This chapter analyses recent trends in policy priorities related to equity and quality, as defined by the Education Policy Outlook analytical framework, across a variety of OECD and non-OECD education systems and economies. The aim is to show how policy priorities can be shared by different education systems, how common principles of policy action proposed by the OECD can apply differently, depending on the different contexts and the scope of the analysis carried out, and how policy principles recommended in one education system could serve as an inspiration for other systems. Persisting policy priorities to promote equity and quality in education include: bridging performance gaps due to socio-economic background (among students from different population sub-groups and from different regions and among boys and girls); and increasing access to and quality of early childhood education and care. Emerging policy priorities include: integrating immigrant students into the education system; strengthening student performance for all students; and preventing grade repetition and delaying tracking.
Education Policy Outlook 2018
Chapter 2. Equity and quality: Trends in evolution of policy priorities
Abstract
The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.
Highlights
Analysis of the period from 2008 to 2017 shows persisting policy priorities in many OECD and non-OECD education systems to bridge performance gaps due to socio-economic background, among students from different population sub-groups and different regions, and among boys and girls.
OECD recommendations to education systems with these persisting policy priorities include the following key principles for action: 1) targeting educational funding support to students with low socio-economic status; 2) encouraging students from minority backgrounds to go into mainstream education and providing extra support as needed; 3) developing measures to channel resources to the most disadvantaged regions; 4) promoting assessment of the impact of actions in educational institutions on both men and women; and 5) increasing access to and quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) by creating an integrated system to monitor ECEC.
Emerging policy priorities identified from 2014 to 2017 include: integrating immigrant students into the education system; strengthening student performance for all students; and preventing grade repetition; and delaying tracking.
OECD recommendations to education systems with these emerging policy priorities include the following key principles for action: 1) intervening as early as possible through language courses for immigrant students; 2) developing specific teacher training and employing better qualified teachers; and 3) establishing educational outcomes as a main target, rather than focusing solely on increasing spending.
Introduction
Within policy ecosystems, equity and quality in education are mutually reinforcing priorities. Equity in education means that students’ personal or social circumstances (such as gender, ethnic origin or family background) do not hinder them from achieving their potential and obtaining a high-quality education. Quality in education refers to providing students with high-level skills adapted to their individual interests and needs, building the foundation to succeed later in their lives (OECD, 2012). In PISA 2015, eight OECD countries achieved both above-average performance in science and above-average equity in education (OECD, 2016a). The five top-performing OECD countries in science all had a weaker-than-average relationship between student performance and socio-economic status.
According to the findings of the Education Policy Outlook, challenges related to equity and quality and objectives to improve access, value and excellence of education offerings are key features of policy ecosystems across the OECD. During early education and schooling, when children are very young, their capacity for skills acquisition is at its highest. This period forms the bedrock for acquiring basic skills that prepares students for the labour market and further learning throughout their lives. The rate of return on investment in human capital is greater in the earliest years (Carneiro, Cunha and Heckman, 2003; OECD, 2006b). This suggests that resources and policies should be balanced to ensure appropriate priorities between lower and higher levels of the education system. Providing all students with better education opportunities from early in their lives, while they are still in compulsory education, can help them to remain in the education system for longer and also to better reap the benefits of education or training later in life (OECD, 2012).
Increasing the number of years of compulsory education has become an overall trend in OECD countries. This includes giving children a strong start as well as offering training to develop skills later in life, to increase opportunities to succeed in the labour market or the transition to higher education (Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1. Evolution in the number of years with 90% of the population enrolled in education across OECD countries (2005-15)
Sources: OECD (2007), Education at a Glance 2007: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2007-en; OECD (2017a), Education at a Glance 2017: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2017-en.
This chapter provides a comparative overview of the evolution of policy priorities related to equity and quality in education across a variety of OECD and non-OECD education systems, based on the EPO analytical framework. The analysis draws on the review of a collection of OECD country-based work and responses to the EPO National Survey for Comparative Policy Analysis 2016-17 (EPO 2016-17 Survey), which together cover 43 OECD and non-OECD education systems from 2008 to 2017.
