Why access to quality early childhood education and care is a key driver of women’s labour market participation

  by Eric Charbonnier, Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

We are in 1961. JF Kennedy is president and has just designated Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman of the new US Commission on the Status of Women: "We want to be sure that women are used as

How primary and secondary teachers differ and why it matters

by Marie-Helene Doumet, 
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Learning needs vary as we evolve through life. The early years of education set the stage for children’s well-being, cognitive and social-emotional development; young children starting out in the

What the expansion of higher education means for graduates in the labour market

by Markus Schwabe
Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills

A university degree has always been considered as key to a good job and higher wages. But as the share of tertiary-educated adults across OECD countries has almost doubled over the last two decades, can the labour market absorb this growing supply of skills? At first glance, the answer isn’t encouraging: the number of unemployed tertiary-educated adults has been increasing across OECD countries for many years. However, a closer look reveals that the unemployment rate for these adults is still much lower than for those without a university degree.

The latest Education Indicators in Focus policy brief analyses long-term trends in employment outcomes of adults based on their highest level of educational attainment. The figure above shows that, in all OECD countries, adults with tertiary education still enjoy higher employment rates than those without by 10 percentage points, on average, and this advantage has changed little over the past two decades.

While this might seem reassuring, in some countries the reality is more troubling. In Korea, for example, labour market demand has not kept pace with an ever-increasing supply of tertiary graduates. As a result, the employment advantage of tertiary-educated adults decreased slightly, by 0.6 point, between 1995 and 2006. In 1995, tertiary-educated adults in Korea were 13% more likely to be employed than those with an upper-secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education; today they are only 6% more likely to have a job. With 70% of young adults in Korea holding a tertiary degree, some might wonder whether tertiary expansion has reached its limit. But with populations of school-aged children shrinking across OECD countries, the worry about too many university graduates competing for too few high-skilled jobs might prove to be misplaced.

The “knowledge economy” has increased the demand for better-educated and well-skilled workers. But in many countries, even as enrolments in higher education have grown, companies still report that they cannot find workers with the skills they are looking for. While technological progress and globalisation continue to challenge education systems, automation and digitalisation will be, in the words of two Harvard economists*, an ongoing “race between education and technology”. Countries should thus worry less about the share of tertiary-educated adults in the labour force and more about the skills that education provides. Ensuring that the skills students graduate with are relevant to the labour market will go a long way towards making the expansion of higher education sustainable – and beneficial for all.

*Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz in their book The Race between Education and Technology (2008), Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap.

Links

Education Indicators in Focus No. 57 - Is labour market demand keeping pace with the rising educational attainment of the population?
Education at a Glance 2017 - OECD Indicators

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Who really bears the cost of education?

by Marie-Hélène Doumet
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

It can be difficult to get your head around education finance. Who actually pays for it, where does the money come from, and how is it spent are all crucial questions to ask if you want to understand how the money flows in education. In many countries, basic education is considered a right, and governments are expected to ensure universal access to it. However, educational attainment has reached unprecedented levels, and more people are participating in education than ever before, leaving governments struggling to meet the demand through public funds alone. The role of private funding has become more significant in the past decade, particularly at the pre-primary and tertiary levels of education. 

But the reality is more complex than a binary public-private model would suggest. Other financing mechanisms, involving the transfer of funds between governments, households and other private entities, are blurring the lines of what is commonly understood as public or private.

Take government-subsidised loans to students. A loan, by definition, needs to be repaid, and so is commonly considered as a private cost to households.  But before that, loans actually come out of the public purse, and so are actually a public cost to governments at the time the loan is issued. The cost, however, shifts to individuals once they enter the labour market and start earning enough to make repayments.  

The latest Education in Focus brief  tries to answer the question “Who really bears the cost of education?” by looking at these transfers as two sides of the same coin.  Separating out transfers from the traditional public-private split of costs also provides more granularity on the sourcing of private expenditure, differentiating what comes in the form of government support from what is truly out-of-pocket costs. 

Consider, for example, two countries well known for their reliance on private expenditure to fund tertiary education: the United Kingdom and Japan. In 2014, both countries relied on private funding to provide around 70% of the cost of tertiary education (when considering the final allocation of funds after transfers). However, two-thirds of that private funding in the United Kingdom comes from government transfers to private non-educational entities, mostly in the form of loans, with advantageous repayment schedules and conditions, to students. This means that while the private sector is ultimately responsible for this expenditure, it is the public sector that bears a significant share of the initial cost, not only of the value of the loan, but also the risk of future default on payments. By contrast, in Japan, only 20% of final private expenditure originated from government transfers, leaving the private sector, a large share of which are households, to fund the rest from their own pockets.  

The chart above shows the extent to which countries balance out public and private funding in tertiary education, and how they compensate for private funding through government transfers to households, students and other non-educational private entities. Interestingly, some countries with the largest share of private funding in education provide the least financial support as a share of total private expenditure. This is the case in Chile, Japan, Korea and the United States. By contrast, countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Slovenia cover a large share of private expenditure through public-to-private transfers, and households bear much less of a financial burden. In between the two models, countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom rely on public funds to unlock private ones.  A strong financial support system, mostly structured on publicly subsidised loans, lightens the initial high cost of education for individuals, but allows graduates to repay the loans when they are most able to do so.    

Central to the idea of who should bear the cost of education is the philosophy behind who actually benefits the most from it: the public or the individual. Primary and secondary education are generally considered as a fundamental human right to basic skills that should mostly be provided by governments, which, indeed, is often the case. However, the earnings premium provided to higher education opens the debate as to who benefits the most from higher education and therefore, who should be paying for it. But thinking mainly in terms of public or private spending misses an essential element: what happens behind the scenes in the form of public-to-private transfers. Understanding these financial transfers provides insights as to how the cost of education shifts between the public and private sectors over time, and sheds some light on a sometimes overlooked measure of education finance.  

