Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Education at a Glance
The latest international comparison of education systems and outcomes from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has been published.
The Education at a Glance annual report, produced by the OECD, started in 1994, comparing the education systems and outcomes across 34 OCED and partner countries. It is now seen as one of, if not the most comprehensive statistical analysis of the performance of education systems across the globe. The latest report published in September evaluates data from 2008/9.
Countries included for the first time in the 2011 report are Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa.
The 2011 report contains twenty-nine indicators: eleven indicators on education outputs and their impact on learning, seven indicators on financial and human resources, five indicators on access to education, participation and progress, and six indicators on the learning environments and organization of schools. As well as these indicators the Education at a Glance report gives descriptions of the characteristics of each education system.
The latest report has some interesting reading for UK education decision makers.
*The UK has the third highest student fee levels across the 34 countries, with the present tuition fee of £3,400. Only the US and Korea charge higher fees. Next year UK fees will go up to as much as £9,000 a year.
*The overall share of the public spending cake that goes towards education in the UK is lower than the international average – 5.7 per cent compared with an average of 5.9 per cent.
*The UK still lags behind the rest of the world in numbers ofyoung people staying on in full-time education or training after the school leaving age of 16. The statistics show that 25 of the 30 countries in the survey had higher rates of 15- to 19-year-olds in education and 27 had a higher rate of 20- to 29-year-olds in education.
*In the United Kingdom, expenditure per student from primary to upper secondary education increased by 56% between 2000 and 2008, the 8th highest increase among 30 countries with available data. At the tertiary level, expenditure increased by 30%, the 6th highest increase.
*UK secondary class sizes shrunk by 16% between 2000 and 2009 to 19.6 students per class, below the OECD average of 24 students per class. This was the largest decline among countries with available data. In primary education, UK class size decreased by 5% to 24.5 students per class, but still remains above the OECD average of 21.4 students per class. China has the largest primary class size with an average of 37.1 per class.
*The gap in reading performance between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds is also higher than the OECD average in the United Kingdom. (Along with Australia, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, and Israel Sweden.)
Evaluating the data across all the countries, the report draws some conclusions about patterns in education provision and policy. Highlighted in the 2011 report is the observation, “countries are increasingly interested in ‘the quality of competences which students acquire.”
In its specific country note for the UK, the OECD points out that "the public benefit that tertiary graduates generate through higher income tax and social contributions far outweigh the public costs."
A PDF of the Education at a Glance, 2011 Report.