Policy priorities encompass what actors involved in an education system define as their key challenges, issues and objectives, based on their own analysis of their system’s performance. This chapter aims to show how policy priorities can be shared in different education systems and how general principles of policy action proposed by the OECD in its country reviews can apply differently in different systems, according to the context, the resources available, existing relevant policy initiatives and the relative and perceived importance of the policy priority. Analysis indicates that certain policy principles recommended in one education system can serve as inspiration for other education systems, even though the specifics of implementation may differ. Figure 2.2 presents key trends in the evolution of the policy priorities discussed in this chapter.
Figure 2.2. Key trends in the evolution of policy priorities
1. Blue bars represent emerging policy priorities and grey bars represent persisting policy priorities, according to education systems’ self-reports and previous OECD country-based work. Priorities are ranked by decreasing order of the number of education systems where the policy priority was identified.
2. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
3. Priorities identified by education systems in self-reports are drawn from responses to the EPO Survey 2016‑17. Priorities identified were also identified based on the EPO Country Profiles published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
Analysis carried out for this report identified some topics of education policy that continue to be priorities compared to the previous round of consultation with education systems (2008-13). From 2014 to 2017, participating education systems identified additional emerging policy priorities. In some education systems, these gained importance, according countries’ responses to the EPO Survey 2016-17.
In many cases, policy priorities identified in the survey responses had also been noted by the OECD in its work with individual education systems, through education policy country reviews, economic surveys and country reports on specific topics, including quality in ECEC, school resources, and vocational education and training (VET). However, in some cases, the survey responses did not identify policy priorities previously noted by the OECD. This may be because countries have ongoing policies on those priorities, but it may also be because countries lack resources to dedicate to certain priorities. These cases highlight the relevance of education policy priorities for the broader economic and social issues covered in OECD country reviews.
This chapter also identifies some broad principles of action relevant to these policy priorities that the OECD has recommended to education systems. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally (see the Reader’s Guide for more information).
Persisting policy priorities from 2008 to 2017
Bridging performance gaps due to socio-economic background
Both the OECD and education systems have identified persisting policy priorities with regard to equity and quality. Bridging performance gaps due to socio-economic background has remained a high policy priority in at least 23 OECD and non-OECD education systems analysed by the OECD over 2008-17 (Table 2.1). The broad principles of policy action proposed to help reverse this trend include providing more educational and funding support to students of low socio-economic status. As noted in Chapter 1, such principles of policy action apply differently in different education systems.
In the EPO Survey 2016-17, over half of the participating education systems identified reducing the impact of socio-economic background on students’ performance and attainment as a policy priority: Australia, Belgium (Flemish and French Communities), Canada (New Brunswick), Chile, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the Slovak Republic, Turkey and the United Kingdom (England) (Table 2.1).
Table 2.1. Decreasing performance and attainment gaps due to socio-economic status
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. Education systems highlighted in bold are those where the policy priority was identified by both the OECD and the education system, in either the EPO Survey 2016-17 or the EPO country profiles published in 2017. 3. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
3. Education systems listed in the final row refer to OECD accession or partner countries.
4. Responses for Belgium (Fl and Fr) are based on the EPO Country Profile published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
Depending on the context, there are many pathways from identifying policy priorities to developing and actualising principles of action. In 2017, the OECD advised Portugal to provide more and earlier individualised academic support to students with low socio-economic background, as more than 50% of 15-year-olds with a disadvantaged background had repeated a year in 2015, the second highest rate among OECD countries (OECD, 2016b). In 2016, the OECD advised Canada to increase targeted needs-based financial assistance to increase access to tertiary education for disadvantaged students.
Education systems have implemented many different types of initiatives to expand and enhance educational opportunities for all. Providing educational support and reinforcement for students from disadvantaged backgrounds has been a strategy used by many education systems, including: the Flemish Community of Belgium (Parliamentary Act for Primary and Secondary Education, 2008); the French Community of Belgium (Instrument for Differentiated Support, 2009, 2017); Chile (School Inclusion Law, 2015); and the United Kingdom (England) (Pupil Premium Programme, 2011).
Bridging performance gaps among students from different population sub‑groups
According to PISA 2015, students from ethnic minorities are significantly less likely to make the transition from primary to lower secondary school and from lower to upper secondary school, and they are more likely to be delayed in their progression through the grade levels. Participating education systems have identified addressing educational attainment and performance gaps affecting students from different population sub‑groups between minorities (such as Indigenous and other students) as a policy priority.
