A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

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Education at a Glance

The book Inequality by Christopher Jencks is in one sense an arid waste of somewhat confusing and misleading statistics between chapter one and chapter nine, and, in another sense, a destructive, unscientific critique of American education and families. Jencks' interpretation comes down hard on his basic feeling that "The crucial problem today is that relatively few people view income inequality as a serious problem; indeed the Nixon administration apparently convinced itself that income was too equally distributed in 1968 and that the rich needed additional incentives to get even richer . The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were only marginally better. Neither made any explicit effort to equalize incomes; the subject was hardly discussed. Instead reformers focused on equalizing opportunity." This view is probably correct but it is no excuse for an unscholarly, unscientific polemic against far from "peripheral institutions," which is Jencks' evaluation of the American schools. This book states

Inequality, A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America.

Tertiary education policy is increasingly important on national agendas. The widespread recognition that tertiary education is a major driver of economic competitiveness in an increasingly knowledge-driven global economy has made high-quality tertiary education more important than ever. The imperative for countries is to raise higher-level employment skills, to sustain a globally competitive research base and to improve knowledge dissemination to the benefit of society.

Tertiary education for the knowledge society

No More Failures challenges the assumption that there will always be failures and dropouts, those who can’t or won’t make it in school. In fact, initiatives in many countries demonstrate that it is possible to successfully tackle school failure and dropout rates – and to reduce the huge social cost of adults without basic skills. This book offers a valuable comparative perspective on how different countries have handled equity in education. Among the issues it explores:

https://www.oecd.org/education/school/45179151.pdf

No more failures : ten steps to equity in education

Fewer women than men pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), despite girls outperforming boys at school in the relevant subjects According to the ‘variability hypothesis’, this over-representation of males is driven by gender differences in variance; greater male variability leads to greater numbers of men who exceed the performance threshold Here, we use recent meta-analytic advances to compare gender differences in academic grades from over 16 million students In line with previous studies we find strong evidence for lower variation among girls than boys, and of higher average grades for girls However, the gender differences in both mean and variance of grades are smaller in STEM than non-STEM subjects, suggesting that greater variability is insufficient to explain male over-representation in STEM Simulations of these differences suggest the top 10% of a class contains equal numbers of girls and boys in STEM, but more girls in non-STEM subjects

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Gender differences in individual variation in academic grades fail to fit expected patterns for STEM

This study examines gender differences in the variability of student performance in reading, mathematics and science. Twelve databases from IEA and PISA were used to analyze gender differences within an international perspective from 1995 to 2015. Effect sizes and variance ratios were computed. The main results are as follows. (1) Gender differences vary by content area, students' educational levels, and students’ proficiency levels. The gender differences at the extreme tails of the distribution are often more substantial than the gender differences at the mean. (2) Exploring the extreme tails of the distributions shows that the situation of the weakest males in reading is a real matter of concern. In mathematics and science, males are more frequently among the highest performing students. (3) The “greater male variability hypothesis” is confirmed.

/pdf/gender-differences-in-variability-and-extreme-scores-in-an-1s599tlh4w.pdf

Gender differences in variability and extreme scores in an international context

A la demande du Parlement europeen, les auteurs analysent et discutent la communication de la Commission europeenne au Parlement et au Conseil intitulee "Efficacite et equite des systemes europeens d'education et de formation" publiee en 2006 (COM(2006)481 final).

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/42/38/40/PDF/parlement_note_vf.pdf

Efficiency and Equity in European Education and Training Systems

and Equity in European Education and Training Systems

Equity in European Educational Systems: a set of indicators

Recent initiatives in the U.S. and U.K. have added greatly to the amount and quality of research on the effectiveness of secondary reading programs, especially programs for struggling readers. This review of the experimental research on secondary reading programs focuses on 69 studies that used random assignment (n=62) or high-quality quasi-experiments (n=7) to evaluate outcomes of 51 programs on widely accepted measures of reading. Categories of programs using one-to-one and small-group tutoring, cooperative learning, whole-school approaches including organizational reforms such as teacher teams, and writing-focused approaches showed positive outcomes. Individual approaches in a few other categories also showed positive impacts. These include programs emphasizing social studies/science, structured strategies, and personalized and group/personalization rotation approaches for struggling readers. Programs that provide a daily extra period of reading and those utilizing technology were no more effective, on average, than programs that did not provide these resources. The findings suggest that secondary readers benefit more from socially and cognitively engaging instruction than from additional reading periods or technology.

Ariane Baye

Papers

Gender differences in variability and extreme scores in an international context

Efficiency and Equity in European Education and Training Systems

and Equity in European Education and Training Systems

Equity in European Educational Systems: a set of indicators

A Synthesis of Quantitative Research on Reading Programs for Secondary Students