Links

Education Indicators in Focus No. 56 - Who really bears the cost of education? How the burden of education expenditure shifts from the public to the private sector

Education at a Glance 2017 - OECD Indicators

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What happens with your skills when you leave school?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Mean literacy and numeracy score, by age and education enrolment status
OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), 2012 or 2015

Moving from the world of school to the world of work is one of the most dramatic changes in the lives of young people. And for many youngsters this transition does not go smoothly. Spells of frictional or longer-term unemployment, job insecurity because of low-paid or temporary contracts, and the uncertainties associated with starting to live autonomously produce a challenging phase in young people’s lives. The most vulnerable people are those who fall between the two systems: the so-called NEETs (not in employment, education or training), who are no longer in school and are either unemployed or inactive. Some 6% of 15-19 year-olds in OECD countries – in other words, half of those of that age who have left school, or around 5 million young people – are NEET.

A new Education Indicators in Focus brief looks at the transition from school to work across different age groups. It reconfirms that leaving school is much less difficult if one has acquired an upper secondary qualification, which functions as a kind of security mechanism against most of the hardships associated with the transition. The share of 20-24 year-old NEETs who do not have an upper secondary qualification (36%) is double the share of employed 20-24 year-olds who have not attained that level of education (18%).

But an educational qualification is one thing; the actual skills that people have are another. The brief publishes some new and interesting findings about the skills disparities among young people in different age groups in and out of school. The chart above shows the difference in mean literacy and numeracy skills between people in and out of education in three different age groups. The differences are remarkable. Among 16-19 year-olds, the difference in skills amounts to the equivalent of around 2.5 years of schooling. But the differences among older age groups are also considerable – and they remain significant even after controlling for educational attainment.

The finding lends itself to various possible explanations and observations. The most obvious one is that the results reflect a selection effect: more-skilled young people tend to stay in school while the less-skilled leave. A skills-selection effect does not seem to be problematic among 20-24 and 25-29 year-olds, when continuing one’s education is based on educational merit. For the younger age group, however, the difference in skills signals an efficiency problem in our education systems. Less-skilled young people should leave school only after they have acquired a foundation level of skills. When dropping out of school at an early age is the result of a skills-selection mechanism, than we are not serving our most vulnerable youngsters well.

Another possible explanation looks at the skills difference from the other side of the transition: the labour market and the world of work. This hypothesis suggests that leaving school and entering the labour market is accompanied by a process of de-skilling. When skills are not used in employment, they erode. A difficult school-to-work transition can have a scarring effect that can last throughout an entire career. De-skilling can happen through unemployment, but also through employment in precarious jobs, where workers do not fully use their skills, or through employment in an ill-matched job. This hypothesis suggests that a difficult transition process can undermine what should be a social benefit: essentially, the investment in skills acquisition is wasted.

The policy consequences are clear: there are many reasons for governments to be concerned about the school-to-work transition. Dropping out of school at an early age without a proper qualification has a huge social cost. Policies to provide guidance and support to young people during that transition pay off: there is less risk that people become unemployed or fall between the cracks and become dependent on welfare systems. And such policies should encourage people to maintain their skills and give them the opportunity to improve their skills through quality work and training. The political responsibility to ensure a smooth transition is enormous, but it is also shared between the work of education and the world of work.

Links

Education Indicators in Focus No. 54 - Transition from school to work: How hard is it across different age groups? 

Education Indicators in Focus 

Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators

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Chart source: OECD (2017), in Education Indicators in Focus No. 54, Figure 3. 

Do countries pay their teachers enough?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Teachers enter the profession for a variety of reasons. Intrinsic motivations that have to do with the nature of the job and the intangible rewards associated with being an effective teacher play an important role. Yet when comparing a teaching career with similarly rewarding professions, the primary and secondary working conditions and material benefits probably come into play as well. To improve the quality of the candidates for teacher-training programmes and to keep them motivated to enter – and stay – in the profession, it is essential to offer competitive pay.

For many years Education at a Glance has been tracking and monitoring the salaries of teachers, comparing them across countries and over time. A new Education Indicators in Focus brief has brought together the available data in order to chart the evolution of teachers’ salaries over the past ten years. The data clearly show that, in several countries, teachers’ salaries have suffered from the impact of the financial and economic crisis that started in 2008, and from austerity policies and fiscal constraints in recent years. In one-third of the countries with available data, mainly European countries, teachers’ statutory salaries decreased in real terms between 2005 and 2014. But in countries with no similar decreases, teachers’ salaries also did not keep up with pay rises in other professions or public services. In countries with severe budgetary difficulties, it was expected that funding for education would be reduced too; but in doing so governments might have put the long-term quality of the teaching profession at risk.

In troubled labour markets teachers might put job stability and security, or secondary benefits and working conditions first, while accepting less-favourable salaries. At the same time, high-potential graduates might look for better opportunities outside the teaching profession. Lowering salaries in the context of economic downturn and increasing unemployment thus might have an impact on the quality of the candidates seeking to enter the teaching profession and those teachers who are deciding whether or not to remain in the profession. And that could have long-term consequences for the education system in general and for students in particular.

The interesting question is how teachers’ salaries now compare with those of similarly educated professionals. The chart above compares the average actual salaries of teachers in different levels of education against the average salary of a tertiary-educated 25-64 year-old professional who works full time. The data is from 2014, when the worst of the economic downturn was over and recovery had kicked off. The data can be influenced by the differences in teachers’ ages, since in most countries teachers’ salaries increase almost automatically with seniority; but they do provide a fairly accurate basis for comparison. 

The conclusion is straightforward: in the large majority of countries actual teachers’ salaries lose out against those of competing professions. On average across OECD countries, pre-primary teachers’ actual salaries amount to only 74% of the earnings of a tertiary-educated worker. Primary teachers are paid 81% of these benchmark earnings, lower secondary teachers 85% and upper secondary teachers 89%. In only five countries do the salaries of the best-paid teachers exceed those of other professionals.

The chart also shows that the differences in teachers’ pay related to which level of education they teach are significant. In many countries teachers in lower levels of education are paid less than those in upper secondary education. This can be partly explained by differences in the length and qualification level of initial teacher-education programmes or differences in how salaries evolve over the different levels of education. And the gaps are large, adding to the lack of competitiveness of the salaries of teachers in lower levels of education. In recent years, the gaps have narrowed, mainly because of increases in teachers’ salaries at these levels of education; but they are still wider than the pay gap between tertiary-educated professionals and upper secondary teachers.  