Through its country-based work in some contexts, the OECD has identified addressing education needs for Indigenous students and raising outcomes for ethnic minorities as policy priorities. In some education systems (including the Czech Republic, Israel, and the Slovak Republic), the OECD has recommended further encouraging students from minorities to follow mainstream education by providing extra financial or academic support, as needed. At the same time, in the EPO Survey 2016-17, Australia, Canada, Mexico and New Zealand reported that ensuring quality education opportunities for Indigenous students was a key policy priority.
This common policy priority applies differently depending on the context. For example, in the Czech Republic, a disproportionate share of students from the Roma community attend special schools for children with mental disabilities, and this affects their educational attainment and their labour market prospects. In 2016, as a principle of action, the OECD recommended to the Czech Republic that Roma students should be integrated into mainstream schools where they could receive more adequate support, such as better trained teachers, specialised teaching aid and financial resources. Also in 2016, the OECD advised Israel to improve the quality of education, especially for Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) and Israeli Arabs, so they could be better integrated into the labour market. The OECD recommended providing extra financial support and access to more standard, better-quality education to encourage higher educational attainment among these population sub-groups.
Many different policy responses have been put in place by countries to address these policy priorities. For example, New Zealand set up the Māori-medium education sector (1980s) to revitalise te reo Māori, and Australia recently implemented the Indigenous Student Success Program (2017). Both of these initiatives were designed to improve the educational outcomes of Indigenous students (see Chapter 3).
The OECD also identified as a policy priority improved inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN), specifically for Estonia and Latvia. For these two education systems, the OECD recommended expanding access to mainstream education for SEN students and increasing financial support for these students and their teachers. Australia, Belgium (Flemish and French Communities) and the Czech Republic, identified this as a policy priority in the EPO Survey 2016-17, along with Latvia. The initiative on the Promotion of the Inclusion of Students with Special Needs (2011), highlighted in Latvia’s Education Development Guidelines 2014-2020, aims to better accommodate students with special needs in the education system. Australia’s National Disability Coordination Officer Programme (2008) aims to include more people with disabilities in tertiary education, and the M-Decree (2014) in the Flemish Community of Belgium reinforces the right of students with special educational needs to be enrolled in mainstream education.
Table 2.2. Bridging performance gaps among students from different population sub-groups
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. Education systems highlighted in bold are those where the policy priority was identified by both the OECD and the education system, in either the EPO Survey 2016-17 or the EPO country profiles published in 2017. 3. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
3. Responses for Belgium (Fl and Fr) are based on the EPO Country Profile published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
Bridging performance gaps among students from different regions
Performance gaps across regions were identified recurrently by the OECD over both 2008-13 and 2014-17. OECD recommended as a key principle of action that education systems in Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and accession country Colombia develop measures to channel different types of support to the most disadvantaged regions. Again, broad principles of action were targeted contextually in different ways. In 2015, for example, the OECD Secretariat suggested that Mexico could expand its small VET system to further support learning opportunities in remote regions, especially for students at risk, while the OECD’s regional policy recommendations for Poland in 2008 focused on expanding the provision of free preschool education from age 3 to age 5 in poor and rural areas (Table 2.3).
Over the years, education systems also identified reducing performance gaps across regions as a key policy priority, in countries including Estonia, Italy, Latvia and Turkey (Table 2.3). Italy, for example, experiences differences in educational attainment levels across regions (OECD, 2017a). In Latvia, PISA 2015 shows performance differences between urban and rural areas, in a context of significant demographic change in recent years driven by substantial emigration and urbanisation. Portugal also specifically reported developing measures to reduce performance difference between regions with its Third Generation of the Education Territories of Priority Intervention Programme (TEIP3) in 2012 (see Chapter 3).
