There is a discernible and growing gap between the qualifications that a university degree certifies and the actual generic, 21st-century skills with which students graduate from higher education. By generic skills, it is meant literacy and critical thinking skills encompassing problem solving, analytic reasoning and communications competency. As automation takes over non- and lower-cognitive tasks in today’s workplace, these generic skills are especially valued but a tertiary degree is a poor indicator of skills level. In the United States, the Council for Aid for Education developed an assessment of generic skills called the CLA+ and carried out testing in six countries between 2016 and 2021. This book provides the data and analysis of this "CLA+ International Initiative".

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Across the OECD, enormous effort and investment has been made to reinforce the quality, production and use of education research in policy and practice. Despite this, using research in education remains a challenge for many countries and systems. The OECD launched the Strengthening the Impact of Education Research project to respond to this challenge.
This publication provides a first set of analyses of data collected from over 30 systems through an OECD survey. It describes the mechanisms used to facilitate research use in education policy and practice, and the levels of engagement of various actors in these processes. By mapping the drivers of, and barriers to, using research systematically and at scale, the publication sets out an agenda for future inquiry.

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Education systems can build on school-led micro-innovations during the pandemic to develop more equitable learning. Empowering teachers to be autonomous, actively engaged in designing learning environments, and knowledgeable and dynamic in using multi-modal technology can encourage more peer-to-peer collaboration in schools and enrich pedagogy. This will be crucial in addressing the learning needs of disadvantaged students and boosting science proficiency with the goal of societal equity.

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Brandenburg’s economy is undergoing structural change, which opens exciting new prospects for highly skilled workers. The state has intensified efforts to diversify the economy towards cleaner and more knowledge-intensive industries, including the development of advanced manufacturing, spill-over effects from the start-up scene in Berlin, fostering entrepreneurial activities at its own higher education institutions, promoting innovative places for working and living, and phasing out of coal production in favour of next-generation technologies. As the engine of skills development and research, the higher education system will play an important role in helping the state unleash these opportunities. The German State of Brandenburg has therefore entrusted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – in close collaboration with and supported by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support – with the development of recommendations on how to enhance the visibility of its institutions’ programme offer, align this offer with the skills and innovation demand, and make it more attractive to prospective students from the state and beyond.

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Ageing populations and rising skill demands have heightened expectations that higher education systems will widen their offer of continuing education and training (CET) for adults aiming to renew or augment their skills at an advanced level. CET is becoming increasingly important for maintaining a highly skilled workforce also in Germany, and particularly in the state of Brandenburg. However, Brandenburg’s public higher education institutions have so far been only marginal providers. To expand their offer of CET, they would require more legal certainty about the use of public funding in light of European Union (EU) state aid policy. EU state aid policy ensures public subsidies (state aid) are not used by state agencies to crowd out markets (economic activity). There are no clear EU, federal or state-level directions about whether CET is a non-economic activity and thus exempt from EU state aid rules. This report analyses the reasons for this legal uncertainty and provides recommendations to the state government and public higher education institutions in Brandenburg about how to clarify the status of continuing education and training as a state-aided activity. It also proposes pointers for interpretation and future reform of the EU framework on state aid, and provides impulses for policy action in other German states and at the federal level.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has high levels of educational attainment and performs similar to other Western Balkan economies in international assessments of student learning, like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). However, large shares of students in BiH continue to leave school without mastering basic competencies and there are signs of inequities in the learning outcomes. BiH also has limited comparable data on teaching and learning and faces considerable capacity and resource constraints. Considering collaboration across the country’s different levels of government is limited, these factors prevent the development and implementation of sustainable education reforms. This review explores some of the contextual features of education systems in BiH and highlights how a stronger evaluation and assessment frameworks can help achieve higher learning standards for all students.

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Over the past three decades, Bulgaria has carried out important structural reforms which have helped the country reach higher levels of socio-economic development. However, long-standing social disparities and income inequalities remain and Bulgaria’s overall productivity gains have not fully translated into sustainable and inclusive growth. In this context, the country holds education as key to improve the nation’s future economic potential and increase the quality of life of its population. For example, the national development strategy, Bulgaria 2030, sets out an ambitious reform plan that identifies the importance of raising learning outcomes and addressing inequities in order to sustain socioeconomic growth. This review provides recommendations on how evaluation and assessment in Bulgaria’s education system can support the country in reaching its goals.