In many countries, policies that affect teachers have been given high priority in education policy development – and rightly so: governments realise that to achieve high quality, efficiency and equity in education, improving the quality of the profession is key. Countries also want to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession, and the quality of teacher education and professional development. The definition of “teacher” is slowly evolving too: a teacher is increasingly seen as an autonomous professional capable of making decisions in varied and complex conditions. But it is hard to see how policies that aim to upgrade the teaching profession – essentially, recognising teachers as the professionals they are – can succeed without raising teachers’ pay at the same time. Governments should not expect that prospective and current teachers will remain content with just the intangible incentives and rewards that traditionally come with teaching. Like every other professional, teachers deserve to be paid a salary that is commensurate with their training and experience. The war for talent is also fought with money.

Links 

Education Indicators in Focus No. 53 - How have teachers’ salaries evolved and how do they compare to those of tertiary-educated workers?

Education Indicators in Focus 
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators

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Chart source: OECD, Table D3.2a. See Annex 3 for notes (http://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm)

Are countries ready to invest in early childhood education?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills 

There is now a widespread consensus that high-quality early childhood education is critically important for children. Research continues to find that early childhood education can compensate for a lack of learning opportunities at home, and can help children begin to develop the social and emotional skills needed for success later in life. Few policy makers would now question the benefits of high-quality early childhood education.

As a result, early childhood education systems have expanded. As documented in Education at a Glance 2016, on average across OECD countries enrolment in pre-primary education among 3-year-olds rose from 54% in 2005 to 69% in 2014, and among 4-year-olds from 73% to 85%. Expansion policies include the extension of compulsory education to younger children, free or universal early childhood education, and the creation of programmes that integrate care with formal pre-primary education.

Yet, the available data show that many countries still have a long way to go. As the chart above illustrates, enrolment rates among 2- to 4-year-olds still fall below 50% in Ireland, Poland, Switzerland, the United States and in OECD partner countries Argentina and Colombia. In some countries that are known for the overall quality of their education, such as Australia, Finland, Japan and the Netherlands, enrolment rates among this age group do not exceed 70%.

Are countries hesitant to translate their acknowledgement of the benefits of early childhood education into adequate funding? A look at how early childhood education is financed suggests they are. The latest Education Indicators in Focus brief looks at how much governments allocate to early childhood education and where the money comes from. The overall picture is disappointing.

As seen in the chart above, overall annual public expenditure on early childhood education per pupil varies enormously, from close to USD 2 000 in Estonia to close to USD 18 000 in Norway. Most countries still spend less than USD 5 000 per pupil per year. In many countries there is still a large gap between public per-student funding in early childhood education and primary education; yet from an educational point of view, there are no valid arguments for being stingy with early childhood education.

The expansion of early childhood education coincided with radical changes in the economy. As more women entered the work force, the demand for childcare and early childhood education grew. But budget constraints, fiscal austerity following the economic crisis, and the increased cost of other levels of education made it difficult to keep up with the demand and with growing policy interest. Thus, many countries turned to various cost-sharing arrangements.

In most countries households continue to assume a large share of the financial burden. The conservative view that early childhood education is a kind of surrogate “family”, rather than an autonomous learning environment in its own right, provided some ideological justification for cost-sharing. The Education Indicators in Focus brief shows that, on average across OECD countries, the private sector finances 31% of expenditure on early childhood educational development programmes and 17% of pre-primary programmes. Another cost-sharing mechanism for early childhood education makes local and regional levels of government responsible for co-funding. On average across OECD countries, local governments provide 48% of total public funding, even before accounting for transfers from regional and central governments.

The overall picture of the economics of early childhood education is thus extremely complicated, with various sources of funding complementing each other, complex systems of transfers between levels of government, and intricate combinations of public and private funding. Different systems of tax credits and fiscal expenditures contribute to the complexity of the funding arrangements. As a result, governance, policy, oversight and accountability arrangements are also often complicated and sometimes even contradictory. Clearly, these are not the most favourable conditions for expanding early childhood education.

Yet, as the chart above illustrates, there are also countries that seem to have committed themselves to allocating adequate resources to early childhood education. It is interesting to see that higher levels of funding also correlate with higher levels of participation. With the exception of Estonia, Israel and Spain, countries that attract over 80% of 2- to 4-year-olds to early childhood education also ensure relatively high per-student funding from public sources.

Early childhood education can no longer be seen as a luxury; it is neither just a welcome add-on to those education systems that can afford it nor dispensable to those that can’t. The evidence of its benefits for both individuals and society as a whole is just too overwhelming to justify the kinds of timid funding policies that are revealed in the data.

Links
Education Indicators in Focus No. 52 -  Who bears the cost of early childhood education and how does it affect enrolment?
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators
Starting Strong 2017 - Key OECD Indicators on Early Childhood Education and Care
Starting Strong V - Transitions from Early Childhood Education and Care to Primary Education

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Chart source: Semeraro, G. (2017), Who bears the cost of early childhood education and how does it affect enrolment?, Education Indicators in Focus, No. 52, OECD Publishing, Paris, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/e1a6c198-en

Who benefits when international students pay higher tuition fees?

by Dirk Van Damme

Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills 

In 2014, over 3 million students in OECD countries – more than double the amount in 2000 – were studying outside their country of citizenship. International students go to study in countries with reputations for academic excellence; but they are frequently also seen as seeking economic and social opportunities in the host country.

As many countries seek to restrict immigration, international students are becoming a targeted population. One of the policies that aim to reduce the number of incoming international students is charging higher tuition fees for international students compared to national students (“national” meaning outside the European Economic Area [EEA] in the case of European countries). Countries also hold the view that national resources and taxpayers’ money should not be spent to subsidise international students, so they increasingly aim to charge the full tuition cost to international students. Some of the countries that have put themselves firmly in the market for international students in recent years also see fee-paying international students as an important source of revenue for their higher education sector.

The current Education Indicators in Focus brief, based on the most recent data on international student mobility and tuition fees published in Education at a Glance 2016, looks into the reforms differentiating tuition fees between national and international students. The majority of OECD countries still do not differentiate fees between the two categories, but a growing number of countries do. As the chart above shows, in some countries the differences are significant. In Australia, Austria, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, foreign students pay double or more the tuition fees charged to national students, on average, while Sweden and Denmark charge no fees to national students but ask international students to pay more or less the full cost of tuition.