Table 2.3. Bridging performance gaps among students and regions
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. Education systems highlighted in bold are those where the policy priority was identified by both the OECD and the education system, in either the EPO Survey 2016-17 or the EPO country profiles published in 2017. 3. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
3. Education systems listed in the final row refer to OECD accession or partner countries.
4. Responses for Italy are based on the EPO Country Profile published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
Bridging performance gaps among boys and girls
PISA evidence shows that performance differences among boys and girls do not start at birth, but develop at home, at school and in the social context (OECD, 2016a). Over 2014‑17, the OECD has identified addressing gaps between boys and girls in performance and specific field-of-study orientation leading to higher gender pay gaps as priority issues. For countries including Austria, Estonia, Iceland and Scotland, the OECD has also identified as a principle of action assessing implications for both women and men of any planned action in educational institutions. This principle of action can also lead to very diverse policy efforts. For example, it can relate to better supporting career choices for girls at the age of first streaming. Evidence from 2015 showed that half of women doing apprenticeships tended to choose among only 3 career choices out of 250 available in Austria, while men tended to choose among professional tracks with higher earning potential (OECD recommended this to Austria in 2015). In the same way, this principle also relates to expanding coverage of day-care centres in Estonia for children age 0-2 and full-day kindergarten for children age 3-5 to support mothers aiming to have full-time jobs (as recommended by the OECD in 2015), among other types of possible efforts to support gender equity (Table 2.4).
In responses to the EPO Survey 2016-17, addressing high levels of gender gaps in performance, education completion and pay was reported as a key policy priority by Finland and New Zealand in 2008-13 and by Latvia in 2014-17. These priorities are viewed in different ways among countries. On the PISA 2015 assessment, boys scored below girls in science by 15 points in Finland and by 11 points in Latvia. On the same assessment, boys scored above girls by 4 points across the OECD and by 5 points in New Zealand. These gender differences highlight that countries’ perceptions of this issue as a priority are not always related to the size of the gender gap. Specific examples of policies that aim to bridge performance gaps among boys and girls include the Project for Increasing School Attendance Rates Especially for Girls (IAREFG or KEP-2, 2015-17) in Turkey (Table 2.4).
Table 2.4. Bridging performance gaps among boys and girls
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. Education systems highlighted in bold are those where the policy priority was identified by both the OECD and the education system, in either the EPO Survey 2016-17 or the EPO Country Profiles published in 2017.
3. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
Raising access to and quality of ECEC
The OECD identified raising access to and quality of ECEC as a key policy priority to improve students’ future outcomes in 14 education systems. According to PISA 2015 results, the average gap in science scores between students who attended at least more than one year of pre-primary school and those who had attended one year or less was 41 points (OECD, 2017b). This identified difference in performance provides some evidence on how important ECEC can be for the academic success of students (although this may be more difficult to take into account for education systems where children have more recently migrated into the system).
The OECD identified this policy priority in education systems including the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Korea and Portugal. For those education systems, as a principle of action over 2008-17, the OECD recommended creating an integrated system to monitor ECEC standards according to age, among other things, in order to avoid different quality standards and different levels of quality between ECEC institutions. This applied particularly to countries such as Korea Italy, where childcare centres and kindergartens were separate strands of provision at the time of the review (Table 2.5).
Only one of the participating education systems identified access and quality in ECEC as a key priority in the two EPO Surveys (Table 2.5). This may be largely due to the high number of ECEC policies and reforms that were ongoing or recently implemented by countries in 2017.
That being said, countries have been working to expand access to ECEC, improve its quality and enhance children’s preparedness for primary education, as explained in Chapter 3. In 2009, for example, Norway extended the legal right to a place in ECEC to start at age 1. More recently, Slovenia introduced Amendments to the Kindergarten Act (2017) to offer short-term state-funded programmes one year before entering primary school for children not enrolled in preschool education. In addition, approaches to promoting education quality and children’s preparedness for primary school include Sweden’s latest reforms to the ECEC curriculum (Läroplan för Förskolan – Lpfö 98) in 2016 (with others planned in 2017) and France’s 2013 reform of its school system (Refondation de l'école de la République).
Table 2.5. Increase access and quality of ECEC
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
3. Responses for Italy are based on the EPO Country Profile published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
Emerging policy priorities identified from 2014 to 2017
In addition to these persisting policy priorities, the OECD has identified other emerging priorities among education systems over 2014-17. Notable emerging policy priorities identified in this analysis include strengthening student performance for all (with a focus on low performing students) and successfully integrating the immigrant population into the education system, although other key emerging priorities became apparent.
