This extended literature review explores four broad themes concerning mathematics education, the first of which is on how U.S. school-aged children have been performing in mathematics at the national and international levels. Findings demonstrated that at the national level, their performance has been stagnant for many decades for high school…

This article investigates the importance of global competence and its incorporation in interventions from Grade 5 to Grade 12 public education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to prepare learners for local and global challenges, such as sustainable development, technological innovation, climate change, etc. Using data from the Programme for…

Many studies investigating inquiry learning in science domains have appeared over the years. Throughout this period, inquiry learning has been regularly criticized by scholars who favor direct instruction over inquiry learning. In this vein, Zhang, Kirschner, Cobern, and Sweller (2022) recently asserted that direct instruction is overall superior…

This article explores the uptake of so-called fast policy solutions to problems in different education policy contexts and highlights the potential impacts that can arise from such policymaking approaches. We draw upon recent literature and theorising around notions of fast policy and evidence-informed policymaking, which suggests that, in an…

This report considers the role that the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) could take in supporting partner countries in embedding 21st-century skills or equivalent within their education systems. The report recommendations consider the different levers that GPE can use as well as the core principles underlying GPE's work, including…

Each country's education system is intricate and unique, underpinned with different policies and priorities. International Large Scale Assessments (ILSAs) provide valuable insights into how a country's education system is performing. These studies gather in-depth contextual information about systems, schools, teachers and students; and explore the…

As is the case in most OECD countries, boys in Norway are more likely to have lower levels of academic achievement and attainment than girls. While this phenomenon is not recent, it has become increasingly pronounced in recent years and, as a result, is attracting considerable attention from policy-makers in many countries. This paper develops…

This Forum discusses the significant growth of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) since the mid-1990s. Addey and Sellar's contribution ("A Framework for Analysing the Multiple Rationales for Participating in International Large-Scale Assessments") outlines a framework of rationales for participating in ILSAs and examines the…

This policy profile on education in Austria is part of the "Education Policy Outlook" series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across OECD countries. Building on the OECD's substantial comparative and sectoral knowledge base, the series offers a comparative outlook on education policy by providing…

This report provides an overview and discussion of the past decade of academic evidence on the causal effects of resources in schooling on students' outcomes. Early evidence lacked good strategies for estimating the effects of schools resources, leading many people to conclude that spending more on schools had no effect. More recent evidence using…

Education is an area that is highly devolved in the UK, and the fact that all four constituent countries have pursued very different policies in the recent past provides a good testing ground to undertake a comparative review of the merits or otherwise of the education reforms that have taken place. There is, of course, an important policy context…

This paper provides evidence on the sources of differences in inequality in educational scores and their evolution over time in four European countries. Using Programme for International Student Assessment data from the 2000 and the 2006 waves, the paper shows that inequality decreased in Germany and Spain (two "decentralised" schooling…

In response to the need for cross-nationally comparable evidence on student performance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 1997. PISA represents a commitment by governments to monitor the outcomes of education systems through measuring…