International organisations have pressed countries to prepare students for the knowledge economy by building real-life competencies into national curricula, and the OECD's PISA has assessed competencies like collaboration and creative problem solving. But is there really a deficit in competencies that schools must address? This review of empirical…

Schools are not just four walls inside of which students learn how to read, write and think. Schools provide a venue where young people meet each other, and where they develop relationships and friendships that may last for decades. At school, students socialise and hone the interpersonal skills that are required to function effectively in the…

There is considerable debate about the relative importance of family versus school factors in producing academic and nonacademic student outcomes, and whether and how their impacts vary across different student groups. In addition to critically reviewing and synthesizing earlier work, this study extends the literature by (a) using the ECLS-K, a…