It is well known that exporting education services has become an important economic activity in some countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Fee-paying international students generate a considerable revenue stream to higher education institutions; they also consume other goods and services and thus contribute to the host country’s economy. But to what extent do universities in these countries benefit from this source of income? There are no data available to make reliable estimates for a large group of countries; but for Australia and New Zealand, countries that vigorously market their higher education services, the income from fee-paying international students equals over one-quarter of the total expenditure on higher education. By contrast, in the United States, income from these students represents only 2.4% of total expenditure on higher education; in Canada, it represents only 8.2%. But it is interesting to see that in Denmark – a country that traditionally considers free higher education to be a right, but introduced tuition fees for non-EEA students in 2005 – the income generated by international students now equals 13.3% of total expenditure on higher education.

Universities are genuinely concerned about their place in the global scientific research and education system. They thus see the internationalisation of their institutions as part of a wider strategy. But at the same time, it is clear that in several countries fee-paying students generate welcome additional revenue at a time when public funding is insufficient to cover costs. As is evident from the political debate in several countries, this creates tensions between universities’ policies to defend their commercial interests on the one hand and governments’ restrictive immigration policies on the other.

These developments fundamentally alter the position and perception of international students. From being a desirable addition to the student population, a source of global relevance and diversity, they are now regarded as either cash-cows or scroungers of national resources, taking away benefits and opportunities from locals. It remains to be seen how these students will react to these developments. The current Education Indicators in Focus brief provides some evidence, based on observations in Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden, that introducing fees for international students did result in a drop in their numbers in subsequent years. International students are looking for the best education at a reasonable cost, balancing perceived academic excellence and reputation against cost and hospitality.

As long as higher education systems in emerging economies are not able to match growing demand with sufficient high-quality local supply, students will continue to cross borders to seek education opportunities. For destination countries with excellent higher education systems, international students offer a lot of benefits – but only if they are regarded as welcome additions to the student population, and not as cash cows or opportunistic free-riders.

Links
Education Indicators in Focus No. 51: Tuition fees reforms and international mobility
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators
Podcast: International Tuition Fee Policies: An Interview with Gabriele Marconi
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Join us on Edmodo

Chart source: OECD (2016), Education at a Glance Database, http://stats.oecd.org/.

Why do so many women want to become teachers?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills 

It is well known that the share of women in the teaching force is growing. According to the latest Education Indicators in Focus brief, the average share of female teachers across OECD countries increased from 61% in 2005 to 65% in 2010 and to 68% in 2014, in all education levels combined. Around 82% of primary school teachers and 63% of secondary school teachers are women. Some policy makers see this trend as a cause for concern, citing, among other things, that the lack of male teachers and role models might play a role in the decline of learning outcomes among young boys. But it seems fair to say that few people would be concerned about a similarly skewed gender imbalance in other professions if it benefited men.

The statistics on the age distribution of male and female teachers show that the gender imbalance in the teaching profession will increase even more in the years to come. At the lower secondary level, women make up 70% of teachers under the age of 30, while they account for 65% of those aged 50 and over. This pattern is observed in 22 out of 35 countries with available data. The larger proportion of women among young teachers raises concerns about future gender imbalances at the lower levels of education, where women already dominate the profession.

Gender imbalances among teachers have a lot to do with gender stereotyping, and the power and prestige connected with certain occupations within the profession. This is seen in the smaller shares of female teachers in the higher levels of education, in (perceived) more prestigious fields of study and in leadership positions. Women fill only 43% of the jobs in tertiary education. In secondary school, women are less frequently found teaching science, mathematics and technology classes. And, on average across OECD countries, 68% of lower secondary teachers are women, but only 45% are principals. This is particularly striking given that principals tend to be recruited from among the ranks of teachers – suggesting that female teachers are less likely to be promoted to principal than their male counterparts. So, the large share of women in the teaching profession is, itself, skewed towards specific jobs: those at the bottom of the education pyramid and the bottom of the hierarchy of power.

So why, then, do so many women want to become teachers? Gender imbalances in teaching are the result of women’s conscious and strategic choices as much as of labour market conditions, social norms and cultural messages. In many countries, women’s increased participation in the labour market coincided with the need for more trained teachers in expanding education systems. Countries where female labour participation in general is low, like Japan, also have the smallest shares of female teachers. In addition, stereotypical views of teaching as a profession that, at times, resembles parenting, probably play a role, especially with younger generations of women who apparently value motherhood more than their own baby boom mothers did. Labour provisions that allow teachers to work part time and to flexibly combine work, family life and the care of one’s own children also seem to be more appealing to women.

But less well-known is that the salaries of teachers, as measured against the average wages of other tertiary-educated workers, are much more attractive for women than for men. As shown in the chart above, on average across OECD countries, male primary school teachers earn 71% of the wages of other tertiary-educated men. But female teachers earn a significantly higher relative wage. Women in primary education earn over 90% of the salaries of other tertiary-educated female workers. While men and women doing the same teaching job in public schools earn nearly the same, the relative value of their earnings in the professional labour market is strikingly different. This is probably why more women are interested in teaching, especially at the lower levels of education.

Paradoxically, introducing a greater gender balance into the teaching profession depends on the extent to which and the speed with which other sectors reduce gender gaps in earnings. But the education sector could do much more to ensure that women are promoted into leadership positions, and to end the stereotyping that prevents women from breaking the glass ceiling in specific subject areas and in universities. It could also do more to attract young men into teaching by offering them better career prospects and labour conditions that can make teaching a more competitive career choice, even if teachers’ salaries still lag behind those of other professionals.

Links: 
Education Indicators in Focus No. 49: Gender imbalances to the teaching profession
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators
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Chart source: OECD (2016), Education at a Glance (database)

Who are the winners and losers of the expansion of education over the past 50 years?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Modern education systems, which are open to the middle classes and the poor, not just the elites, were established during the first industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. The growing demand for elementary literacy and technical skills during that period prompted an expansion of school systems and the adoption of the first pieces of legislation on compulsory education. Popular education continued to grow during the first half of the 20th century, corresponding to the so-called “second industrial revolution”, which was ignited by advances in science and technology. In the early 20th century, attainment of primary education became nearly universal, and the system of secondary education began to grow. 

