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The document discusses changes in higher education trends over time. It shows data on expenditures per student in tertiary education and tertiary graduation rates in various countries from 1995 to 2008. There are also charts comparing the share of populations with tertiary degrees among older (55-64) and younger (25-34) age groups in different countries in 2009. The composition of the global talent pool has shifted over time.
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Schule 2.0
- 1. 11München,19November2011Schule2.0 Schule 2.0 München, 19November 2011 Prof. Andreas Schleicher Advisory of the OECD Secretary-General on Education Policy OECD Directorate for Education
- 2. 22München,19November2011Schule2.0 Immer mehr Menschenerreichen immer höhere Bildungsziele
- 3. 33München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 1995 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate Graduate supply Costperstudent
- 4. 44München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 1995 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate Graduate supply Costperstudent United States Finland Deutschland
- 5. 55München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2000 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate United Kingdom
- 6. 66München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2001 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate Australia
- 7. 77München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2002 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 8. 88München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2003 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 9. 99München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2004 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 10. 1010München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2005 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 11. 1111München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2006 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 12. 1212München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2007 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate
- 13. 1313München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2008 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate Finland Deutschland
- 14. 1414München,19November2011Schule2.0 Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherland New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United KingdomUnitedStates A world of change – higher education 0.0 5,000.0 10,000.0 15,000.0 20,000.0 25,000.0 30,000.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2008 Expenditureperstudentattertiarylevel(USD) Tertiary-type A graduation rate United States
- 15. 15151515 OECDSkillsStrategy EDPC,15November2011 Translatingbetterskillsinto bettersocialandeconomicoutcomes The compositionof the global talent pool has changed… Countries’ share in the population with tertiary education, for 25-34 and 55-64 year- old age groups, percentage (2009) 55-64-year-old population 25-34-year-old population About 39 million people who attained tertiary level About 81 million people who attained tertiary level
- 16. 16161616 OECDSkillsStrategy EDPC,15November2011 Translatingbetterskillsinto bettersocialandeconomicoutcomes United States, 35.8 Japan, 12.4 China,6.9 Germany, 6.3 United Kingdom, 5.3 Canada, 4.2 France, 3.5 Brazil, 3.5 Spain, 2.1 Italy, 1.9 Mexico, 1.8 Australia, 1.7 Korea, 1.6 other, 12.9 55-64-year-old population United States, 20.5 Japan, 10.9 China, 18.3 Germany, 3.1 United Kingdom, 4.4 Canada, 3.1 France, 4.1 Brazil, 4.5 Spain, 3.5 Italy, 2.0 Mexico, 3.9 Australia, 1.6 Korea, 5.7 other, 14.5 25-34-year-old population The composition of the global talent pool has changed… Countries’ share in the population with tertiary education, for 25-34 and 55-64 year- old age groups, percentage (2009)
- 17. 1717München,19November2011Schule2.0 Nie zuvor habendie, die gut gebildet sind, so gute Lebenschancen gehabt wie heute
- 18. 1818Council,18September2008EducationataGlance 7,342 18,802 23,306 40,036 40,260 41,090 48,024 48,714 55,695 60,519 63,414 64,664 69,235 82,007 85,586 104,410 127,691 146,539 146,673 173,889 186,307 -250,000 -150,000 -50,00050,000 150,000 250,000 350,000 450,000 Denmark Sweden Norway New Zealand France Turkey Germany Australia Spain Austria Belgium Finland Canada OECD average Korea Ireland Hungary Poland Czech Republic United States Italy Portugal Foregone earnings Direct cost Gross earnings benefits Income tax effect Social contribution effect Transfers effect Unemployment effect USD equivalent A8.3 Components of the private net present value for a male with higher education Net present value in USD equivalent 35K$56K$ 367K$105K$27K$ 26K$ 170K$
- 19. 1919Council,18September2008EducationataGlance 10,346 14,236 17,197 17,851 19,752 21,280 23,875 28,193 36,730 37,586 47,368 50,271 51,954 55,612 57,221 63,604 63,756 74,219 94,804 96,186 100,119 160,834 0 50,000 100,000150,000 200,000 Turkey Denmark Sweden Norway Spain Korea Canada New Zealand France Austria Australia Portugal OECD average Finland Poland Germany Italy Ireland Hungary Belgium United States Czech Republic Public cost and benefits for a male obtaining post-secondary education Public benefits Public costs Net present value, USD equivalent (numbers in orange show negative values) USD equivalent
- 20.