Integrating immigrant students into the education system
In recent decades, the demographic landscape has been evolving dramatically in many OECD countries, primarily due to migration. Across OECD countries, the share of the foreign-born population increased from 6% to over 9% over the last two decades (OECD, 2017b). As a result, populations in various education systems have been changing. This poses a challenge as governments seek to effectively integrate young immigrant children into ECEC programmes and schools and to identify and respond to performance gaps between them and their peers. In PISA 2015, almost one in four 15‑year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. In Switzerland and Luxembourg, half the 15‑year-old students reported that they were foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent (OECD, 2018). Responses to the EPO Survey 2016-17 suggest that integrating immigrant students into the education system has been emerging as a more clearly identified policy priority in a large number of education systems. The issue was already apparent in education systems’ responses during 2008-13, but it appears to have become more significant with the high levels of migration experienced across Europe in recent years. High performance and attainment gaps remain between native and immigrant students, as shown in PISA.
The OECD Secretariat identified further integrating immigrant students into education systems as a pressing policy priority in its country-based work in Austria, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Poland and the United Kingdom (England) over 2008-13, and in education systems including Finland, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Turkey over 2014-17. As a core principle of action, the OECD advised education systems to intervene as early as possible, mainly by providing language courses to immigrant students and developing specific teacher training to guarantee that teachers have the right skills to maximise the integration of students and adults into the education system.
As noted, principles of action are applied differently depending on a country’s national context and the priorities its government and education systems identify, as well as on priorities identified by the OECD through country-based work. For example, in Germany in 2016, the OECD recommended providing additional language courses and including refugee children in regular compulsory education as soon as possible to avoid segregation. In 2015, the OECD advised Sweden to encourage language learning in the workplace and to introduce a youth package with enhanced education and training offers for older students.
Education systems that had reported further integrating immigrant students into education as a significant policy priority in 2008-13 included Belgium (Flemish community), Finland and Iceland (Table 2.6). According to PISA 2015, the performance difference between non-immigrant and immigrant students increased between 2006 and 2015 in both Finland and Belgium, while it decreased in Iceland. The importance of the challenge, however, appears to have grown significantly in education systems like Germany, Sweden and Turkey in 2014-17.
Countries have taken a wide range of measures to work towards successful integration of immigrant students, from specific curricula (as in Finland, with its 2015 National Core Curriculum for Instruction Preparing for Basic Education) to large-scale action plans (as in Germany, with its 2011 National Action Plan on Integration).
Table 2.6. Ensuring success of immigrant students in the education system
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. Education systems highlighted in bold are those where the policy priority was identified by both the OECD and the education system, in either the EPO Survey 2016-17 or the EPO Country Profiles published in 2017.
3. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
4. Responses for Belgium (Fl, Fr, Dg) and Sweden are based on the EPO Country Profiles published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
Strengthening student performance for all
As mentioned earlier, quality education systems help all students develop their full potential regardless of their different interests and skills. However, analysis of the data collected did not find evidence of policies targeting specifically mid-to-high performers in the participating education systems. For a majority of participating OECD education systems, the focus of the key policies reported has been on low educational performance levels.
Over 2014-17, the OECD identified the need to decrease the share of low performers in PISA as a prominent policy priority in 15 OECD education systems: Belgium (Flemish Community), Chile, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden and accession country Costa Rica. EPO Survey responses of 2013 and 2016-17 also suggest that this issue has been a key government priority in Belgium (Flemish Community), Finland, Germany, Iceland, Spain, Sweden and Turkey since 2008 (Table 2.7).
According to studies performed by the OECD in these education systems over 2014-17, principles of action that could be beneficial to raise student performance included employing better qualified teachers and establishing educational outcomes as a main target, rather than focusing solely on increasing spending. In 2015, the OECD advised Mexico to: 1) establish a small number of clear, highest-priority and measurable aims focused on improving the learning of all students; 2) align all efforts towards their achievement; and 3) increase spending efficiency by refocusing such spending on pre-primary, primary and secondary education. In 2016, the OECD recommended that Greece take the following actions to boost performance: 1) improve the quality of teachers by linking teaching evaluation to effective professional development; 2) make schools more autonomous and accountable; and 3) introduce a performance evaluation system for universities. In 2016, the OECD advised Costa Rica to improve efficiency and evaluation mechanisms and enhance accountability across the entire education system, including universities.