But the great surge in the expansion of education in developed nations, specifically in secondary education, occurred in the wake of World War II, and more specifically from the 1960s and 1970s onwards. At that time, many countries started to see a massive increase in the demand for education, which they had to meet with new infrastructure, a vast effort to recruit and train more teachers, and a corresponding jump in public funding. Unprecedented economic growth and the modernisation of societies, together with an emerging welfare-state consensus that included public education as one of its core components, created the demand for skills and aspirations for upward mobility among large sections of the population – and the political and economic resources to fuel that expansion.

The most recent Education Indicators in Focus brief provides a fascinating statistical account of the growth of secondary education attainment in OECD countries since 1965, spanning half a century to 2015. The chart above highlights the differences in take-off and speed of growth of educational attainment across countries. It ranks countries by the date at which 80% of the 25-34 year-olds in that country attained upper secondary education.

The chart clearly shows that the dominant view of the expansion of education, which is based on data from only a few countries, does not do justice to the variety of developmental trajectories across countries. For example, the United States had developed its system of public education steadily since the late 19th century and had already achieved the 80% benchmark attainment rate by 1969. This remarkable achievement provided one of the foundations for the economic, social and political powerhouse that the United States became in the latter half of the 20th century. 

Germany was also an early achiever in educational development. The Prussian state adopted legislation on compulsory education early in the 19th century. Strong economic development from the late 19th century onwards and welfare-state approaches to public education after Bismarck propelled the development of public education across the country, albeit in a socially segregated system with sharp divisions between the elite education offered in the Gymnasia and the technical-vocational education targeting the working class. 

It is no coincidence that the two most educationally developed nations at the time fought on opposite sides of World War II. But it is also interesting to note that both countries did not make a lot of further progress in the half century after 1965, and that they have been surpassed by a wide range of countries since then. Other countries, including Denmark, Norway and Sweden, have also not been able to build on their impressive position in 1965 and have even seen a decline in educational attainment rates among the younger generation in recent years.

In 1965, fewer than one in two 25-34 year-olds in most OECD countries had attained upper secondary education. The interesting thing to compare is the timing and speed of the expansion of education over the subsequent 50 years. The most impressive – and well-known – story is of course that of Korea. With an attainment rate of just over 20% in 1965 it succeeded in expanding education at an unprecedented speed, especially from 1985 onwards. No other country has been able to match that achievement. Despite doubts about the sustainability of the expansion, especially since it has moved to the tertiary level, and the risks of “education inflation”, it remains an impressive historical accomplishment, which undoubtedly fuelled the economic success of the country.

The chart shows that there are other examples of rapid educational development over the past 50 years, such as occurred in Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland and Poland. When these countries were transforming themselves from agricultural to largely industrial economies, they managed to grow their secondary attainment rate from below 40% in 1965 to the 80% benchmark between 1990 and 2005. Another group of countries, which includes Greece, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and Turkey, is also making enormous progress, but has yet to reach the benchmark in attainment.

Trajectories of education expansion vary enormously among countries. The differences observed in 1965 were already remarkable, mirroring the diversity of levels of economic development and state formation. Religious divisions within Europe are still apparent in the 1965 data, with countries with a “Protestant work ethic” in the lead and predominantly Catholic countries much further behind. But by 2015, most of these countries have converged in their upper secondary attainment levels, and the ranking in educational attainment looks now completely different from the one in 1965.

It is difficult to disentangle the interplay between social developments and developments in education to determine causality with any certainty; but it is clear that the expansion of education helped countries grow economically, modernise and develop their social and political systems. Of course, rising educational attainment also has a downside: the increased marginalisation and exclusion of those without a good education. Recent social and political events have exposed the fractures in societies along the educational attainment fault line. While expansion is now moving into the tertiary level of education, countries might also have to turn their focus from fuelling continuous growth to catering more to those who have been left behind during this remarkable historical transformation.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus No. 48: Educational attainment: A snapshot of 50 years of trends in expanding education
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators
Follow the conversation on twitter: #OECDEAG
Chart source: OECD (2016), “Educational attainment and labour-force status”, Education at a Glance (database). See Annex 3 for notes.

Education and skills foster health and well-being, but why is this a problem?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Knowing, for example, that tobacco is bad for one’s health influences smoking behaviour much less than being able to control one’s own lifestyle. Schooling, together with non-formal and informal learning experiences, has been found to foster the acquisition of skills that matter for health behaviour. It is one of the great insights of recent educational research that education is a very important driver of social progress, and that this happens through the transfer of knowledge and the development of cognition, but probably even more so through fostering the social and emotional skills that allow people to control and change their behaviours.

Traditional economics measure the benefits of education and skills in its economic gains in employment or earnings. These measures include for example the ‘rate of return’ of an individual’s investment in educational attainment or skills acquisition as the annualised average financial benefit, in much the same way as interests rates on capital investment are calculated. This is more or less equivalent to measuring, at an aggregate level of a country or region, the growth rate in the ‘gross domestic product’ (GDP) or total economic output to indicate economic growth.

Whilst such economic measures remain important and influential, they have been increasingly criticised for being one-dimensional and reductionist. They poorly reflect the diversified and holistic nature of human and social progress, well-being or happiness. The publication of the so-called Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report, named after the three chairs of the Commission established by ex-French President Sarkozy to develop new measures of economic performance and social progress, was a pivotal moment for the international community that GDP did not tell the whole story of human development. International organisations – and together with the World Bank and others the OECD has taken a leadership role in this – have started to develop the measurement tools and methodologies for a multidimensional approach to well-being and social progress.

Similarly, work has been undertaken in recent years to develop a more holistic and multidimensional set of measures for estimating the various benefits of investment in education and skills, moving into fields such as health, interpersonal trust, life satisfaction, political engagement, citizenship or volunteering. For a number of years Education at a Glance has included an indicator on these so-called ‘social outcomes of education’, based on the analysis of various data collections. This issue of Education Indicators in Focus brief discusses the most recent findings of this work.

The chart above, focusing on self-reported health, is a good illustration; its pattern is not very different from the ones found for other social outcomes. Both educational attainment (horizontal dimension) and skills, measured by literacy skills, (vertical dimension) are associated with better self-reported health. The chart also shows that although there are strong interactions between education and skills, each has an impact of its own. Within each attainment level the literacy skills level of individuals is also positively associated with the health outcome, and vice versa.