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The Review of Inclusive Education in Portugal provides, from an international perspective, an independent analysis of major issues regarding diversity, equity and inclusion in education in Portugal, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches. The report serves three purposes: i) to provide insights and advice to Portuguese education authorities; ii) to help other countries understand the Portuguese approach to inclusive education; and iii) to provide input for comparative analyses of the OECD Strength through Diversity project. The scope for the analysis in this report covers primary (including 1st and 2nd cycle of basic education) and secondary education (including 3rd cycle of basic education and upper secondary). The analysis in the report focuses on the following areas: i) governance and financing of inclusive education; ii) capacity building; iii) school-level interventions and iv) monitoring and evaluation. This report will be of interest in Portugal and other countries looking to improve the equity and inclusion in their education systems.

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This policy brief brings together key reflections from the Policy Dialogues in Focus: International Insights for School Funding Reform in Sweden. This seminar offered Swedish policy makers an opportunity to learn from the reform experiences of school funding policy specialists from peer education systems (Australia, United Kingdom and the Netherlands). It also provided them with insights into relevant international comparative and empirical perspectives from the OECD Secretariat. A new seminar series, the Policy Dialogues in Focus, establishes targeted policy dialogue events, driven by a country/group of countries and tailored to their specific needs. These seminars mobilise the knowledge base of the Education Policy Outlook and other relevant OECD expertise on targeted topics. Through an active stakeholder network of international senior policy makers, it also offers first-hand accounts of managing complex policy processes to help provide powerful peer learning experiences for policy makers looking for inspiration or insights from their international peers.

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This policy brief is the third in a series of thematic policy briefs in the OECD's Resourcing Higher Education Project. This wider project aims to provide a shared knowledge base for OECD member and partner countries on policy for higher education resourcing, drawing on system-specific and comparative policy analysis. The policy brief for Ireland addresses a series of specific questions about the funding of higher education institutions, formulated by Ireland's Higher Education Authority (HEA). The brief first reviews the main factors that affect the cost of delivery in higher education (cost drivers) and the extent to which OECD jurisdictions monitor costs and use cost information to inform the design and implementation of their funding systems. It then provides an analysis of the ways in which OECD jurisdictions design models for allocating public funding to higher education institutions to promote social inclusion objectives, reward institutional performance and provide targeted resourcing for national priorities, such as increasing supply of high-demand skills.

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The German-speaking Community of Belgium is in the process of developing an overall vision for its education system (the "Gesamtvision Bildung") to guide reforms across the education sector for greater quality and equity. To support this process, the OECD review offers an independent analysis of the German-speaking Community's school system and assesses the system’s strengths and challenges from an international perspective. It provides a description of the system's policies in international comparison and proposes options for future reforms, covering pre-primary to upper secondary education. The analysis addresses the funding and governance of school education, policies to support equity and inclusion, the evaluation system, school leadership and the development of the teaching profession. The report aims to highlight opportunities for the German-speaking Community to build on the strengths of its school system, enhance the effectiveness of its resource use and ensure that the system delivers the best outcomes for all students.

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Teachers can shape their students' educational careers. Research shows that children taught by different teachers often experience very different educational outcomes. This begs the questions: how are teachers assigned to schools in different countries? And to what extent do students from different backgrounds have access to good teachers? Building on literature identifying the characteristics and practices of teaching that boost student achievement, this report shows how teachers with different characteristics and practices tend to concentrate in different schools, and how much access students with different socio-economic backgrounds have to good teachers. It points out the aspects of different educational systems that influence how teachers are allocated to schools. The report also discusses the consequences that inequitable teacher allocation systems have on students’ educational outcomes.

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In supporting children’s development, countries invest in the future successes of economies and societies. Awareness of the critical role early childhood education and care (ECEC) plays in setting a strong foundation for children’s learning, development and well-being has grown among policy makers worldwide. The OECD Quality beyond Regulations policy review provides countries with an overview of the different dimensions of quality in ECEC. It also highlights policies that can enhance process quality in particular. From this review, emerged the present report, taking an in-depth look at Luxembourg’s ECEC system. It outlines the system’s main strengths and challenges, focusing on workforce development and quality assurance through the monitoring system. The report provides tailored policy recommendations to improve provision in line with national goals.

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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.

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Did you ever wonder what the impact of climate change will be on our educational institutions in the decade? What does it mean for schools that our societies are becoming more individualistic and diverse? Trends Shaping Education is a triennial report examining major economic, political, social and technological trends affecting education. While the trends are robust, the questions raised in this book are suggestive, and aim to inform strategic thinking and stimulate reflection on the challenges facing education. This 2022 edition covers a rich array of topics related to economic growth, living and working, knowledge and power, identity and belonging and our physical world and human bodies and interactions. It includes a specific focus on the impact of COVID-19 on global trends, and new futures thinking sections inviting readers to reflect on how the future might differ from our current expectations.

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