- 21. 2121München,19November2011Schule2.0 Stabil DynamischMärkte National GlobalWettbewerb HierarchischVernetztOrganisationsformen Massenproduktion Flexible Produktion – embedded services Produktion Mechanisierung Digitalisierung, Miniaturisierung Wachstumsimpulse „Economies of scale“ Innovation, ZeitnäheWettbewerbsvorteil Einzelbetrieb „Co-petition” – AllianzenFirmenmodell Vollbeschäftigung „Employability”Politische Ziele Klare Identität im berufsspezifischen Kontext Konvergenz und Transformation Berufsprofile Berufsspezifisch Multi-dimensionalKompetenzen Formale Qualifikation Lebensbegleitendes LernenBildung Neue Herausforderungen Gestern Heute
- 22.
- 23. 2323München,19November2011Schule2.0 Low skills andsocial outcomes Odds are adjusted for age, gender, pand immigration status. 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 Level 5 Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1 Has fair to poor health Does not volunteer for charity or non-profit organizations Poor understanding of political issues facing country Poor level of general trust Higher propensity of believing people try to take of advantage of others Lower propensity to reciprocate Poor political efficacy Odds ratios
- 24.
- 25. 2525München,19November2011Schule2.0 Veränderungen in derNachfrage nach Kompetenzen Economy-wide measures of routine and non-routine task input (US) 40 45 50 55 60 65 1960 1970 1980 1990 2002 Routine manual Nonroutine manual Routine cognitive Nonroutine analytic Nonroutine interactive (Levy and Murnane) Meantaskinputaspercentilesofthe1960taskdistribution The dilemma of schools: The skills that are easiest to teach and test are also the ones that are easiest to digitise, automate and outsource
- 26. 2626München,19November2011Schule2.0 Skills for the21st century r The great collaborators and orchestrators The more complex the globalised world becomes, the more individuals and companies need various forms of co-ordination and management r The great synthesisers Conventionally, our approach to problems was breaking them down into manageable bits and pieces, today we create value by synthesising disparate bits together r The great explainers The more content we can search and access, the more important the filters and explainers become
- 27. 2727München,19November2011Schule2.0 Skills for the21st century r The great versatilists Specialists generally have deep skills and narrow scope, giving them expertise that is recognised by peers but not valued outside their domain Generalists have broad scope but shallow skills Versatilists apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and assuming new roles. They are capable not only of constantly adapting but also of constantly learning and growing r The great personalisers A revival of interpersonal skills, skills that have atrhophied to some degree because of the industrial age and the Internet r The great localisers Localising the global
- 28.
- 29. 2929München,19November2011Schule2.0 Making lifelong learninga reality Skills by age 225 235 245 255 265 275 285 295 305 15 25 35 45 55 65 Age No adjustment Adjusted for immigrant status and education Adjusted for immigrant status, education and reading engagement Skill score Factoring in population ageing
- 30. 3030München,19November2011Schule2.0 Keeping learning beyondschool Cross-sectional skill-age profiles for youths by education and work status 220 230 240 250 260 270 280 290 300 310 320 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Age Linear (In education only) Linear (In education and work) Linear (Work only) Linear (NEET) Mean skill score Youth in education Youth in education and work Youth in work Not in education, not in work
- 31. 3232 PISA OECDProgrammefor InternationalStudentAssessment BriefingofCouncil 14November2007 Handlungsfelder Some policy leversthat emerge from international comparisons
- 32. 3333München,19November2011Schule2.0 Some students learnat high levels All students need to learn at high levels Student inclusion Routine cognitive skills, rote learning Learning to learn, complex ways of thinking, ways of working Curriculum, instruction and assessment Few years more than secondary High-level professional knowledge workers Teacher quality ‘Tayloristic’, hierarchical Flat, collegial Work organisation Primarily to authorities Primarily to peers and stakeholders Accountability Schule 2.0 The old bureaucratic system The modern enabling system
- 33. 4242München,19November2011Schule2.0 Lessons from PISA onsuccessful education systems A commitment to education and the belief that competencies can be learned and therefore all children can achieve Universal educational standards and personalisation as the approach to heterogeneity in the student body… … as opposed to a belief that students have different destinations to be met with different expectations, and selection/stratification as the approach to heterogeneity Clear articulation who is responsible for ensuring student success and to whom
- 34. 4343München,19November2011Schule2.0 School performanceand social background GermanyStudentperformance AdvantagePISA Index of socio-economic backgroundDisadvantage Private school Public school in rural area Public school in urban area 700 200 493 -2 -1 0 1 2 Score
- 35. 4444München,19November2011Schule2.0 Lessons from PISA onsuccessful education systems Clear ambitious goals that are shared across the system and aligned with high stakes gateways and instructional systems Well established delivery chain through which curricular goals translate into instructional systems, instructional practices and student learning (intended, implemented and achieved) High level of metacognitive content of instruction
- 36. 4545München,19November2011Schule2.0 Lessons from PISA onsuccessful education systems Capacity at the point of delivery Attracting, developing and retaining high quality teachers and school leaders and a work organisation in which they can use their potential Instructional leadership and human resource management in schools Keeping teaching an attractive profession System-wide career development