Correlation does not however imply causation. Obviously there are selection effects and factors that mediate the relationship such as employment, work environments, living standards or income. But research that controls for such factors has found that there also is an independent education effect on health outcomes through the acquisition of skills that drive pro-health behaviours. Analysis of longitudinal datasets by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation’s Education and Social Progress project has shown that cognitive and non-cognitive skills acquired informal education and through informal learning change the health behaviour of individuals and improve general self-perceived health. Moreover, the non-cognitive social and emotional skills, such as self-control, perseverance and conscientiousness, seem to exert a bigger impact on health outcomes than cognitive ones.

Research on the economic benefits of education and skills has focused on the returns for individuals. Work on the social outcomes of education has also emphasised the benefits for individuals’ success in life. But what about the effects on communities and societies? Can we actually assume that the positive outcomes of education and skills at the individual level add up to better living conditions and well-being for everyone? In the case of economic returns this is far from evident. The data from Education at Glance shows us that economic returns depend on the wage differentials with less educated individuals. High rates of return mirror high levels of income inequality. Countries with less unequal income distributions show lower economic returns. Raising the share of tertiary-educated individuals in a country, leading to higher returns for those individuals, might increase social inequality if the lower attainment levels are left unchanged and the higher attainment levels concentrate on a larger share of the social product.

In the case of social outcomes this is much less the case. Individuals with higher social returns on education do not concentrate the social surplus, but there are important spill-over effects to other individuals. An individual with better health behaviour will have a positive impact on his or her social environment. Likewise, a person with higher interpersonal trust will positively influence his or her community. Better health outcomes of education thus add up to societies with higher longevity, and higher levels of individual interpersonal trust aggregate to more cohesive societies.

However, we should not be too positive about the impressively high education and skills gradient in various social outcomes. The positive impact of education and skills on health is only evident because low-educated individuals show poorer levels of self-reported health. The education and skills gradient also shows that people who have missed the opportunities for quality education and who lack the skills pay a high price in their own health. As much as we praise the good health of high-educated individuals, this remains a social problem and an educational challenge.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus No. 47: How are health and life satisfaction related to education? by Simon Normandeau and Gara Rojas Gonzalez.
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators
Follow the conversation on twitter: #OECDEAG
Chart source: OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) (2012, 2015). See Education at a Glance 2014 for more information, www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm.

To contain the cost of education, should countries only consider teachers’ salaries?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

High-performing education systems value teachers and invest a lot in them. And indeed, the human factor is crucial in creating effective and high-quality teaching and learning environments. On average across OECD countries, the compensation of staff involved in education counted for 77% of total expenditure on secondary education in 2013 (Indicator B6 of Education at a Glance 2016). In monetary terms, the annual salary cost of teachers per student at the lower secondary level reached USD 3 389, on average across OECD countries in 2014, but this amount ranged from USD 1 000 in Mexico to USD 5 379 in Austria. However, we also know that it is not the amount of money invested that counts, but the way it is used. PISA reveals that, above a certain threshold, more money invested in education does not necessarily lead to better outcomes. Countries that may spend the same per student often put that money to different use.

The new Education Indicators in Focus brief, based on the most recent data published in indicator B7 of Education at a Glance 2016, deepens the analysis on the factors influencing the per-student salary cost of teachers. Each country’s per-student salary cost is based on a mix of four main factors: teachers’ salaries, teaching time, instruction time and class size. The figure above shows the weight of each of these four factors, compared to the OECD average, in each country’s per-student cost of teachers. The differences between countries are striking, especially between countries that arrive at a similar per-student salary cost of teachers, but based on a very different mix of the four components mentioned.

Take, for example, two countries with a similarly high per-student cost of teachers, the Flemish Community of Belgium and Germany. In the former, the per-student salary cost is relatively high, because all four components are more cost-intensive than the OECD average, adding up to a high total salary cost even if the teachers’ salaries are not very high. In Germany, teachers’ salaries are much higher, but their impact on the per-student salary cost is offset by more-than-average teaching time and lower-than-average instruction time.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Czech Republic and Turkey, countries with a relatively low per-student salary cost of teachers. In the former, instruction time, teaching time and class size are close to the OECD average, but the per-student salary cost is driven downwards by much lower teachers’ salaries (in real terms). In Turkey, teachers are better paid than their Czech colleagues, but the per-student cost is offset by less instruction time and larger classes.

Is there, then, a particular mix of components that makes an education system more effective? Apart from Korea, most high-performing countries in PISA are found towards the left of the chart, indicating a relatively higher-than-average per-student salary cost of teachers. But even those high-performing countries do not share a common mix of components – except, perhaps teachers’ salaries. In all high-performing countries except Finland, teachers’ salaries are higher than the OECD average.

The impact of other factors – including class size – is much less clear. Education at a Glance 2016 shows that many countries have reduced average class size over the past decade or so, responding to political pressure and public demand. But the evidence on the impact of smaller classes on the effectiveness and quality of teaching and learning is patchy. Analysis of PISA data reveals that there might be some positive impact from reducing class size, but much less than if teachers’ salaries were raised or if more were invested in teachers’ professionalism, instead. Some academic research evaluates the effect of smaller classes more positively, but this research is mostly limited to North America and Europe, whereas large classes are the norm in high-performing systems in Asia.

The factor of instruction time has a similarly uneven impact on performance. Some high-performing systems, as measured by PISA, such as Finland, require less instruction time than on average across OECD countries, thus offsetting the cost of higher teachers’ salaries. But other countries, such as the Netherlands, show above-average instruction time, contributing to a relatively higher per-student salary cost. The Education Indicators in Focus brief n° 22 looked into the issue of instruction time in more detail, but did not find any conclusive evidence on the relationship between instruction time and the quality of learning.

In times when governments need to contain the cost of education, improve the quality of teaching and learning, and increase the efficiency of spending, the cost of the teaching force is a major area of concern. The evidence shows that there is no magic formula for mixing the components of the per-student salary cost, but it does suggest that prioritising teachers’ salaries over class size and instruction time makes sense. Lowering teacher salaries might be the easiest way to cut costs – and the evidence suggests that countries have done this in the recent past in response to the financial crisis – but a more sophisticated look into all the factors influencing the cost of education might be more appropriate.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus No. 46: What influences spending on education? by Camila de Moraes
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
Chart source: OECD (2016), Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators, www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm.

