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This Spotlight presents data and analysis on vocational education and training (VET) from Education at a Glance 2023. VET is a key component of most education systems in OECD countries. About one in three 25-34 year-olds have a vocational qualification as their highest level achieved, whether at upper secondary, post-secondary non-tertiary or short-cycle tertiary level. The first part of the Spotlight focuses on upper secondary programmes, analysing their components and outlining the main challenges to countries aiming to improve their quality, while promoting equity and ensuring better labour-market opportunities for their graduates. The second part focuses on progression pathways open to VET graduates and higher-level vocational programmes. Taken together, the two parts of this spotlight demonstrate the huge diversity of OECD country VET programmes.

Policies aimed at reducing the environmental impact of human activities have important consequences for labour markets, jobs, and skills. As employment is shifting towards more sustainable activities, workers are increasingly expected to have skills that support the transition to a greener economy. Assessing and anticipating emerging skill needs is crucial to avoid bottlenecks and sustain the green transition. This report sheds light on existing methods to measure changes in skill demand and supply related to the green transition through an in-depth review of practices in five OECD countries (Australia, Austria, France, Norway and Sweden). It also identifies best practice on how to feed information on changing skill needs into policies, notably in the areas of employment, career guidance, education and adult learning.

This policy brief was prepared as part of the OECD's Resourcing Higher Education Project. This wider project aims to provide a shared knowledge base for OECD member and partner countries on policy for higher education resourcing, drawing on system-specific and comparative policy analysis. The policy brief for Lithuania was developed at the request of the Lithuanian authorities as part of their efforts to promote the development of a more diversified and efficient institutional landscape in the national higher education system, in which universities and colleges can sharpen their profiles to align better with their individual strengths and the student populations and communities they serve. The brief initially provides a concise overview of the operating environment for HEIs in Lithuania and the existing institutional landscape. It then examines the approaches adopted to institutional differentiation and missions in higher education in other OECD higher education systems, before considering the rationale for reform in Lithuania and – informed by international examples – the policy options open to Lithuania to effect reform of its higher education landscape.

This policy brief was prepared as part of the OECD's Resourcing Higher Education Project. This wider project aims to provide a shared knowledge base for OECD member and partner countries on policy for higher education resourcing, drawing on system-specific and comparative policy analysis. The policy brief for Finland was developed at the request of the Finnish authorities to support reflection on possible adjustments to the public funding model for Finnish higher education for the funding period (2025-28). The brief reviews the key challenges facing higher education in Finland and national policy priorities, compares Finland’s model of funding higher education institutions (HEIs) with models in OECD systems sharing similar characteristics to Finland’s and reviews policy options – both within and outside of the funding model – to support achievement of key policy objectives.

This report analyses the career options of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. It identifies policies and practices to promote diverse careers, flexible career trajectories and ultimately better-quality research and innovation across different economic and social sectors. The report presents a conceptual framework and synthesis of available data and policy information. It offers recommendations and a set of policy options to: promote engagement and interaction with employers outside academia; provide researchers with experience and skills for diverse careers; encourage valorisation of diverse career options; support career development and guidance for researchers; promote inter-sectoral mobility; and, reconfigure and support careers in academia.

This report presents the conceptual foundations of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), now in its eighth cycle of comprehensive and rigorous international surveys of student knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies. As in previous cycles, the 2022 PISA assessment covered reading, mathematics and science, with a major focus on mathematics, plus an evaluation of students’ creative thinking and financial literacy skills. This publication includes the frameworks for assessing mathematics, financial literacy and creative thinking. These chapters outline the content knowledge and skills that students need to acquire in each domain, how each domain is assessed, and the contexts in which this knowledge and these skills are applied. The publication also presents the frameworks for the various questionnaires distributed to students, school principals, parents and teachers, including a new Global Crisis Module (GCM) for students and school principals. It concludes with the framework for the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) familiarity questionnaire distributed to students.

Measuring innovation in education and understanding its drivers and obstacles is essential to improve the quality of the education sector – and of specific educational establishments. Are pedagogical and administrative practices changing in the expected direction? Do educational institution have a positive innovation culture that supports innovation? What are the drivers of innovation that policy makers or institution leaders could influence to achieve the systems’ educational objectives? How much do countries invest in educational research? This book proposes insights and tools to policy makers and education leaders willing to drive change based on data and evidence and new tools and methodologies for education policy makers and institution leaders to answer those questions. Based on the research literature and the long experience of innovation and research surveys, these tools are meant either for a statistical collection or to engage in self-reflection at the institutional level. Three aspects of innovation are covered: educational innovation at the system level, innovation culture within educational institutions, innovation towards equity in education. A questionnaire to measure educational research and experimental development expenditures and implementation and new methodologies to measure certain aspects of educational innovation and educational research based on big data and bibliometrics are also presented.

Digital technologies can be used to support the inclusion of diverse student groups in education in a number of ways including enhancing accessibility of educational content, increasing personalisation and providing distance learning opportunities, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, persistent digital inequalities can undermine digital equity and inclusion and equity and inclusion in education generally, particularly for the most disadvantaged students. This paper explores the themes of digital equity and inclusion, and maps some of the policies and practices adopted in OECD countries for the equitable and inclusive use of digital tools in education. It highlights the importance of inclusive design and implementation of digital technologies, as well as the need for education systems to focus on capacity building such as teacher training, as well as adequate resourcing of digital tools. It discusses advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, and concludes by highlighting research and policy gaps.

This study investigates whether English formal instruction and a number of teaching practices are more strongly associated with reading or listening English skills, using data from a large-scale assessment of English skills among 14- and 15-year-olds in 15 European education systems in 2012. The results indicate that the skill difference between reading and listening skills is positively associated with: more years spent learning English in school; more hours of current English instruction; and even indicators of quality of English instruction. In addition, the use of different teaching materials and the emphasis put on oral skills in the classroom are also associated with the difference between reading and listening skills. These results are based on a methodology developed specifically for this study, and they confirm the usefulness of separately measuring foreign language skills for policy analysis.