- 37. 4646München,19November2011Schule2.0 Lessons from PISA onsuccessful education systems Incentives, accountability, knowledge management Aligned incentive structures For students How gateways affect the strength, direction, clarity and nature of the incentives operating on students at each stage of their education Degree to which students have incentives to take tough courses and study hard Opportunity costs for staying in school and performing well For teachers Make innovations in pedagogy and/or organisation Improve their own performance and the performance of their colleagues Pursue professional development opportunities that lead to stronger pedagogical practices A balance between vertical and lateral accountability Effective instruments to manage and share knowledge and spread innovation – communication within the system and with stakeholders around it A capable centre with authority and legitimacy to act
- 38. 4747München,19November2011Schule2.0 Schools with lessautonomy Schools with more autonomy 480 490 500 Systems with more accountability Systems with less accountability 495 School autonomy in resource allocation System’s accountability arrangements PISA score in reading School autonomy, accountability and student performance Impact of school autonomy on performance in systems with and without accountability arrangements
- 39. 5050München,19November2011Schule2.0 Lessons from PISA onsuccessful education systems Investing resources where they can make most of a difference Alignment of resources with key challenges (e.g. attracting the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms) Effective spending choices that prioritise high quality teachers over smaller classes
- 40. 5151München,19November2011Schule2.0 Lessons from PISA onsuccessful education systems A learning system An outward orientation of the system to keep the system learning, international benchmarks as the ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ of the system Recognising challenges and potential future threats to current success, learning from them, designing responses and implementing these
- 41. 5252München,19November2011Schule2.0 Lessons from PISA onsuccessful education systems Coherence of policies and practices Alignment of policies across all aspects of the system Coherence of policies over sustained periods of time Consistency of implementation Fidelity of implementation (without excessive control)
- 42. 5353München,19November2011Schule2.0 Then Now Learning aplace Learning an activity Prescription Informed profession Delivered wisdom User-generated wisdom Uniformity Embracing diversity Conformity Ingenious Curriculum-centred Learner-centred Provision Outcomes
- 43. 5454München,19November2011Schule2.0 Thank you ! www.oecd.org; www.pisa.oecd.org – All national and international publications – The complete micro-level database email: [email protected] [email protected] … and remember: Without data, you are just another person with an opinion
Editor's Notes
- #2 Some 10 years ago, we lived in a very different world in which education systems tended to be inward-looking , where schools and education systems typically considered themselves to be unique and to operate in a unique context that would not allow them to borrow on policies and practices developed elsewhere. Sort of, where practitioners and policy makers alike felt reluctant to take any medicine for which they had not themselves participated in its clinical trial. There were lots of walls between education systems. Some of these walls were “natural”, established by language or culture, but others result from poor knowledge management in education systems and because education often remains dominated by beliefs and traditions. International comparisons provide one way to break through some of these walls, and they have become a powerful instrument for policy reform and transformational change, by allowing education systems to look at themselves in the light of the intended, implemented and achieved policies elsewhere. When education ministers meet at the OECD these days, they begin almost any conversation with a comparative perspective. It seems that information feeding peer pressure and public accountability is now often more powerful than legislation, rules and regulations.
- #4 This chart shows you the college graduation rate on the horizontal axis, and how much countries invest per college student each year. Each dot is one country.
- #14 This shows you both how rapidly education systems have expanded but also how much the pace of change has differed across countries. The United States, that was the benchmark for higher education output in 1995, is now an average performer because so many countries have expanded higher education so much faster. In fact, if you followed this chart closely, you will see that, while most countries have moved towards the right, towards more people completing degrees, the US has primarily moved upwards, becoming more expensive.
- #15 You can see this here once more.
- #16 The expansion of higher education has had significant implications on the global talent pool (here 36 countries with comparable data). Among the age group nearing retirement, there are 39 million with a tertiary qualification. Among the age group entering the labour-force, it is 81 million.
- #17 But while in the older age group every third person in global talent pool was in the United States, it is only every fifth in the younger age group. China’s share of this global talent pool has expanded from less 7% among the older age group to 18% among those who have just entered the labor market – just 2 percentage points below that of the U.S. In sum, the US still has one of most highly educated labour forces in the OECD area. With 41% of the adult population having attained a tertiary degree, the US ranks among the top five countries on this measure, and has over 10 percentage points more of its labour force with this level of education than the OECD average (30%). But much of this advantage stems from a high educational level among older age groups. The US, together with Germany and Israel, are the only countries where attainment levels among those about to leave the labour market (55-64 year-olds) are similar to those who have just entered the labour market (25-34 year-olds). This is why the picture looks very different among younger age groups. Among those 25-34 year-olds who have recently entered the labour market, the US ranks 15th among 34 OECD countries in tertiary attainment (Table A1.3a). Similarly, the rate of graduation from tertiary education has increased in the US from 42% in 2000 to 49% in 2009, but the pace of the expansion has been more rapid in other countries: on average across OECD countries, graduation rates have increased from 37% to 47%. Graduation rates from longer, theory-based programmes (tertiary-type A) and advanced research programmes in the US stand at the OECD average of 38% (Table A3.2).
