Foreword

Governments are increasingly looking to international comparisons of education opportunities and outcomes as they develop policies to enhance individuals’ social and economic prospects, provide incentives for greater efficiency in schooling, and help to mobilise resources to meet rising demands. The OECD Directorate for Education and Skills contributes to these efforts by developing and analysing the quantitative, internationally comparable indicators that it publishes annually in Education at a Glance. Together with OECD country policy reviews, these indicators can be used to assist governments in building more effective and equitable education systems.

Education at a Glance addresses the needs of a range of users, from governments seeking to learn policy lessons to academics requiring data for further analysis to the general public wanting to monitor how their countries’ schools are progressing in producing world-class students. The publication examines the quality of learning outcomes, the policy levers and contextual factors that shape these outcomes, and the broader private and social returns that accrue to investments in education.

Education at a Glance is the product of a long-standing, collaborative effort between OECD governments, the experts and institutions working within the framework of the OECD Indicators of Education Systems (INES) programme, and the OECD Secretariat. The publication was prepared by the staff of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, under the responsibility of Dirk Van Damme and Marie-Hélène Doumet, and in co-operation with Étienne Albiser, Andrea Borlizzi, Éric Charbonnier, Manon Costinot, Bruce Golding, Yanjun Guo, Hanna Jang, Corinne Heckmann, Karinne Logez, Camila de Moraes, Simon Normandeau, Gara Rojas González, Daniel Sánchez Serra, Markus Schwabe, Giovanni Maria Semeraro, Choyi Whang and Hajar Sabrina Yassine. Administrative support was provided by Valérie Forges, and additional advice and analytical support were provided by Shinyoung Jeon and Pauline Musset. Cassandra Davis and Sophie Limoges provided valuable support in the editorial and production process. The development of the publication was steered by member countries through the INES Working Party and facilitated by the INES Networks. The members of the various bodies as well as the individual experts who have contributed to this publication and to OECD INES more generally are listed at the end of the book.

While much progress has been made in recent years, member countries and the OECD continue to strive to strengthen the link between policy needs and the best available internationally comparable data. This presents various challenges and trade-offs. First, the indicators need to respond to education issues that are high on national policy agendas, and where the international comparative perspective can offer added value to what can be accomplished through national analysis and evaluation. Second, while the indicators should be as comparable as possible, they also need to be as country-specific as is necessary to allow for historical, systemic and cultural differences between countries. Third, the indicators need to be presented in as straightforward a manner as possible, while remaining sufficiently complex to reflect multi-faceted realities. Fourth, there is a general desire to keep the indicator set as small as possible, but it needs to be large enough to be useful to policy makers across countries that face different challenges in education.

The OECD will continue not only to address these challenges vigorously and develop indicators in areas where it is feasible and promising to develop data, but also to advance in areas where a considerable investment still needs to be made in conceptual work. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and its extension through the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), as well as the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), are major efforts to this end.