Countries’ efforts reported to the OECD to improve low student performance include policies that seek to raise outcomes for those coming from less advantaged backgrounds and to strengthen early childhood education and early intervention mechanisms. Policies should also include measures to promote excellence for all students and strengthen the performance of students at higher proficiency levels.
Table 2.7. Ensuring success for all students in the education system
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. Education systems highlighted in bold are those where the policy priority was identified by both the OECD and the education system in either the EPO Survey 2016-17 or the EPO Country Profiles published in 2017.
3. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
4. Education systems listed in the final row refer to OECD accession or partner countries.
Preventing grade repetition and delaying tracking
Evidence shows that certain system-level policies, such as grade repetition and early tracking, can hinder equity if not managed carefully (OECD, 2016b). Grade repetition has proved to be costly for governments, less efficient in terms of raising students’ performance and more likely to increase the likelihood of disengagement and failure. However, many OECD education systems (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Mexico, Portugal and Spain) still have relatively high levels of grade repetition, as highlighted by the work carried out by the OECD in these education systems. For example, in PISA 2015, the share of students who reported that they had repeated at least one year of education by the age of 15 was 34% in Belgium, 22.1% in France, 30.9% in Luxembourg, and 31.2% in Portugal, compared to the OECD average of 12%. Over 2014-17, the OECD recommended as a principle of action that these education systems endeavour to avoid grade repetition by replacing it with early and individualised support for students who are lagging behind (Table 2.8).
Over 2008-13, reducing grade repetition was reported to the OECD as a key policy priority by Belgium (French Community), Portugal and Spain (according to PISA 2015, these education systems have the highest share of 15-year-old students who reported having repeated a year). Education systems have developed specific policies targeted towards reducing grade repetition, for example in the French Community of Belgium, as part of the Take-off Project (2012). Portugal is also targeting grade repetition, as well as school dropout, as part of its comprehensive National Programme to Promote Educational Success (2016), which includes preventive measures to reduce the use of grade repetition and to support students who have already repeated a grade with additional specialist tutoring.
The OECD also regularly recommends that education systems make transitions more effective by offering more possibilities for success and decreasing the availability of early tracking, as evidence shows that it can favour the development and perpetuation of inequities within the education system. In recent years, the OECD specifically recommended delaying tracking in work carried out with four education systems: Austria (in 2015 and 2016), Belgium (in 2007 and 2011, particularly to integrate populations from immigrant background), the Czech Republic (in 2011, 2014 and 2016) and Germany (in 2010 and 2016). The first age of selection in the education system was 10 for both Austria and Germany, 11 for the Czech Republic and 12-14 for Belgium (where student tracking takes place for the first time to some extent at the age of 12 in the Flemish Community, but generally begins at age 14). During this period, Austria also implemented an initiative to reduce the stratification effect of early tracking, with its New Secondary School model (Neue Mittelschule), which began in 2007/08.
Table 2.8. Reducing grade repetition and delaying tracking
1. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally.
2. Education systems highlighted in bold are those where the policy priority was identified by both the OECD and the education system, in either the EPO Survey 2016-17 or the EPO Country Profiles published in 2017.
3. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
4. Responses for Belgium (Fr) are based on the EPO Country Profile published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
References
Carneiro, P., F. Cunha and J. Heckman (2003), “Interpreting the Evidence of Family Influence on Child Development”, paper presented at conference on The Economics of Early Child Development: Lessons for Economic Policy, Federal Reserve Bank, University of Minnesota, USA, www.researchgate.net/publication/246514464_Interpreting_the_Evidence_of_Family_Influence_on_Child_Development.
OECD (2018), The Resilience of Students with an Immigrant Background: Factors that Shape Well-being, OECD Reviews of Migrant Education, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264292093-en.
OECD (2017a), Education Policy Outlook: Italy, OECD Publishing, Paris, www.oecd.org/edu/Education-Policy-Outlook-Country-Profile-Italy.pdf.
OECD (2017b), Starting Strong 2017: Key OECD Indicators on Early Childhood Education and Care, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264276116-en.
OECD (2016a), PISA 2015 Results (Volume I): Excellence and Equity in Education, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264266490-en.
OECD (2016b), Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264250246-en.
OECD (2012), Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264130852-en.
OECD (2007), Education at a Glance 2007: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2007-en.
OECD (2006a), Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Education and Care, Starting Strong, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264035461-en.