This report would not have been possible without the support of the 19 education systems that are actively engaged in the School Resources Review. Participating countries committed substantial resources and opened their school resource policies to review and debate. National co-ordinators (listed in Annex B) played a key role in this exchange, enriching discussions with their insights from diverse contexts and co-ordinating their countries’ participation in the project.
The OECD Education Policy Committee (EDPC), the Group of National Experts (GNE) on School Resources, and the delegates to both bodies provided essential support and analytical guidance since the inception of the project, and offered valuable feedback on drafts of this document. Leading up to the publication of the report, the GNE was chaired by Mr Jørn Skovsgaard, Senior Advisor of the Danish Ministry of Education; and had as vice-chairs Ms Marie-Anne Persoons, International Policy Advisor in the Strategic Policy Support Division of the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training and Mr Matej Šiškovič, Director of the Educational Policy Institute at the Slovak Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sports. The dedication and leadership of the chair and vice-chairs is gratefully acknowledged.
The School Resources Review and this report also benefited from the active involvement of different stakeholders with an interest in education. The Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (BIAC) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) participated as permanent observers in meetings of the GNE on School Resources and had the opportunity to comment on drafts of this report. During individual country reviews, students, parents, teachers, school leaders, researchers and employers made their time available to meet with review teams and to provide their perspective on school resource policy issues.
This report was prepared within a broader framework of collaboration and a partnership with the European Commission (EC), which was established for the OECD School Resources Review. The support of the EC has covered part of the participation costs for members of the European Union Erasmus+ programme and contributed significantly to the preparation of a series of thematic comparative reports, including this publication. The European Commission’s support for the School Resources Review is gratefully acknowledged. The review team would like to thank in particular colleagues at the EC Directorate-General for Education and Culture, Mónika Képe-Holmberg (Unit A.2: Education and Training in Europe 2020 under the leadership of Denis Crowley), Marco Montanari (Unit B.2: Schools and Multilingualism under the leadership of Michael Teutsch) and many others whose contributions are acknowledged in Annex B.
In addition, the Review’s collaboration with Eurocities, the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, Eurydice, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, and the World Bank created synergies between the work undertaken by different organisations and we are grateful for the valuable input they provided into the project and this report.
The review is equally indebted to the many experts who contributed to the country review visits and the resulting country review reports that are part of the publication series OECD Reviews of School Resources (for the composition of the country review teams, see Annex B). Their expertise, analytical contributions to the country-specific reports and professional exchanges with OECD Secretariat members provided the foundation for the comparative perspective of this report. The background reports prepared by participating countries provided a further important source of information and thanks are due to all those who contributed to their production. In addition to this publication, by July 2018, the review had generated 16 reports by participating countries, 11 reports by external review teams and multiple research papers (all available on the OECD website at www.oecd.org/education/schoolresourcesreview.htm).
Within the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, the work on this thematic report was carried out by the Policy Advice and Implementation Division under the leadership of Paulo Santiago. David Liebowitz, Deborah Nusche (project manager since December 2016), Thomas Radinger, Paulo Santiago (project manager between January 2013 and July 2016) and Claire Shewbridge assumed leadership for the individual country reviews on which this report is based. Important contributions to the country reviews were also made by Anna Pons (who led the review of Kazakhstan), Tracey Burns (who participated in the review of Uruguay), Alfonso Echazarra (who participated in the review of Colombia) and Gonçalo Lima (who participated in the review of Portugal). Cláudia Sarrico provided guidance for the completion of this report as the project’s interim manager since April 2018. Claire Berthelier was responsible for the copy-editing, layout and final formatting of this report. Eleonore Morena provided editorial support during the early stages of the report’s production and took responsibility for the administrative work within the review, the organisation of meetings and communication with the countries until May 2018. The team would also like to thank Andreas Schleicher and Yuri Belfali for their overall guidance and support for the project.
Gratitude is also extended to current and former team members who supported the work of the project at different stages. Macarena Ares Abalde, Francesc Masdeu Navarro and Alette Schreiner provided substantial input into the project’s knowledge base and Samuel Kim supported the project’s preparatory work on human resource policies. Luka Boeskens, Tala Fakharzadeh, Anna Gromada, Gaëlle Leduc, Gonçalo Lima, Antoine Papalia, Kerstin Schophol and Oliver Sieweke provided research assistance and summarised key areas of the literature on school resources during their internships with the review. Joris Ranchin led the initial preparation of the qualitative data collection on countries’ approaches to school funding.
The OECD Review team is grateful to numerous colleagues within the OECD who provided valuable input and advice at different stages of the report’s production. In particular, the report benefited from collaboration with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) team within the Early Childhood and Schools Division, the Vocational Education and Training and adult learning team within the Skills Beyond School Division, the Strength Through Diversity project, the Learning Environments Evaluation Programme (LEEP), the INES Network for the Collection and the Adjudication of System-Level Descriptive Information on Educational Structures, Policies and Practices (NESLI), the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation’s (CERI) work on Governing Complex Education Systems and Strategic Education Governance, and the Economic Analysis, Statistics and Multi-Level Governance Section within the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities.