Education at a Glance 2016

September 25, 2016
High-quality education benefits all and remains a government priority, but despite notable progress, some groups still lag behind. One in six 25-34 year-olds across the OECD lacks an upper secondary education. In the EU, young adults who have dropped out of upper secondary school face unemployment rates of 21.2%, compared with 8% for their tertiary‑educated peers. In a highly demanding and fast‑paced world, a lack of higher level skills comes at a big cost for families and society. Gender imbalances also persist. In many countries, immigrants tend to lag behind their native born peers in educational attainment at all stages.

Education at a glance provides information on the state of education around the world. It provides key information on the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; the financial and human resources invested in education; access, participation and progression in education; and the learning environment and organisation of schools.
The 2016 edition introduces two new indicators:
¬ An indicator on the completion rate of tertiary students and
¬ An indicator on school leaders.

It provides more trend data and analysis on diverse topics, such as: teachers’ salaries; graduation rates; expenditure on education; enrolment rates; young adults who are neither employed nor in education or training; class size; and teaching hours. The publication examines gender imbalance in education and the profile of students who attend, and graduate from, vocational education.
The report covers all 35 OECD countries and a number of partner countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa).

To tackle some of the challenges, Education at a Glance 2016 helps to highlight areas where education investments could be better targeted to improve efficiency, quality and equity:

    Class size is a case in point. Investments in reducing class size have consumed resources better spent on recruiting and rewarding high quality teachers.
    Supporting principals.
    Attracting younger adults to the teaching profession.
    Ensuring all students ─ particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds ─ have access to quality education.

For the first time, this year’s edition of Education at a Glance captures country progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education. The results are sobering.

The report