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This report takes the reader into the lives of young people in Finland, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands and Portugal to explore the question: how do 15-year-olds learn English? Gone are the days when learners only encountered English for a couple of hours a week in a classroom. For today's teens, English is often the preferred language of communication in increasingly diverse online and offline communities. Yet relatively little is known internationally about how students learn English inside and outside school, and the resources available to help them. This report presents country findings from interviews with 15-year-olds, English-language teachers and school principals and wider background research, as well as a comparative chapter on key international insights. The report also explores how today’s digital technologies can support learners to develop foreign language proficiency. These findings support the forthcoming PISA 2025 Foreign Language Assessment through which the OECD will generate comparable data on students’ proficiency in English in different countries and on the factors related to it.

This report brings together 45 of the education continuity stories that were jointly documented by the OECD, the World Bank, Harvard’s Global Education Innovation Initiative and HundrED during the first wave of school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It covers a variety of different examples on how governments and non-governmental organisations quickly responded to school closures to implement a strategy for learners around the world to continue to study. While often based on the use of digital solutions, those solutions target specific solutions aimed at academic learning, socio-emotional support, teacher professional development, etc. The book covers examples from low, middle and high income countries on all continents and draws some lessons of these fast-paced responses to reimagine a post-pandemic education across the world.

This report assesses well-being in the four largest urban agglomerations of the province of Córdoba and provides policy recommendations to strengthen regional development practices, and ultimately improve people’s well-being. Using around 30 statistical indicators, the report analyses the performance of Córdoba’s agglomerations in 12 well-being dimensions in comparison with 391 regions of 36 OECD countries and 98 regions of Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Costa Rica. The report also documents the well-being inequalities between Córdoba’s four agglomerations and suggests three priorities areas which the province should focus on to tackle well-being challenges: i) Ensure that well-being indicators guide future decision-making; ii) Continue strengthening and modernising the provincial statistical system to expand the evidence-base; and, iii) Strengthen governance arrangements for more effective, efficient and inclusive regional development policy outcomes.

How’s Life? charts whether life is getting better for people in 37 OECD countries and 4 partner countries. This fifth edition presents the latest evidence from an updated set of over 80 indicators, covering current well-being outcomes, inequalities, and resources for future well-being. Since 2010, people’s well-being has improved in many respects, but progress has been slow or deteriorated in others, including how people connect with each other and their government. Large gaps by gender, age and education persist across most well-being outcomes. Generally, OECD countries that do better on average also feature greater equality between population groups and fewer people living in deprivation. Many OECD countries with poorer well-being in 2010 have since experienced the greatest gains. However, advances in current well-being have not always been matched by improvements in the resources that sustain well-being over time, with warning signs emerging across natural, human, economic and social capital. Beyond an overall analysis of well-being trends since 2010, this report explores in detail the 15 dimensions of the OECD Better Life Initiative, including health, subjective well-being, social connections, natural capital, and more, and looks at each country’s performance in dedicated country profiles.

Many Latin American countries have experienced improvements in income over recent decades, with several of them now classified as high-income or upper middle-income in terms of conventional metrics. But has this change been mirrored in improvements across the different areas of people’s lives? How’s Life in Latin America? Measuring Well-being for Policy Making addresses this question by presenting comparative evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with a focus on 11 LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay). Spanning material conditions, quality of life, resources for future well-being, and inequalities, the report presents available evidence on well-being both before and since the onset of the pandemic, based on the OECD Well-being Framework. It also identifies priorities for addressing well-being gaps and describes how well-being frameworks are used in policy within Latin America and elsewhere around the world, providing lessons for governments on what is needed to put people’s well-being at the centre of their action. The report is part of the EU Regional Facility for Development in Transition for Latin America and the Caribbean.

La desinformación tiene consecuencias de gran alcance en muchos ámbitos, desde la salud pública hasta la seguridad nacional de los países. Puede arrojar dudas sobre la veracidad de los hechos, poner en peligro la aplicación de políticas públicas y socavar la confianza de los ciudadanos en la integridad de las instituciones democráticas. Este informe explora cómo responder a estos retos y reforzar la democracia. Presenta una evaluación exhaustiva de las respuestas gubernamentales destinadas a respaldar espacios informativos plurales, basados en hechos y que fomenten una ciudadanía informada. Analiza las interacciones entre distintas dimensiones políticas que fortalecen la integridad del ámbito informativo, al mismo tiempo que aseguran una protección diligente de las libertades fundamentales y los derechos humanos. Igualmente, propone un triple marco de actuación en materia de políticas públicas: mejorar la transparencia, la rendición de cuentas y la pluralidad de las fuentes de información; fomentar la resiliencia social; y actualizar las medidas de gobernanza y las instituciones públicas para ayudar a fortalecer la integridad del espacio informativo.

This first book in the new OECD Insights Series examines the increasing economic and social importance of human capital - our education, skills, competencies, and knowledge. As economies in developed countries shift away from manufacturing, economic success for individuals and national economies is increasingly reliant on the quality of human capital. Raising human capital has emerged as a key policy priority, particularly for low-skilled individuals, who are at risk of being left even further behind. Policy in this area is focusing on early childhood development, improving quality and choice in schooling, creating excellence in tertiary education, and widening access to adult learning. Drawing on the research and analysis of the OECD, this dynamic new book uses straightforward language to explain how countries across the OECD area are responding to the challenge of raising their levels of human capital. This book includes Statlinks, URLs linking statistical tables and graphs in the text of the book to Excel spreadsheets showing the underlying data.