- #24 You can see a similar relationship between skills and social outcomes. If you lack foundation skills, you are more likely to be in poor health, you are less likely to volunteer, you will have less of an understanding of political issues facing your country. You are also less likely to trust institution and people and constantly think that others are taking advantage of you. You may ask why trust is so important but the bottom line is that there is no functioning democracy without trust in institutions and there is no functioning business relationship without trust in your partners and the rule of law. Afghanistan is an example for what financial capital can achieve in a country without a human capital base. You will also be less likely to reciprocate. Finally, those with poor skills show also low levels of political efficacy, that is, they tend to believe that politicians do what they want and that they themselves have no influence.
- #26 Levy and Murnane show how the composition of the US work force has changed. What they show is that, between 1970 and 2000, work involving routine manual input, the jobs of the typical factory worker, was down significantly. Non-routine manual work, things we do with our hands, but in ways that are not so easily put into formal algorithms, was down too, albeit with much less change over recent years – and that is easy to understand because you cannot easily computerise the bus driver or outsource your hairdresser. All that is not surprising, but here is where the interesting story begins: Among the skill categories represented here, routine cognitive input, that is cognitive work that you can easily put into the form of algorithms and scripts saw the sharpest decline in demand over the last couple of decades, with a decline by almost 8% in the share of jobs. So those middle class white collar jobs that involve the application of routine knowledge, are most at threat today. And that is where schools still put a lot of their focus and what we value in multiple choice accountability systems. The point here is, that the skills that are easiest to teach and test are also the skills that are easiest to digitise, automatise and offshore. If that is all what we do in school, we are putting our youngsters right up for competition with computers, because those are the things computers can do better than humans, and our kids are going to loose out before they even started. Where are the winners in this process? These are those who engage in expert thinking – the new literacy of the 21st century, up 8% - and complex communication, up almost 14%.
- #27 A strong foundation of subject matter knowledge will always remain at the heart of success, but it is no longer enough. As the previous chart has shown, other skill dimensions are rising in their importance. In our schools, students learn individually and at the end of the school year, we certify their individual achievement. But the more complex the globalised world becomes, the more individuals and companies need various forms of co-ordination and management, the great collaborators and orchestrators will be successful, people who can relate well to others, manage and resolve conflicts, to respect and appreciate different values, beliefs, cultures. Inter-personal competencies will be of growing importance, but are often not sufficiently recognised by school curricula and even less so in assessments. The conventional approach in school is often to break problems down into manageable bits and pieces and then teach students how to solve these. However, today we create value by synthesising disparate bits, today, for example, the computer scientist is at a premium who works in the pharmazeutical company to analyse genetic structures and turns this knowledge into new medicines. If such competencies matter, we need to reflect them in modern assessments. Similarly, if we log on to the world wide web today, we can find everything we are looking for, and teaching students to access and process information is easy. But the more content we can search and access, the more important will those people become, who can meaningfully sort and filter information and explain specialised content in their own sphere to people working in other spheres. Again, if those competencies matter, we need to reflect them in modern assessments.
- #28 Our modern world is also no longer divided into the categories of specialists and generalists. Specialists generally have deep skills and narrow scope, giving them expertise that is recognised by peers but they face difficulties working outside their domain. Generalists have broad scope but shallow skills and that is important but not enough. What counts most today are versatilists who are capable to apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and assuming new roles. Modern schools therefore need to help young individuals to constantly adapt and grow, individuals who cannot only reproduce subject matter knowledge but have the capacity and motivation to expand their horizons and transfer and apply knowledge in novel settings. As peoples future becomes more and more uncertain, individuals need to have the capacity to find and constantly adjust their right place in an increasingly complex world, people who can manage their lives in meaningful and responsible way, and to recognise rights and limitations, those of themselves and others. We can extend the list further but the point is that, whatever competencies are considered relevant for success in modern societies, we need to base modern assessments of learning outcomes at school on those key competencies, rather than solely assessing the efficiency with which students have learned what they have been taught.