Do labour markets welcome shorter tertiary degrees?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

At the turn of this century, two different models of higher education programmes prevailed in the world. The first mainly consisted of three- or four-year programmes leading to a first qualification – a bachelor’s degree – sometimes followed by a “postgraduate” programme at the master’s level. This model predominated in the United States, the United Kingdom and most other English-speaking countries. The second model, prevalent in Europe, entailed long, integrated programmes – in some fields of study, six, seven or even eight years long - leading to a plenitude of qualifications. Emerging economies in Asia mainly copied the American model, while Latin-American countries mainly followed the model of the European colonising powers.

Sixteen years later, the global landscape of higher education looks much different. What happened is that the continental European model transformed itself to the standard of the English-speaking world, which was considered to be more successful, both in scientific research and in education and labour market outcomes. This process of reform was instigated by the Bologna Declaration of 1999 and the so-called Bologna Process, through which the study programmes in all signatory countries were reformed.

The Bologna Process is mostly seen as a process of harmonisation – some would even say “standardisation” – of study programmes in the “European Higher Education Area” in order to promote European integration and mobility. Less well-known is that one of its objectives was to reduce the length of study at European universities and to ensure that people would enter the labour market at a younger age. Having young people first start their working life at the age of 27 or 28, which was often the case in Germany and Italy, was seen as unsustainable. Economic lobby groups, such as the European Round Table of Industrialists, argued explicitly in favour of a drastic reduction in the length of study programmes; national governments and the European Commission responded.

The Bologna reform process has largely been a success, although in some countries the transition is still not completed. Most programmes are now structured around the “bachelor’s/master’s” model. But are there more graduates with bachelor’s degrees or with qualifications from short-cycle tertiary programmes in the labour force? And are these graduates sought after by employers? The Bologna reforms implied changes to the supply side of education, but has the demand side – the labour market – adjusted itself to these new graduates?

The latest Education Indicators in Focus brief provides some interesting statistics on this. The data show that among adults with a tertiary degree, the share of 25-34 year-old graduates holding a bachelor’s or equivalent degree as their highest level of educational attainment is ten percentage points larger than the share of 55-64 year-olds holding similar degrees, on average across OECD countries. In some countries, such as Italy, which is famous for its long study programmes, the difference is as large as 20 percentage points. In 2015, almost one in two (49%) tertiary-educated 25-34 year-olds has, at most, a bachelor’s degree or equivalent.

As expected, among tertiary-educated adults, the share of graduates with a master’s degree has declined, but the rise of the prevalence of bachelor’s degrees is also the result of a decline in short-cycle tertiary qualifications. This is surprising, because the Bologna reforms also prompted new interest in the potential of short-cycle study programmes below the bachelor’s level. While some countries have expanded access to and availability of such short programmes, others have not, or have even phased them out.

The figure above gives a detailed profile of 25-34 year-old tertiary graduates across OECD and some partner countries. The general picture is that the higher the level of qualification, the better the employment rate, with holders of doctoral degrees and the equivalent benefitting from the highest employment rates. But the differences among the employment rates among the four qualification levels vary enormously across countries. The variation is actually larger for those with master’s degrees or short-cycle qualifications than for those with a bachelor’s degree. In two-thirds of the countries examined – those at the left side of the chart – at least 80% of graduates with a bachelor’s degree are employed. This means that in these countries, labour markets have adjusted well and have opened up opportunities for bachelor’s degree holders, even if, only a few decades ago, this level of qualification did not provide access to jobs. The one-third of countries at the right of the figure has not yet adjusted their labour markets to this new reality; they still value master’s degrees more than bachelor’s degrees. In some of these countries, such as Greece, Italy and Spain, the employment rates for all levels of qualifications are extremely low.

The situation for short-cycle programmes is even more confusing. Employers in some countries, including Austria, France and Luxembourg, seem to value these qualifications highly. In others, such as Norway and Sweden, there seem to be few employment opportunities for adults with short-cycle qualifications. And in many more countries, labour markets still have to adjust to be able to absorb graduates of these programmes.

Educational reforms are often grounded in a predominantly supply-side approach; and governments and higher education institutions often expect labour markets to adjust easily to these reforms. But in order to safeguard the future of young people it is much more important to look at the interaction between the supply and demand sides. In order to co-ordinate the acquisition of skills and qualifications with the exigencies of jobs and workplace needs, education and labour market stakeholders need to work together. In most countries, a well-balanced supply of bachelor’s and master’s degrees now seems to be in place, and that’s a major achievement. In these countries, the bachelor’s degree is now a well-established level of tertiary qualification, providing access to jobs and professions. But in a large group of countries, better policies are needed for both sides of the equation to match the supply with the demand for skills and qualifications.

Links:

Education Indicators in Focus No. 44: Attainment and labour market outcomes among young tertiary graduates, by Gabriele Marconi and Markus Schwabe.

OECD (2015), Education at a Glance 2015: OECD Indicators.

Chart source: OECD (2015), “Educational attainment and labour-force status”, Education at a Glance (database), http://stats.oecd.org/Index. aspx?datasetcode=EAG_NEAC. See Annex 3 for notes (www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm).

What does a country average actually mean?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

The institutional framework of the international community was created in the period following the Second World War. The building blocks for international organisations, including the OECD, were and are the nation-states of the post-World War and post-colonial order. However, nation-states are not fixed entities, but historical constructions. Hence, they take many different forms and change as a consequence of socio-political transformations. Few states correspond to the ideal form of a nation – identified by a common history, language and religion – or state. In a complex and diverse world, national identities change and become less homogeneous. Today, many states are confronted with political pressures originating from regional aspirations for more autonomy. Sometimes such pressures lead to a separation of political entities and the creation of new states, as was the case in the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. No one can predict the future, but it would be illusory to expect that the current global order will not continue to evolve during the 21st century.

