Some 72% of people born in Jamaica and holding a tertiary education degree live in OECD countries, a new report finds. Though Jamaica is the country with by far the highest emigration rate among people with such third-level qualifications (earned at home or abroad), the new study shows several OECD countries also feature highly.

“Attitudes are the real disability”, says Henry Holden, a well-known comedian and advocate for the disabled. Education is clearly important in this respect, but ironically, schools themselves have much to do in how they deal with disabled students.

This is an era in which science is needed, arguably more than ever. In the environment, energy and innovation generally, smart investors rely on smart thinkers. The public needs trusty scientists, to pursue knowledge and to arbitrate in debates about the likes of climate change, nuclear energy or nanotechnology.

Finland took the number one spot in the OECD’s PISA 2006 survey, a comprehensive and much-quoted international yardstick of secondary school student performance. Finland was followed by Hong Kong- China, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Estonia, Japan and New Zealand. Australia, the Netherlands, Korea, Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Ireland also scored above the OECD average. Mexico finished last among OECD countries.

“Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error.” So remarked Cisco’s chief, John Chambers, in an article in The New York Times in 1999. But even the boss of a company that produces technology for the Internet might not have guessed just how large e-education would become.

Centres of higher learning often exude a rarefied air. From the spires of Oxford to the lanes of Bologna, a remoteness from local communities and disdain for the commercial world are still a common characterisation, if not a tradition.

Everyone accepts that education is vital for a healthy economy, but now there is strong evidence that it contributes to a healthy body too. Understanding the Social Outcomes of Learning makes the claim that those with more schooling also tend to have better health, as well as more civic engagement.

Learn more, earn more? Some of the issues raised in Education at a Glance 2007 formed a recent online public discussion in our Ask the Economists series. Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD’s Education Indicators and Analysis division and a lead author of Education at a Glance, fielded questions from readers in Chile, China, Germany, Spain and the UK on Wednesday 3 October. Below is a sample.

Third-level education brings many benefits, and not just for the most educated. Higher education has expanded greatly in OECD countries in the past few decades, and the result as expected has been a rise in the number of graduates. But has the increasing supply of well-educated labour been matched by the creation of an equivalent number of highpaying jobs? Or will more and more people with university degrees simply have to work for the minimum wage?

Some 82,900 foreign scholars were in teaching or research at US higher education institutions in the 2003-04 academic year. Most were engaged in research, although the share in teaching has increased. Two-thirds are engaged in scientific or engineering fields, with a fast-growing proportion in life and biological sciences.

Concerns about the supply and quality of teachers are generating new policies in many OECD countries. Here’s why.

“Our values and beliefs inhibit us from looking upon human beings as capital goods, except in slavery, and this we abhor.” So wrote American economist Theodore Schultz in 1961 in his pioneering analysis of the role of human capital in economic growth.

In today’s knowledge economy, the value of learning is becoming ever more apparent. Whether you’re an aged grandmother in Kenya, a 55-year-old manager in Kyoto, or a 25-year-old graduate in Kansas, the economic value of your education is rising.

Carl Sagan, the late astronomer, raconteur and television personality, once wondered aloud how many books an individual could read in a normal lifetime. “From here, to here”, was his estimate, as he walked the length of a single, not very long, shelf of books in a US library. Sagan’s point was that our capacity to read was nothing compared with the vast volume of editions contained in a normal library.

Does repeating a year in school help educational performance? The 2006 Education at a Glance, an annual report, says that although many teachers and education administrators see repeating as a good way of getting children to improve, repeat students are no more likely to do well than non-repeating classmates.

Many factors can influence the quality of education, from teaching and tools to size and comfort of classrooms. As with cleverly laid out books, good design of schools can also stimulate behaviour and responsiveness and facilitate learning.

Every eight seconds, one student in the OECD area leaves school without completing an upper secondary qualification. That means a gloomy outlook for his or her future: on average, 26% of adults without upper secondary qualifications earn half or less than half the national median earnings. The trouble is, the penalties for not obtaining strong baseline qualifications continue to rise year after year.

Innovative design, use and management of physical infrastructure can contribute to the quality of education. This lesson is not all that new. For a decade now, the OECD Programme on Educational Building (PEB), has led an international jury in selecting a number of institutions that exemplify considerations of flexibility, community needs, sustainability, safety and security, and financing.

Higher education cannot escape major and sometimes difficult change, and OECD governments were determined to lead those changes, rather than be driven by them. This was how Marietta Giannakou, minister of national education and religious affairs of Greece, wrapped up her conclusions as chair of the 2006 Education Ministers’ Meeting.