- #32 The best way to find out whether what students have learned at school matters for their life is to actually watch what happens to them after they leave school. This is exactly what we have done that with around 30,000 students in Canada. We tested them in the year 2000 when they were 15 years old in reading, math and science, and since then we are following up with them each year on what choices they make and how successful they are in their transition from school to higher education and work. The horizontal axis shows you the PISA level which 15-year-old Canadians had scored in 2000. Level 2 is the baseline level on the PISA reading test and Level 5 the top level in reading. The red bar shows you how many times more successful someone who scored Level 2 at age 15 was at age 19 to have made a successful transition to university, as compared to someone who did not make it to the baseline PISA level 1. And to ensure that what you see here is not simply a reflection of social background, gender, immigration or school engagement, we have already statistically accounted for all of these factors. The orange bar. … How would you expect the picture to be like at age 21? We are talking about test scores here, but for a moment, lets go back to the judgements schools make on young people, for example through school marks. You can do the same thing here, you can see how well school marks at age 15 predict the subsequent success of youths. You see that there is some relationship as well, but that it is much less pronounced than when we use the direct measure of skills.
- #33 International comparisons demonstrate what can be done with a combination of the right strategy and courageous, sustained leadership. Let us look at what’s behind the success of some of these countries.
- #34 I want to conclude with what we have learned about successful reform trajectories In the past when you only needed a small slice of well-educated people it was efficient for governments to invest a large sum in a small elite to lead the country. But the social and economic cost of low educational performance has risen substantially and all young people now need to leave school with strong foundation skills. When you could still assume that what you learn in school will last for a lifetime, teaching content and routine cognitive skills was at the centre of education. Today, where you can access content on Google, where routine cognitive skills are being digitised or outsourced, and where jobs are changing rapidly, the focus is on enabling people to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers cannot take over easily. In the past, teachers had sometimes only a few years more education than the students they taught. When teacher quality is so low, governments tend to tell their teachers exactly what to do and exactly how they want it done and they tend to use Tayloristic methods of administrative control and accountability to get the results they want. Today the challenge is to make teaching a profession of high-level knowledge workers. But such people will not work in schools organised as Tayloristic workplaces using administrative forms of accountability and bureaucratic command and control systems to direct their work. To attract the people they need, successful education systems have transformed the form of work organisation in their schools to a professional form of work organisation in which professional norms of control complement bureaucratic and administrative forms of control.
- #35 This chart illustrates the reading literacy scale, from below the OECD average, marked in red, to around the OECD average, marked in yellow, to high performance, marked in green. You see that Shanghai, Korea, Hong-Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Japan in Asia, Finland in Europe and Canada in North America do particularly well. Some will attribute the high performance of the East Asian countries to the Confucian culture, but be careful, for example, Chinese Taipei or Macao come from that same culture and don’t do particularly well. They tend to excel in rote learning, but don’t do well on the kind of creative skills that PISA values.
- #36 But I do want to introduce a second dimension into this picture, that PISA pays great attention to. When you look at the distribution of student performance within each country, there are some countries in which social background has a strong impact on student performance, in other words, where educational opportunities are very unequally distributed, where there is a large gap between winners and losers and where a lot of the potential that children bring with them is wasted. There are other countries, where it matters much less into which social context students are born, where outcomes are socially equitably distributed. If you look at this, it is clear where we all want to be, namely where performance and equity are both strong. And nobody, and no country, can accept to be where performance is low and opportunities are very unequally distributed. Whether it is better to have high performance at the price of large disparities, or better to invest in small disparities at the price of mediocracy, that is subject to debate.
- #37 When you look at how countries come out on this picture, you will see that there are a number of countries that feature in the upper right quadrant, which signals that these countries have advanced from providing excellence for some to providing excellence for all. Japan comes out strongly in terms of performance, and about average in terms of social equity. Some of the countries you see here have taken part in PISA over the last decade and I will mark each of those countries with a colored bubble now.
- #38 And I am changing the size of the bubble now to reflect the amount of money these countries spend per student. If money would tell you everything about the quality of an education system, you would find all the large bubbles at the top of the chart, but that is not what you see, money only explains about 10% of the performance variation among countries. Indeed, Japan is a case in point, its performance is considerably stronger than what investment per student alone would suggest. Overall, our data show that two countries with similar levels of spending can produce very different educational results. Furthermore, they show that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated countries is now out of date.
- #39 The red dot indicates classroom spending per student, relative to the spending capacity of countries, the higher the dot, the more of its GDP a country invests. High salaries are an obvious cost driver. You see Korea paying their teachers very well, the green bar goes up a lot. Korea also has long school days, another cost driver, marked here by the white bar going up. Last but not least, Korea provides their teachers with lots of time for other things than teaching such as teacher collaboration and professional development, which costs money as well. So how does Korea finances all of this? They do this with large classes, the blue bar pulls costs down. If you go to the next country on the list, Luxembourg, you see that the red dot is about where it is for Korea, so Luxembourg spends roughly the same per student as Korea. But parents and teachers in Luxembourg mainly care about small classes, so policy makers have invested mainly into reducing class size, you see the blue bar as the main cost driver. But even Luxembourg can only spend its money once, and the result is that school days are short, teacher salaries are average at best and teachers have little time for anything else than teaching. Finland and the US are a similar contrast. Countries make quite different spending choices. But when you look at this these data long enough, you see that many of the high performing education systems tend to prioritise the quality of teachers over the size of classes.