The international statistical system, one of the great achievements of international organisations, has mirrored the evolution of the nation-state. International statistics – and those related to education are no exception – were tuned towards comparing and benchmarking countries against each other. National averages thus became the dominant data. Most of the data points in Education at a Glance, for example, are national averages. However, the expansion and increased sophistication of data collection and data processing have allowed for the development of many more measures than just national averages. Indeed, averages without more detailed measures of how indicators are distributed across various subpopulations offer little added value when it comes to understanding the real world.
Through its “New Approaches to Economic Challenges” initiative, the OECD is working to highlight distributional measures in its statistical apparatus. In Education at a Glance, for example, our analyses increasingly focus on the distribution of education indicators by gender, age, socio-economic status and immigrant background around the national average.

So far, little effort has gone into exploring regional variations within countries. Technical shortfalls, such as the lack of regional data in existing data collections, but also political sensitivities, have hindered the analysis of regional variations. After a few years of hard work, a pilot project under the auspices of the INES Working Party has gathered a range of interesting regional data on some key education indicators. The most recent edition of Education Indicators in Focus (EDIF) explores subnational variations in educational attainment and labour market outcomes.

The chart above shows clearly the relevance of subnational variations. For one of the key measures of a country’s human capital, the tertiary attainment rate in the adult population, the subnational variation in some countries is almost as wide as between-country variations. This is true, obviously, for large countries, such as Canada, the Russian Federation and the United States, but also for Germany, Spain and Sweden. Smaller countries, such as Belgium, Ireland and Slovenia, show less variation, but differences are still significant.

In all countries, the capital region, which attracts a large share of the nation’s human capital for the government and the industries and services concentrated around it, has a larger population of tertiary-educated adults than most other regions. This observation in itself is relevant for education policy: the civil servants and advisors designing those policies often live in environments that bear no resemblance to other parts of the country.

A better understanding of the magnitude of subnational variations in education indicators prompts a range of policy-relevant questions. Huge disparities in human capital between regions call into question the validity of uniform nation-wide education and skills strategies. Regional variation calls for policies that are adapted to the regions’ specific contexts and realities. But nation-states might also have an interest in promoting educational inclusion in the country by taking the steps necessary to help regions at the bottom of the distribution move closer to the average. Significant regional variation might also signal the need for continuing involvement of the central state to ensure that regions have similar capacity and resources to support skills development.

From a statistical point of view, exploring subnational variations raises doubts about the meaningfulness of national averages in international statistics. It is necessary to understand what the country average is and the magnitude of the regional variation around it. After all, an average is just an average, a statistical construct, not a reality.

Links: 

Education Indicators in Focus No. 43 Subnational variations in educational attainment and labour market outcomes, by Markus Schwabe, Rachel Dinkes, Tom Snyder.
Chart source: OECD/NCES (2015), Education at a Glance Subnational Supplement, http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/AnnualReports/oecd/.

Why should we improve learning opportunities for young kids?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

More than hundred years ago, nations that are now members of the OECD introduced legislation to set the age compulsory education. Most countries obliged families to send their children to school from the age of 6 or 7. The gradual abolition of child labour and the need for a workforce with elementary skills – two consequences of the ‘second industrial revolution’ – convinced countries to impose compulsory education. Since then, education policy has focused on ensuring that all students are provided access to – and participate in – compulsory schooling. Many countries have also gradually increased the upper age limit of compulsory education. But for younger kids – under the age of 6 – families were seen as the most optimal environment for children’s care and upbringing.

But as more women entered the labour force and two-income families became the norm, the context in which children grew up changed dramatically. Working parents had to find a way to keep their children safe during their absence. But next to guaranteeing safety and physical care daytime crèches and child minders were not supposed to exert any pedagogical interference. Even when the realities of family life were changing, families – and mothers in particular – could keep up the belief that they and no one else were raising their offspring. Conservative romanticism about family life and ideals about motherhood – also shared by radical feminists – contributed to upholding the traditional pedagogical contract. When things didn’t work out well in practice, individual mothers were to be blamed, and many developed feelings of guilt and shame when professional and private roles came into conflict.

Things have started to change in the past few years. In many countries, not only has early childhood education expanded rapidly, but it has begun to evolve into different kinds of education targeted to distinct groups of children. The most recent Education Indicators in Focus brief, based on recent Education at a Glance and PISA data, documents the expansion of pre-primary education for children between the ages of three and six. This level of education – between childcare and early childhood development programmes for children under the age of 3 on the one hand, and primary education on the other – is now internationally recognised as a discrete step on the education ladder. In most OECD countries, well over 90% of 4-year-olds are enrolled, although participation among certain segments of the population remains low.

But is the expansion of pre-primary education changing the views on educating young kids? The recent research literature from the fields of developmental and cognitive psychology, neurosciences and economics is convincing on the benefits of early education – provided by specialised education programmes – for the cognitive, social and emotional development of children. Early childhood education is rapidly becoming a major area of policy attention, shared between education and social-welfare ministries. Apart from expanding provision policies now concentrate on raising the qualifications of staff and increasing the quality of the educational environments and pedagogical interventions at large. Early childhood education is no longer about offering children a safe and comfortable shelter while parents are out working, but about creating a pleasant, learning-rich environment from which young children can benefit. Some countries are now imposing pedagogical regulations on pre-primary education, much in the same way as they do for other levels of education, and for good reason. At the same time they also refrain from turning pre-primary education into a school-like environment. The pedagogy of stimulating kids to learn through play and joyful activity fortunately gains ground.

Evidence from PISA shows how beneficial early education can be. The chart above shows the relationship between students’ attendance at more than one year of pre-primary school and the mathematics performance of these students when they are 15 years old. Even after controlling for socio-economic status, gender, immigrant background, language spoken at home, family structure, location of student's school (rural area, town or city), grade repetition and programme orientation (vocational or general) students who had not attended any pre-primary education are almost twice as likely to be low performers in mathematics as students who had attended at least one year of pre-primary education.

The arguments and evidence in favour of early childhood education are now so powerful that they have flipped the traditional question of who should educate young children on its head: should governments stimulate families more to send their children to early childhood education? Families increasingly understand that high-quality early education programmes offer their children more than a safe place to spend a day; they can offer the kind of play and instruction that are the building blocks of healthy cognitive and social development. And governments come to realise that securing high-quality learning environments, with highly qualified staff, also require sound policies specifically tuned to the needs of these young kids.

Links:
What are the benefits from early childhood education? Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 42, by Diogo Amaro de Paula
Education at a Glance 2015: OECD Indicators
Chart source: OECD (2016a), Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris,