While most 15-year-old students spend part of their after-school time doing homework, the amount of time they spend on it shrank between 2003 and 2012. Socio-economically advantaged students and students who attend socio-economically advantaged schools tend to spend more time doing homework....

Most students think that what they learned in school is useful for them or their future. Students’ attitudes towards school are associated with their reading skills. Students who report that the climate at their school is conducive to learning tend to have more positive attitudes towards school.

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...

Countries vary in the way they use marks, but they all tend to reward the mastery of skills and attitudes that promote learning. Teachers tend to give girls and socio-economically advantaged students better school marks, even if they don’t have better performance and attitudes than boys and...

The quantity and quality of resources available to schools improved significantly between 2003 and 2012, on average across OECD countries. Greater financial investments in education provided schools with better teaching staff, instructional materials and physical infrastructure. The learning...

Children spend about a third of their waking hours in school during most weeks in the year. Thus, schools have a significant impact on children’s quality of life – including their relationships with peers and adults, and their dispositions towards learning and life more generally....

The percentage of students who expect to complete university is highest in Korea (80%) and lowest in Latvia (25%). Many high-performing students do not expect to go to university, representing potentially lost talent to an economy and society while many low-performing students think they will...

School systems handle the challenges of diverse student populations in different ways. Some countries have non-selective and comprehensive school systems that seek to provide all students with similar opportunities, leaving it to individual schools and teachers to meet the particular needs of...

It’s elementary: students benefit from pre-primary education. The OECD’s PISA 2009 results show that in practically all OECD countries 15-year-old students who had attended some pre-primary school outperformed students who had not. In fact, the difference between students who had attended...