- #40 And I am changing the size of the bubble now to reflect the amount of money these countries spend per student. If money would tell you everything about the quality of an education system, you would find all the large bubbles at the top of the chart, but that is not what you see, money only explains about 10% of the performance variation among countries. This means that two countries with similar levels of spending can produce very different educational results. PISA shows also that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated countries is now out of date.
- #41 For a moment, let us go back to the year 2000. Remember, that was the year before the iPod was invented. This is how the world looked then in terms of PISA literacy performance. The first thing you can see is that the bubbles were generally much smaller, we spent around a quarter less per student. So was the increase in spending matched by better outcomes?
- #42 Not generally, but I want to highlight a few countries that have seen impressive improvements. Korea’s average performance was already high in 2000, yet Korean policy makers were concerned that only a small elite achieved levels of excellence in the PISA assessment of reading back then. Within less than a decade, Korea was able to double the share of students demonstrating excellence in reading literacy. If you raise performance at the top end of the scale only, that of course increases disparities in outcomes, and you see Korea moving slightly backwards on the equity dimension. But it is still a strong and equitable performer. At the other end of the spectrum we have seen impressive gains as well. Chile provides an example. In 2000, Chile performed so low that you would not even see it on this chart. 9 years later the performance of 15-year-olds was roughly a school year better. A major overhaul of Poland’s school system helped to dramatically reduce performance variability among schools, turn around the lowest performing schools and raise overall performance by the equivalent of more than half a school year. So is Portugal, which improved both overall performance and equity. And so did Hungary. Finally, Germany was jolted into action when PISA 2000 revealed below-average performance and large social disparities in their results, and has been able to make progress on both fronts. And this is not the complete list, also Peru, Indonesia, Latvia, Israel and Brazil raised their outcomes and in Mathematics impressive improvements have been realised by Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Germany. When it comes to Japan, the results have remained unchanged, and that is true for reading, mathematics and science. I know that some people have been very concerned in Japan about an apparent decline in student performance in 2003, but when you look at long-term trends properly, you will see that there has been no decline in Japan’s student performance. There has, however, been a widening gap in student and school performance in reading, essentially because the share of top-performers in reading has grown while similar improvements have not been witnessed at the bottom end of the performance distribution.
- #43 First, there is no question that most nations declare that education is important. But the test comes when these commitments are weighed against others. How do countries pay teachers, compared to other highly-skilled workers? How are education credentials weighed against other qualifications when people are being considered for jobs? Would you want your child to be a teacher? How much attention do the media pay to schools and schooling? What we have learned from PISA is that in high performing systems political and social leaders have persuaded citizens to make choices that show they value education more than other things. But placing a high value on education is only part of the equation. Another part is belief in the possibilities for all children to achieve success. In some countries, students are separated into different tracks at an early age, reflecting a notion shared by teachers, parents and citizens that only a subset of the nation’s children can or need to achieve world class standards. Our analysis shows that systems that track students in this way, based differing expectations for different destinations, tend to be fraught with large social disparities. By contrast, the best performing systems deliver strong and equitable learning outcomes across very different cultural and economic contexts. In Finland, Japan, Singapore, Shanghai-China and Hong Kong-China, parents, teachers and the public at large share the belief that all students are capable of achieving high standards and need to do so, and they provide great examples for how public policy can support the achievement of universal high standards.
