Why we should care more about who our future teachers will be

By Noémie Le Donné
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Image credit: Education and Employers, "Drawing the Future"

“What would you like to be when you grow up?” is not only an adult’s favourite icebreaker when speaking with children – it's also a key consideration for policy makers who truly care about students’ futures. This is especially true when the answer to the question is: “I want to be a teacher.”

Faced with teacher shortages, recruitment challenges, and concerns about the social standing of the teaching profession, policy makers need to design strategies to attract more, better-qualified candidates to the teaching profession. But before doing that, they need to know who tomorrow’s teachers might be.

In 2015, the PISA survey asked 15-year-old students the following forward-looking question: “What kind of job do you expect to have when you are about 30 years old?” Our new report, Effective Teacher Policies: Insights from PISA, reveals some enlightening findings.

On average across OECD countries, about 4.4% of 15-year-old students expect to work as teachers. By comparison, the number of teachers in primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education represents about 2.4% of the labour force across OECD countries. This means that the share of students expecting a teaching career is generally larger than the share of working-age people who are actually teaching today.

This suggests that education systems could do more to encourage students to pursue a career in teaching. Teaching’s initial popularity among school-age children is not that surprising considering that the profession, like healthcare, enjoys one clear advantage over other occupations: all 15-year-olds know that this occupation exists. They have all had some contact with teachers, and they have at least a general idea of what they do and what their working conditions are like.

The more an education system is able to raise the skills of its students, the more likely it is to create future generations of highly skilled teachers.

At the same time, about 46% of students in OECD countries expect to pursue a career as some other type of non-teaching professional: high-status jobs that typically require a university degree, such as doctors and lawyers. Yet in many countries, students who expect to work as teachers have poorer mathematics and reading skills than those who expect to work in these other professions.

Interestingly, the skill gap between students who expect a career in teaching and those who expect a career as professionals tends to be larger in low-performing countries. In other words, there seems to be an opportunity for a virtuous cycle: highly skilled teachers are needed to meet the challenge of educating future generations, while also attracting more motivated candidates to the profession. At the same time, the more an education system is able to raise the skills of its students, the more likely it is to create future generations of highly skilled teachers.

School systems often aim to recruit their teachers out of the same pool from which all of the top professionals are recruited. But people who see themselves as candidates for those professions, and are attracted to the working conditions enjoyed by professionals, might not find what they’re looking for in schools that use an overly bureaucratic management structure to direct teachers’ work.

Transforming the work organisation of schools, involving teachers in school decision making and enhancing their leadership responsibilities are at least as important as increasing teacher salaries. Media campaigns to enhance the image of the profession – by highlighting its importance for the nation, its sophistication and complexity, and the intellectual excitement it can generate – can also be a great help.

“What would you like to be when you grow up?” is no throwaway question. The answers are symptomatic of the virtuous or vicious nature of the education cycle in a given system. So what can policy makers do to enter or pursue a virtuous cycle? Our new report on effective teacher policies discusses this and recommends important levers for promoting teaching as a demanding, rewarding and fulfilling profession.


Learn more

• Teaching in Focus #22: Who wants to become a teacher and why?
• Effective Teacher Policies: Insights from PISA

How can technology support teaching and learning more effectively?

By Marc Fuster Rabella
Consultant, Directorate for Education and Skills

Photo credit: John Schnobrich/Unsplash

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, it marked one of the most revolutionary technological developments in human history. Gutenberg’s invention allowed for the universalisation of knowledge and the rapid spread of new ideas. However, whenever an artefact serves to disseminate both good and bad ideas alike, it cannot be considered an absolute benefit.

For better or worse, technology intervenes in most, if not all aspects of our lives. When it comes to the link between education and technology, there are at least two important considerations to make. How can schools and teachers help students improve the outcomes of their use of technology? What are the ways in which technology can support teaching and learning more effectively? We address these and related questions in our latest Trends Shaping Education Spotlight.