A basic problem with delivering a better higher education system is funding. Since the Second World War higher education, just as secondary and primary schools, has been considered as a public good, and so in most OECD countries the service had to be delivered free of charge to students through taxation. However, tighter public budgets and stiffer global competition for talent have led to a renewed interest in student fees as a possible way of raising more funding. The issue poses several tricky challenges, about access, equity, student finance, debt, and so on. Little wonder the debate has become rather heated in several countries.

Higher education is attracting unprecedented public attention across the OECD. In Germany a competition to create universities of excellence is fuelling debate; in France discussions continue about struggling mainstream universities versus more well-endowed grandes écoles; in the UK there is a debate about education as a public good versus faculties as market-oriented enterprises; and in the US public focus continues on accessibility, competition and costs.

Last February, some 20 universities, brought together in a task force created by the UN secretary-general, met in Princeton to examine the way in which universities might respond in a new and innovative way to the intellectual, scientific, political and economic changes taking place in our societies. One issue at the fore of these discussions was the social responsibility of universities.

You cannot expect someone to be able to build a house just by giving them a saw, a hammer and some wood. Likewise, you cannot expect someone to be able to manage their finances just by giving them an income, a mortgage, a credit card and an insurance policy. People need to be taught how to use these tools in order to succeed.

If secondary education died tomorrow, what would its epitaph be? This question was used as a springboard by school administrators in the Netherlands to rise above the distraction of today’s pressing needs and spur innovative ideas on what tomorrow’s schools should look like. Schooling for Tomorrow: Think Scenarios, Rethink Education points out that today’s educational thinking profoundly influences the lives of individuals and the health of whole communities for decades to come, yet much decision-making tends to deal with immediate issues.

When European Union heads of state and government met at a summit in Lisbon in 2000, they set the goal of making Europe “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.” That goal is far from being met, not least in tertiary education.*

Planning next year’s studies? Why not consider reading E-Learning in Tertiary Education: Where Do We Stand? This latest report from the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) says that in addition to lifting constraints of time and place, electronic learning can be more personalised, flexible and even less expensive than conventional learning places.

Graduate teaching courses are becoming more popular again in many countries, though ageing continues to affect the profession, and making the career more attractive for longer remains a challenge. For insight, we asked a retired teacher to explain why, despite the challenges, he stayed in the job.

On 21 October, 1966, a slag heap in south Wales slid down a mountain and engulfed the village school, killing 144 people, 116 of them children. The 1995 terrorist bombing outside a school near Lyon, France, wounded three children and 11 adults. Fourteen students died in the 1999 gun and bomb assault at Columbine High School in Colorado, and an earthquake in southern Italy in 2002 destroyed a schoolhouse, killing 26 children.

Ownership, participation, stakeholder involvement: these form the jargon of today’s open policymaking with civil society. But what about school kids?

“The never-ending search for competitive advantage in the global knowledge economy has led all public policymakers to focus on education as a key factor in strengthening competitiveness, employment and social cohesion.” This was how Noel Dempsey, Ireland’s minister for education and science, summed up the importance of education at a lively meeting of OECD education ministers in Dublin in March.

Are computers really everywhere? Not in some schools. Governments have invested heavily in the past 20 years to make computers and the Internet available in schools in the most advanced OECD countries, but their use by teachers and students is disappointing, a new report says.

These are important times for education in all the member countries of the OECD. The neverending search for competitive advantage in the global knowledge economy has led all public policy-makers to focus on education as a key factor in strengthening competitiveness, employment and social cohesion.

Higher grades, better students? Or higher grades, lower standards? When more students achieve high exam grades, some claim the credit for supposedly better education systems. Others suggest that requirements must have been lowered. Behind these suspicions, there is usually a belief that somehow there is a natural ceiling to overall performance in education. This would be a mistaken view.

Has teaching lost its appeal as a career choice? There are many indications that it has. But governments can take action.

Where were you when the Twin Towers collapsed? Can you remember receiving your first diploma, your first bicycle or your first kiss?

When a company makes a decision to invest, one of the most important factors is the quality of the workforce. Every entrepreneur is aware of this; business literature is rich in accounts of capital investments that went wrong because of some mismatch with the local labour pool. Governments, businesses, people: we all lose when that happens. We all gain from a good match.

Irishman Peter Sutherland has had quite a career in both international policy-making and business. From top jobs as European commissioner for competition policy and directorgeneral of the GATT, and founding chief of the WTO to chairmanships at Goldman Sachs International and BP, Dr Sutherland’s CV is indeed outstanding. So much so, in fact, that a new centre was named after him at Trinity College Dublin in December 2002.