- #45 High-performing education systems also share clear and ambitious standards across the board. Everyone knows what is required to get a given qualification, both in terms of the content studied and the level of performance needed to earn it. Students cannot go on to the next stage—be it in work or in further education—unless they show that they are qualified to do so. They know what they have to do to realise their dream, and they put in the work that is needed to do it. As discussed in the 2009 edition of OECD’s Education at a Glance¸ over the past decade, assessments of student performance have become common in many OECD countries – and the results are often widely reported and used in both public and more specialised debate. However, the rationale for assessments and the nature of the instruments used vary greatly within and across countries. Methods employed in OECD countries include different forms of external assessment, external evaluation or inspection, and schools’ own quality assurance and self-evaluation efforts. One aspect relating to accountability systems concerns the existence of standards-based external examinations. These are examinations that focus on a specific school subject and assess a major portion of what students who are studying this subject are expected to know or be able to do (Bishop, 1998, 2001). Essentially, they define performance relative to an external standard, not relative to other students in the classroom or school. These examinations usually have a direct impact on students’ education – and even on their futures – and may thus motivate students to work harder. Other standardised tests, which may be voluntary and implemented by schools, often have only indirect consequences for students. For teachers, standardised assessments can provide information on students’ learning needs and can be used to tailor their instruction accordingly. In some countries, such as Brazil, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland and the Slovak Republic, such tests are also used to determine teachers’ salaries or to guide professional development (for data, see the 2009 edition of Education at a Glance ). At the school level, information from standardised tests can be used to determine the allocation of additional resources, and what interventions are required to establish performance targets and monitor progress. Across OECD countries, students in school systems that require standards-based external examinations perform, on average, over 16 points higher than those in school systems that do not use such examinations (Figure IV.2.6a). Among OECD countries, there are standards-based external examinations for secondary school students in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. In Australia, these examinations cover 81% of secondary students, in Canada 51% and in Germany 35%. In Austria, Belgium, Chile, Greece, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, such examinations do not exist or only in some parts of the system (Table IV.3.11). In PISA 2009, school principals were asked to report on the types and frequency of assessment used: standardised tests, teacher-developed tests, teachers’ judgemental ratings, student portfolios or student assignments. Some 76% of students in OECD countries are enrolled in schools that use standardised tests. Standardised tests are relatively uncommon in Slovenia, Belgium, Spain, Austria and Germany, where less than half the 15-year-olds attend schools that assess students through standardised tests. In contrast, the use of standardised tests is practically universal in Luxembourg, Finland, Korea, the United States, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where over 95% of students attend schools that use this assessment at least once a year (Table IV.3.10). In Japan, 65% of students are in schools that use standardised tests.
- #46 Third, the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and principals. Just like companies, high quality school systems pay attention to how they select and train their staff. They watch how they improve the performance of those who are struggling; how structure teachers’ pay packets; and how they reward their best teachers. They provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame good practice. That is where teachers conduct field-based research to confirm or disprove the approaches they develop, and they judge their colleagues by the degree to which they use these practices in their classrooms. Listen to what the Finnish Minister had to say about that.
- #47 Fourth, as you have seen, success has to do with incentives and accountability, and how these are aligned in the system. It has also to do with how vertical accountability to superiors is balanced with horizontal or professional accountability towards peers, how knowledge is shared and spread. For students this affects: How gateways affect the strength, direction, clarity and nature of the incentives operating on students at each stage of their education; as well as the degree to which students have incentives to take tough courses and study hard and the opportunity costs for staying in school and performing well. It also means providing incentives for teachers to make innovations in pedagogy and/or organisation, improve their own performance and the performance of their colleagues, and to pursue professional development opportunities that lead to stronger pedagogical practices. High performing systems tend to provide a balance between vertical and lateral accountability and have effective instruments to manage and share knowledge and spread innovation – and that means both communication within the system and with stakeholders around it.
- #48 What is important is that autonomy and accountability need to be seen in conjunction. Data from PISA show that in school systems where most schools post achievement data publicly, schools with greater discretion in managing their resources tend to show higher levels of performance. In school systems where schools do not post achievement data publicly, a student who attends a school with greater autonomy in resource management than the average OECD school tends to perform 3.2 score points lower in reading than a student attending a school with an average level of autonomy. In contrast, in school systems where schools do post achievement data publicly, a student who attends a school with above-average autonomy scores 2.6 points higher in reading than a student attending a school with an average level of autonomy (Table IV.2.5).
- #50 School education takes place mainly in public schools. Nevertheless, with an increasing variety of educational opportunities, programmes and providers, governments are forging new partnerships to mobilise resources for education and to design new policies that allow all stakeholders to participate more fully and share costs and benefits more equitably. Privately funded education is not only a way of mobilising resources from a wider range of funding sources, it is sometimes also considered a way of making education more cost-effective. Publicly financed schools are not necessarily also publicly managed. Instead, governments can transfer funds to public and private educational institutions according to various allocation mechanisms. Indeed, publicly funded private schools are the most common model of private education in OECD countries (see section on school choice, above). Across OECD countries, 15% of students are enrolled in privately managed schools that are either privately or government funded, although in many countries government authorities retain significant control over these schools, including the power to shut down non-performing schools. Enrolment in privately managed schools exceeds 50% of 15-year-old students in the Netherlands, Ireland and Chile, and in Australia and Korea between 35% and 40% of students are enrolled in such schools. In Japan, 29 % of students attend schools that are privately managed and 71% attend schools that are publicly managed. In contrast, in Turkey, Iceland and Norway, more than 98% of students attend schools that are publicly managed (Table IV.3.9). On average across OECD countries, privately managed schools display a performance advantage of 30 score points on the PISA reading scale (Table IV.3.9). However, once the socio-economic backgrounds of students and schools is accounted for, public schools come out with a slight advantage of seven score points, on average across OECD countries. In Japan, public and privately managed schools do not show a performance difference before accounting for the socio-economic background, and public schools outperform private schools after accounting for students’ and schools’ socio-economic backgrounds.
