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OECD’s Recommendation of the Council on Budgetary Governance makes a substantial contribution to discussion of good budgetary practice by synthesising much common understanding while updating it to recognise some lessons from the experience of the Great Recession. Yet its implicit understanding of the purposes of budget processes has weaknesses both as policy and political analysis. The policy understanding overemphasises the importance of budget totals relative to budget details. The political understanding is as top-down as the policy view. Although budgets might be seen as contracts between citizens and the state, in a representative system they are better seen as treaties among citizens negotiated through politics. The Recommendation barely recognizes the existence of and challenges from political conflict.
JEL classification: H00, H60, H61
Keywords: Balance, fiscal policy, information, representation, top-down, United States
First-time entrants to tertiary education are required to make interconnected decisions about their field of study, the fees they will pay and the application requirements they are prepared to face. Their choice of programme and institution will be influenced by the costs and entry criteria. The decisions they make about what to study and where will have a long-term impact on their earnings and employment prospects.
Although girls and boys perform similarly in the PISA science assessment at age 15, girls are less likely than boys to envision a career in science and engineering, even in countries where they outperform them.
Current gender disparities in the labour market will not be addressed by the inflow of new graduates: in all OECD and partner countries, women significantly outnumber men in education while men largely outnumber women in engineering, manufacturing and construction in both fields of study and the labour market.
Male-dominated fields of study such as engineering, manufacturing and construction have high employment rates but also the greatest difference between the employment rates of men and women.
From the onset of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, most refugee arrivals have been women and children, creating unique challenges for integration. The share of women among adult refugees is around 70% in most host countries and many have arrived with children, with the share of minors around 30%. Most OECD countries are supporting the socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugee women through their pre-existing mainstream integration systems. Refugee integration policies have been, however, often created with different gender and educational profiles in mind, which may weaken outcomes in the longer term. There are some promising targeted measures available in OECD countries to support the socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugee women. These include counselling, networking opportunities, training, and work placements, but also general community-building activities aimed at women.
School heads in public institutions are required to work on average 7-8 hours a day, as is the case for most office-based jobs. The hours worked and the list of tasks and responsibilities vary widely across countries. On average across OECD countries, they earn more than teachers and other full-time tertiary-educated workers. However, more than half of school heads in the OECD countries are not satisfied with their salary and feel quite stressed due to heavy administrative workloads and responsibilities other than leadership and management.
With most students around the world having experienced remote learning over the past year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of teachers and schools has become all the more evident. Temporary school closures underline how richly students benefit from being in school with their teachers and classmates. Positive, High-achieving Students? What Schools and Teachers Can Do pinpoints some of the factors that make an effective teacher and school.
One of the goals of education systems is to equip all students, irrespective of their individual characteristics, with market-relevant skills. Poor or inadequate skills limit access to better-paying and more rewarding jobs and, ultimately, to better living and health conditions, and higher social and political participation. Yet, inequalities in education abound. Family background, disabilities and gender all influence students’ trajectory toward fulfilling their potential. Boys, for instance, tend to lack the basic reading proficiency needed for today’s knowledge societies. The latest TALIS-PISA link report, Positive, High-achieving Students? What Schools and Teachers Can Do, explores some of the teacher and school factors that could play a role in bridging the gap in reading performances at school between girls and boys.
Many education systems aim to provide learning opportunities to all students regardless of their backgrounds in order for them to realise their potential. Education systems are expected to break down barriers to social mobility. However, too often, children are not given enough opportunities to succeed, to pursue their interests, or to develop their skills. Individual circumstances over which students have no control often affect the quality of the schooling they receive and the educational path they choose. They also influence students’ development of attitudes and dispositions toward learning, and can shape students’ dreams for their future. Differences in opportunities for students often result in achievement gaps among students with different backgrounds. Over the last 20 years, PISA has shown that students’ socio-economic status, which includes parents’ occupations and educational levels and home possessions, are predictors of performance scores in reading, mathematics and science in all countries and economies participating in PISA. So far, this has been without a single exception. This policy brief points to key aspects to consider in providing students with needed opportunities to level the playing field for all students and achieve greater equity in education beyond the exigencies of the pandemic.
Proficient readers use and engage with a variety of texts, including books, online articles and social media. They can find information, understand the literal and the implied meaning, and reflect critically on content and form. But before students can become proficient readers, they must become fluent readers. In every language, once students read fluently, they can devote their effort and attention to higher-level comprehension tasks and engage more deeply with texts. This policy brief examines what we can learn from the results of the assessment of students' reading fluency within the 2018 PISA test, and its importance for teachers.
Vocational education and training can play a central role in preparing young people for work and responding to the labour market needs of the economy. While often neglected in the past, an increasing number of countries are recognising that high-quality vocational education and training can make a major contribution to economic competitiveness. In an unpredictable future where jobs will either disappear or transform, vocational education and training, together with work-based learning, can respond to this challenge by offering an excellent opportunity to nurture the skills employers require.
The paper investigates two – often disconnected – policy questions: how can we scale the use of evidence in teaching practice, and how can we generate and scale innovation? Both questions necessitate understanding how teachers and schools connect with each other, and with other organisations and professionals. The paper thus explores the role of networks in scaling evidence and innovation through a review of literature and a number of short case descriptions. Through the lens of networks, the analysis shows how the mobilisation, construction and diffusion of knowledge are of central importance in both policy issues. It suggests that scaling evidence and innovation should be treated as one ecosystem, in which mechanisms that allow effectively blending research and practical knowledge are key. Further, the paper proposes a framework for studying knowledge dynamics in networks to better understand how their context, characteristics and devices can contribute to facilitate these dynamics.
This paper reviews evidence on the interplay between professional standards for teachers, the content of teacher education and educational sciences, and provides three case studies to illustrate these interactions from Estonia, Australia and Singapore. In particular, it investigates what aligning teacher education programmes to standards really mean; and what conception of educational sciences is reflected in the standards and the curriculum. Analyses suggest that alignment, as an explicit, direct and consistent correspondence, is difficult to achieve, in part due to different conceptualisations of professional knowledge. However, this paper argues that the main value of standards as policy tools lies in their capacity to create mutual dialogue between different artefacts (standards’ requirements, curriculum, course descriptions, accreditation standards, etc.), as well as among stakeholders. Regularly renegotiating the standards as a result of such dialogue and reflections should be a crucial part of the policy process.
Globalisation and digital technologies have made financial services and products more widely accessible and at the same time more complex to handle. Responsibility for investing in higher education or planning for retirement is increasingly assumed by individuals. Young people are now more likely to encounter situations where they need to set their spending priorities, be aware of new types of fraud, know that some items that they want to buy will incur ongoing costs, and be alert that some purchasing offers are simply too good to be true.
Financial literacy performance is strongly correlated with performance in mathematics and reading. Students should be helped to make the most of what they learn in subjects taught in compulsory education, which could also be complemented with more specific financial literacy content. Fostering the development of financial literacy skills in school could also be a way to offer students learning opportunities beyond those provided by parents and peers, to help overcome socio-economic inequalities, and to expose students to more balanced messages than those they might receive through media and advertising.