The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2024 aims to be a definitive guide to the state of education around the world. It has a related press release. There is also a country note focused on Australia.
The ‘At a glance’ describes “the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools.” The 2024 edition focuses on equity in education.
Overall, what are the messages?
First, “the number of 25-34 year-olds without secondary attainment fell across most OECD countries between 2016 and 2023,” and:
“These positive trends are driven by 18-24 year-olds staying in education longer and a robust labour market. However, they do not indicate better learning outcomes. The proportion of low-performing 15-year-olds in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has remained unchanged or increased since 2012 in most countries. Moreover, the skills acquired by young adults often do not match labour market needs.”
Second, “girls and women outperform boys in education, but remain disadvantaged in the labour market.” Moreover, “significantly more young women than men obtain advanced qualifications. However, the employment rate of women aged 25-34 remains below the employment rate of men.”
Third, “educational outcomes are strongly influenced by family background.” The ‘At a glance’ focuses on the primary and secondary years. However, it reports that:
“Students who start an upper secondary programme are 19 percentage points less likely to successfully complete their studies if their parents have not attained upper secondary education than their peers with parents who have a tertiary qualification, and this gap is 13 percentage points for those starting a bachelor’s programmes. These disadvantages result in very different levels of educational attainment. While 72% of adults who have at least one parent with a tertiary qualification have also obtained a tertiary qualification, only 19% of those whose parents have not completed upper secondary education have tertiary attainment.”
And for Australia?
Messages in the country note include:
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- Not having at least an upper secondary or higher qualification is a disadvantage and, in Australia, “66% of 25-34 year-olds without an upper secondary qualification are employed, compared to 84% of those with an upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary qualification.”
- “Strong labour markets and increasing participation in education have led to a decline in the share of 18-24 year-olds who are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) in most OECD member countries.” And “in Australia, the share of NEETs decreased from 10.9% to 9.7%.”
- In relation to gender issues, in Australia “87% of young women with a tertiary qualification are employed, while the corresponding share for young men is 92% (the corresponding OECD averages are 84% and 90%).” Also, in Australia, and in terms gender pay gap, among those with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary attainment, young women earn on average 84% of the wage of their male peers in Australia.
- In Australia, 57% of new entrants to tertiary education are women, compared with an OECD average of 56%. “In Australia, only 12% of women entering tertiary education were studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, while only 5% of men were entering education-related fields.”
- “The likelihood of tertiary students successfully completing their studies depends on their family background. In Australia, 73% of students with at least one parent with tertiary attainment successfully completed their tertiary studies within three years of the theoretical end of the programme, while only 61% of students whose parents had less than upper secondary education did so.”
- “In Australia, the share of bachelor’s graduates from private institutions increased from 5% to 11%,” and finally
- In Australia, the share of public expenditure for tertiary education it is 36%, compared to an OECD average of 68%.