- #51 The most impressive outcome of world class education systems is perhaps that they deliver high quality learning consistently across the entire education system so that every student benefits from excellent learning opportunity. To achieve this, they invest educational resources where they can make most of a difference, they attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classroom, and they establish effective spending choices that prioritise the quality of teachers. Let me come back to the example of Shanghai once more here. Let us have a look at the struggling schools six years later. Research usually shows a weak relationship between educational resources and student performance, with more variation explained by the quality of human resources (i.e. teachers and school principals) than by material and financial resources, particularly among industrialised nations. The generally weak relationship between resources and performance observed in past research is also seen in PISA. At the level of the education system, and net of the level of national income, the only type of resource that PISA shows to be correlated with student performance is the level of teachers’ salaries relative to national income (Figure IV.2.8). Teachers’ salaries are related to class size in that if spending levels are similar, school systems often make trade-offs between smaller classes and higher salaries for teachers. The findings from PISA suggest that systems prioritising higher teachers’ salaries over smaller classes, such as those in Japan and Korea, tend to perform better. The lack of correlation between the level of resources and performance among school systems does not mean that resource levels do not affect performance at all. Rather, it implies that, given the variation in resources observed in PISA, they are unrelated to performance or equity. A school system that lacks teachers, infrastructure and textbooks will almost certainly perform at lower levels; but given that most school systems in PISA appear to satisfy the minimum resource requirements for teaching and learning, the lack of a relationship between many of the resource aspects and both equity and performance may result simply from a lack of sufficient variation among OECD countries.
- #52 Some of the most successful systems are also actively looking outward, realising that the benchmark for success is no longer simply improvement by national standards, but the best performing systems internationally. Whether Singapore is interested in designing a better sewer system, retirement system or school system, it sends key people in the relevant sector to visit those countries that are the world’s best performers in those areas with instructions to find out how they do it, and to put together a design for Singapore that is superior to anything that they have seen anywhere.
- #53 Last but not least, in high performing systems these policies and practices are aligned across all aspects of the system, they are coherent over sustained periods of time, and they are consistently implemented. And PISA shows, success is within the reach for nations that have the capacity to creating and executing policies with maximum coherence in the system. Of course, the path to reform is not easy and it can be fraught with political controversy. Moving away from administrative and bureaucratic control toward professional norms of control can be counterproductive if a nation does not yet have teachers and schools with the capacity to implement these policies and practices. Pushing authority down to lower levels can be as problematic if there is not agreement on what the students need to know and should be able to do. Recruiting high quality teachers is not of much use if those who are recruited are so frustrated by what they perceive to be a mindless system of initial teacher education that they will not participate in it and turn to another profession. Or if they become school teachers, but are so turned off by the bureaucratic forms of work organisation they find there that they leave teaching for some other occupation. So this is all about alignment.
- #54 This is going to be a perspective from 30,000 feet above, which does not allow us to see much detail, but rather to get an impression of the big picture of changes in education that we are seeing around the world. Some of these changes are profound. In the past, learning was considered a place, we brought kids to school. Now learning is an activity that cuts through everything children do at all stages of our lives. In old bureaucratic education systems, teachers were often left alone in classrooms with a lot of prescription what to teach. The most successful systems now set ambitious goals, are clear about what students should be able to do and then provide teachers with the tools to establish what content and instruction they need to deliver to their individual students. The past was about delivered wisdom, the challenge now is to enable user-generated wisdom. In the past, different students were taught in similar ways, today the challenge is to embrace increasing diversity with differentiated pedagogical practices. The goal of the past was standardization and conformity, now it’s about being ingenious, about personalizing educational experiences, about realising that ordinary students have extraordinary talents. Education systems have always talked about equity, now we measure their success by how well they deliver equity, in terms of moderating the impact which social background has on learning outcomes. The past was curriculum-centered, the future is learner centered. In the past, the policy focus was on the provision of education, today it’s on outcomes, shifting from looking upwards in the bureaucracy towards looking outwards to the next teacher, the next school, about creating networks of innovation In the past we emphasized school management, now it is about leadership, with a focus on supporting, evaluating and developing teacher quality as its core, which includes coordinating the curriculum and teaching program, monitoring and evaluating teacher practice, promoting teacher professional development and supporting collaborative work cultures. In the past, we considered social background and culture as obstacles to learning, the best performing systems capitalize on the diversity of learners; see diversity not as the problem, but as the potential of the knowledge society. And Ontario is actually a great example in this respect.