Countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have clear aspirations to strengthen civic participation and increase prosperity for all. A highly skilled and knowledgeable population is critical to achieving these goals, which makes creating and maintaining high quality and equitable education...

This report explores the educational performance and attitudes of males and females during childhood and adolescence. It opens with a general summary of gender differences measured outside of the PISA assessment programme and then considers the knowledge gained about gender-related issues from...

This volume of PISA 2009 results examines how human, financial and material resources, and education policies and practices shape learning outcomes. Following an introduction to PISA and a Reader's Guide explaining how to interpret the data, Chapter 1 presents a summary of features shared by...

In OECD countries, the average class size at the lower secondary level is 23 students, but there are significant differences between countries, ranging from over 32 in Japan and Korea to 19 or below in Estonia, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. Class size, together with...

In most countries and economies, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to perform at higher levels than other students. Socio-economic status explains only part of the performance difference between students who attend urban schools and other students. Schools in urban settings are...

Most students enjoy orderly classrooms for their language-of-instruction lessons. Socio-economically disadvantaged students are less likely to enjoy orderly classrooms than advantaged students. Orderly classrooms – regardless of the school’s overall socio-economic profile – are related to...

The report links the results from the OECD PISA 2000 survey to qualitative evidence on important public policy measures in six countries that performed well in PISA. These measures included strategies for educational reform and innovation; issues of governance and resource allocation; national...

The results of the Survey of Adult Skills confirm that there is a strong link between the level of numeracy performance and the use of these skills in practice. In view of these findings, countries could further encourage the teaching of numeracy-related disciplines in a wider variety of higher...