wide range of actors from government, business and civil society have joined efforts and embarked on initiatives that indeed fill the gap between labour market policy and vocational training, and workers’ weaknesses and employers’ evolving needs. There are rich lessons to be learned from the experiences of Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States, which are investigated in this book.

This book provides an internationally comparable set of indicators on educational provision for students with disabilities, learning difficulties and disadvantages (DDD). It highlights the number of students involved, where they are educated – special schools, special classes or regular classes – and in what phases of education – pre-primary, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education.  It also includes information on the physical provision and on student/teacher ratios and discusses policy implications concerning special education. This new edition also presents for the first time trends in the data for students with DDD from 1999 to 2003.

This book provides an internationally comparable set of indicators on the educational provision for students with disabilities, learning difficulties and disadvantages (SENDDD). It covers the number of students concerned, their learning environment (special schools, special classes and regular classes) and level of education (pre-primary, compulsory and upper secondary education). It also discusses policy implications vis-à-vis special education needs and offers an analysis of the participation and performance of students with special education needs in the 2006 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).