Finding a satisfying career is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Nor is it easy in modern, complex labour markets: job content changes, new occupations grow, other occupations decline. Yet, if people can find the work they want, then both human happiness and the efficiency of the labour market increase. Where to start?

Many headline economic indicators fluctuate day by day. With few exceptions, commentators judge the success or failure of economic policies in quarterly data or annual growth rates. It is harder to become excited about education in the same way, since both policy and indicators measuring performance inch forward at a much slower pace.

“Mohammed starts to swing. He is trying to go as high as possible. Which diagram best represents the height of his feet above the ground as he swings?”

It is rare that I see my family's situation reflected perfectly in an article in a journal such as the OECD Observer. However, this came to pass in your 40th anniversary edition (No. 235, December 2002).

Investing in secondary and tertiary education as well as primary schooling, pays rich dividends for emerging economies, both for countries and individuals, says a new study by UNESCO and the OECD. Investment in human capital over the past two decades has accounted for about half a percentage point in the annual growth rates of 16 emerging economies, Financing Education – Investment and Returns: Analysis of the World Education Indicators found.

The head of OECD’s education indicators, Andreas Schleicher, took what looked like a poor report card for Germany’s educational system and ended up receiving an award for himself, from none other than the Germans. In April he received for this achievement the prestigious Theodor Heuss award, named after the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Education is largely a national affair, but it is fast becoming a worldwide service industry too, even for publicly-funded systems. Does trade in education help and can education be traded on the global market without compromising on issues like cultural independence or quality? These questions raise important challenges for governments, educators and students alike that will grow in the years ahead.

Big businesses go out with a bang, but small businesses come and go like winter snow. Yet, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent 95% of all businesses in most OECD countries, and are often seen as the dynamic drivers of the economy, including for innovation. They are the laboratories of “creative destruction”.

In the world of education, students and teachers are on the move. More students attend universities and schools abroad, while teachers too have become more internationally mobile. In some ways, education has many of the characteristics of a large global business. This year’s Education at a Glance, published in October, shows that within the OECD area, Australia, France, Germany, the UK and the US attract seven out of ten foreign students studying abroad.

Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States, was the keynote speaker at OECD Forum 2002 on 14 May. The theme of Forum 2002 was taking care of the fundamentals: security, equity, education and growth. All four are important, Mrs Bush told a packed audience that included many high-level guests, but all four hinge on one: education. The following two short extracts are from the First Lady’s speech, the full version of which can be found at www.oecd.org/forum2002

The findings of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment are alarming. A country with the economic and political significance of Germany belongs at the top of the league and cannot be satisfied with an education system performing at the OECD average level – never mind below it.

There can be no doubt that poverty, which was the scourge of the 20th century, continues to confront us as the pre-eminent challenge of the new century. High mortality rates claim the lives of millions of women and children. This scourge is manifested in the form of diseases, malnutrition, stunted physical and intellectual development, all of which result in grim consequences. One overriding factor is to blame: poverty.

Keynote address on education by Mrs Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States

In 2000 the British government and the Wolfson Foundation, a research charity, launched a five-year research award that raised little attention outside scientific circles. The £20 million scheme aims to attract the return of Britain’s leading expatriate scientists and the migration of top young researchers to the United Kingdom. That same year under greater media coverage, the US Congress announced it was raising the annual cap on the number of temporary work visas granted to highly skilled professionals under its H1B visa programme, from 115 000 to 195 000 per year until 2003.

The new PISA survey of student knowledge and skills tells us more than we have ever known about which education systems do well. It reveals some interesting surprises, too. The results may point to a need for improvements to education systems worldwide, though this does not mean a standardised curriculum for all countries.

Girls have overtaken boys in the literacy stakes when it comes to reading, both in their ability to understand what they read and in their tendency to read for pleasure.

Sir, OECD ministers were recently wondering about the quality and relevance of teaching, and your latest OECD Observer (No 225) takes up the matter rather thoroughly. The problem is of special interest as far as economics is concerned.

Learning your ABC is no longer enough; you can now add a D for digital, as well as an E for electronic. But while information technology has changed society, school has changed hardly at all.

There has been much talk but precious little action about the coming of “virtual learning”. This might be about to change, although challenges remain.

The knowledge society requires not only a higher level of basic education than in the past, but also new kinds of expertise and reliable means to measure them, OECD education ministers agreed at a two-day meeting in Paris in April. They urged the OECD to develop more educational indicators to measure such elements adult life and progress in achieving the goal of lifelong learning. One key issue is the quality of teaching and the status of the teaching profession.

