Publications & Documents

Measuring innovation in education and understanding its drivers and obstacles is essential to improve the quality of the education sector – and of specific educational establishments. Are pedagogical and administrative practices changing in the expected direction? Do educational institution have a positive innovation culture that supports innovation? What are the drivers of innovation that policy makers or institution leaders could influence to achieve the systems’ educational objectives? How much do countries invest in educational research? This book proposes insights and tools to policy makers and education leaders willing to drive change based on data and evidence and new tools and methodologies for education policy makers and institution leaders to answer those questions. Based on the research literature and the long experience of innovation and research surveys, these tools are meant either for a statistical collection or to engage in self-reflection at the institutional level. Three aspects of innovation are covered: educational innovation at the system level, innovation culture within educational institutions, innovation towards equity in education. A questionnaire to measure educational research and experimental development expenditures and implementation and new methodologies to measure certain aspects of educational innovation and educational research based on big data and bibliometrics are also presented.

Digital technologies can be used to support the inclusion of diverse student groups in education in a number of ways including enhancing accessibility of educational content, increasing personalisation and providing distance learning opportunities, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, persistent digital inequalities can undermine digital equity and inclusion and equity and inclusion in education generally, particularly for the most disadvantaged students. This paper explores the themes of digital equity and inclusion, and maps some of the policies and practices adopted in OECD countries for the equitable and inclusive use of digital tools in education. It highlights the importance of inclusive design and implementation of digital technologies, as well as the need for education systems to focus on capacity building such as teacher training, as well as adequate resourcing of digital tools. It discusses advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, and concludes by highlighting research and policy gaps.

This study investigates whether English formal instruction and a number of teaching practices are more strongly associated with reading or listening English skills, using data from a large-scale assessment of English skills among 14- and 15-year-olds in 15 European education systems in 2012. The results indicate that the skill difference between reading and listening skills is positively associated with: more years spent learning English in school; more hours of current English instruction; and even indicators of quality of English instruction. In addition, the use of different teaching materials and the emphasis put on oral skills in the classroom are also associated with the difference between reading and listening skills. These results are based on a methodology developed specifically for this study, and they confirm the usefulness of separately measuring foreign language skills for policy analysis.

The New South Wales (Australia) Government is committed to an education system that prepares learners for rewarding lives and lifelong learning. To realise this, the NSW Department of Education (DoE) has initiated several reforms in recent years, including the Local Schools Local Decisions (LSLD) reform (2011) that was replaced by the School Success Model (SSM) reform in 2020. The SSM is a school improvement reform that aimed to deliver high quality, tiered support to all NSW public schools. The SSM also strives for a balance of autonomy and accountability for student improvement across schools by formalising system targets and priorities, among others, through a tailored school support framework.  Realising successful educational change however is complex. The DoE invited the OECD Implementing Education Policies project team to build on lessons from past reforms and receive feedback from the education profession and other stakeholders. Drawing from OECD’s international knowledge base and expertise, this report presents an in-depth assessment and offers concrete recommendations for enhancing the design and implementation of the DoE school improvement and broader education reform agenda.

A changing world of work brings the importance of Vocational Education and Training (VET) to the forefront, as it has the ability to develop the skills that are needed in today’s labour markets and societies. At the same time, structural changes highlight the need to re-engineer certain parts of VET systems in some countries to make them more resilient and ensure they can make the most of the opportunities ongoing changes present. This report zooms in on four key dimensions of future-ready VET systems: i) responsiveness to changing skill needs; ii) the flexibility to make VET work for all; iii) the ability to support transitions into a changing labour market and further learning; iv) the potential of digital technology to innovate VET design and delivery. For each of these dimensions, the report presents a set of key questions that policymakers and other VET stakeholders should consider when re-engineering VET to make it more future-ready, as well as insights from data and international examples of policies and practices.

In today's dynamic and rapidly evolving world, evidence-informed decision-making has emerged as a cornerstone in guiding effective education policy and practice. In particular, creating a culture of research engagement is often highlighted as a key ingredient to strengthening the impact of research. However, it is not always clear how that works in practice. The publication provides analyses of data collected from more than 30 education systems. It delves into how systemic and organisational capacity for thoughtful engagement with research can be built into policy and practice. It also contains concrete examples of building a culture of research engagement by presenting diverse case studies, analyses, tools and processes. It is intended as a practical resource for policy makers, educational leaders, teachers and the research community to stimulate reflection and guide their efforts to developing a culture of research engagement in education.

Resource banks support learning in classrooms by improving the quality of teacher instruction and assessment. They are typically online platforms that include examples of curriculum-aligned assessment tasks and complementary instruction, assessment and learning materials. These can be used by teachers, students and parents to improve learning in schools. While resource banks have become an important curriculum and assessment tool in many OECD countries, information about them remains scarce. This policy perspective provides a framework to help educators plan, design and use resource banks. First, policymakers should have a thorough concept of the resource bank and carefully plan its governance and resourcing structure. Second, the definition and development of its content and the platform’s underlying technology should be guided by quality, security and privacy principles that place users at the centre. Thirdly, once released, it is important to promote awareness of the resource bank to key stakeholders and maintain content and IT-support. This will ensure resource banks have a long-lasting and positive impact on educational practices.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, countries around the world faced the challenge of how to certify student learning at the end of schooling, when in-person examinations were no longer possible. In 2020 and 2021, Ireland developed emergency measures to replace the country’s historic Senior Cycle examinations, or Leaving Certificate. The global health situation, school closures and the challenges to continue teaching and learning in this context made it a particularly difficult time for students, teachers, school leaders, families and policy makers. Ireland’s emergency solutions – the Calculated Grades System in 2020 and the Accredited Grades System in 2021 – provided recognised certification of student achievement and enabled Ireland’s young people to progress to the next stage of life, into further education or employment. This policy perspective reflects on the experience for stakeholders of the solutions that were adopted in 2020 and 2021.

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are laying the groundwork for extensive and rapid transformations in society. Understanding the relationship between AI capabilities and human skills is essential to ensure policy responsiveness to ongoing and incoming changes. The OECD has tracked how well AI systems fare on tasks from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), comparing AI performance to that of 15-year-old students in the test’s core domains of reading, mathematics and science. Tests were conducted using the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) family of large language models (LLMs), the AI behind ChatGPT, which took the world by storm after its public release in late 2022. Results show that both GPT versions outperform average student performance in reading and science. In addition, we observe rapid advances in mathematics where AI capabilities are quickly catching up with those of students. In November 2022, GPT-3.5 could answer 35% of a set of PISA mathematics tasks, a level of performance significantly below that of humans, who answer 51% of the tasks successfully on average. However, by March 2023, GPT-4 answered 40% of the tasks successfully. Policy implications of these results are discussed in this paper.