“For two years, Johnny, a quiet 13-year-old, was a human plaything for some of his classmates. The teenagers badgered Johnny for money, forced him to swallow weeds and drink milk mixed with detergent, beat him up in the restroom and tied a string around his neck, leading him around as a ‘pet’. When Johnny’s torturers were interrogated about the bullying, they said they pursued their victim because it was fun.”

Lifelong learning has to start at a young age and so it does in many OECD countries, with universal enrolment (more than 90%) at five or six years of age in the majority of OECD members. And in some countries virtually all three to four-year- olds are already enrolled in pre-primary or primary programmes.

The role of education in contributing to a fairer society has always been double-edged. When successful in widening participation in learning, its contribution is powerful and positive. But too often, it can have the opposite effect of being socially selective, even divisive. Policy strategies need to work with this dual focus – reinforcing inclusion and participation while tackling out-dated forms of selection. In 21st century society, this longstanding equity goal for education takes on new urgency.

The teaching workforce is ageing. A considerable number of countries already have an old teaching force, with 49% of teachers in upper secondary education in Sweden aged 50 and over. Moreover, recent signs point to a worsening of the situation in several other countries, such as Germany and New Zealand.

Teachers in OECD countries generally do not have sufficient command of information and communications technology (ICT) for educational purposes, particularly when they are using the Internet. That at least was the verdict of 29 students from OECD countries who met with OECD policymakers and experts in Aix-en-Provence, France last December.

Well-designed schools and campuses may have a role to play in improving educational quality. A new OECD publication* looks at 55 establishments in OECD countries selected by an international jury for the way they have adapted to a constantly changing teaching and learning environment. The schools were selected from 90 schools and universities in 21 countries offered to illustrate themes such as schools for a communications society, school buildings and the environment, libraries and educational resources or establishments for higher education.

New technologies were for a long time confined to specific occupations and sectors of the economy, but they are now in widespread use. They have become an integral part of daily life and are radically changing trade and the development of communications around the world. Individual levels of education and training are also constantly rising. If the knowledge economy is to expand, every individual – not only those in work – will have to be able to use, handle or produce information. Mastering new skills has become a necessity outside the workplace, to watch interactive television, use the Internet or simply withdraw money at a cash point.

Reducing class sizes may not necessarily lead to improved educational performance, France’s advisory Haut Conseil de l’Evaluation de l’Ecole has warned, throwing doubt on a 30-year-old pillar of national education policy. The report, delivered in March to the French education minister, Jack Lang, said that smaller class sizes can have an effect in underprivileged areas, but only at primary level and only if the cut is drastic.

Since I arrived at the OECD in 1996, I have participated in more conferences on more issues than I would have imagined possible. These many and varied meetings focused on almost every area of public policy. Without exaggeration, I can report that in all cases a common thread of consensus was education as the fundamental building block of social and economic progress. Would this have been the case, say, 100 or even 50 years ago? I doubt it.

The public education systems woven into the fabric of 20th century welfare states prepared populations to contribute to society and shaped national identity. But the industrial society and the nation state that prompted their existence have had their day, giving way to the new economy and globalisation.

Teachers need more training in new technologies but should not be replaced by computer terminals, students from OECD countries told educational policymakers at a meeting in December. The 28 students, aged 17-20, were worried that many teachers were ignorant not only of the technical aspects of the new technologies, but also about how to use them as an effective learning tool. This can lead to tension between self-directed learning using computers at home and activity within school, the students told the meeting, which was one of the first of its kind, set up to get students’ views on new technology in education. The students also raised the question of the quality of the information being provided via new technologies. They said many CD-ROMs cover a subject with great breadth but not depth, and that much time can be wasted searching on the Internet, with no guarantee of the authenticity of the information recovered. And while computers provide enormous learning potential when used wisely, they do not and should not displace books, teachers and basic human interactions.

”You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is an adage past its prime, or at least that is what neuroscientists are beginning to argue in brain science. As recently as 1997, it was “ generally accepted that formative learning takes place only in the first three years of life. But new research helped by technological breakthroughs show this not to be the case. In fact, the evidence shows that the possible loss of neurons after age 40 can be offset by stimulating the brain regularly. In other words, as with muscles, targeted exercise can bring learning benefits at any time in a life. This brain plasticity, or the capacity for lifelong learning, is an exciting finding for cognitive scientists, and is now just starting to influence educational policymaking.