The first question revolves around what students should learn in a world that is increasingly influenced by technology. A common response consists in focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). This makes sense from a labour market perspective, considering the current and projected growth of sectors such as biotechnology, computer science and software, renewable energy or medical and personal care. Yet a narrow focus on STEM learning may not be enough.

There are multiple paths to STEM occupations that don’t require qualifications in STEM; and even the most technologically advanced industries require workers with strong mixes of skills, including social and emotional skills, and multilingual and multicultural competencies. Addressing gender-based prejudices and stereotypes is a particularly crucial issue, as these prevent many girls and women from engaging in STEM education and careers.

When thinking about the future of work, it is important to bear in mind that current students might be preparing for jobs that do not even exist yet. OECD projections show that in less than a decade, computers will be capable of performing tasks carried out daily by more than 50% of today’s workforce. We must therefore pay greater attention to life-long learning and rethink the links between education and work, in order to articulate a whole-of-society effort that guarantees access to skilling, up-skilling and re skilling opportunities.

A number of issues related to personal and social development emerge in a heavily digitised world, as well. Technology creates opportunities and risks alike. For example, wider access to information eases learning, but it also enables the spread of low-quality and unreliable information. The use of social media makes it easier to connect with friends at any time, yet it simultaneously exposes a great deal of personal data to unwarranted use, and facilitates more pervasive forms of bullying and harassment.

Students across OECD countries need to develop resilience to these risks. It is important to support their engagement in and motivation towards positive ICT uses, and their development of strong digital skills. Enabling strategies, rather than bans and limitations, is the most effective way for students to deal with risks both at home and at school. Fairness is a key consideration here, as schools might have to compensate for students who do not receive such support at home.

Apart from education on using technology, how can education systems harness technology to improve teaching and learning? Adaptive learning systems are one example of impressive advances in so-called “edTech” applications. Increasingly reliant on big data, these systems support students in managing their own learning experiences with more autonomy, and free up time for teachers to better plan, prepare and develop classroom activities.

Another example is the use of increasingly sophisticated virtual environments such as games, simulations and virtual worlds. These provide low-cost opportunities for more situated and collaborative learning, sometimes where they did not exist before – think of home-schooled children accessing virtual labs through virtual reality devices.

Despite the inherent potential of such technologies, putting them to work depends on finding the right interplay among the different elements that influence student learning. These include learning goals, available technologies, students’ prior knowledge and learning needs, and the context in which teaching and learning develop.

In this respect, different forms of ICT use, digital skills and attitudes towards technology are as important for students as they are for teachers. Using technology effectively in the classroom requires teachers to have access to training, practice and peer collaboration, in order for them to coherently integrate  integrate content, technological and pedagogical knowledge.

Ultimately, technology reflects and even amplifies what happens in everyday life – whether  in our personal, professional or civic capacities. Positive technology use is built on skilled users who anchor their practice in ethical attitudes and behaviours, and education has a lot to say about that. As the technology philosopher Jaron Lanier says about the printing press, “people, not machines, made the Renaissance”.

Learn more: 

• Trends Shaping Education Spotlight 15
• OECD Skills Outlook 2017
• Computers and the Future of Skill Demand 
• Teaching for the Future: Effective Practices to Transform Education
• Teachers as Designers of Learning Environments

Improving learning spaces by empowering school users

By Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

During a trip to Finland in the middle of winter, I visited a school where all the students left their snow boots in the school lobby and walked around in their socks for the rest of the day. I had a similar experience in New Zealand, where barefoot students are a common sight in warmer months. In each case, the students clearly felt as comfortable in their schools as they would in their living rooms. While fundamental, we need to do more than just ensure the comfort and safety of students in schools. The bigger challenge is to foster an effective learning environment that supports students in building the portfolio of knowledge and skills they will need to thrive in the 21st century.

When visiting schools all over the world, I’ve witnessed many instances of students and teachers re-arranging their physical environment – both inside and outside school buildings – to suit their learning objectives and teaching practices. In some cases, the school building and its grounds had clearly been designed to be responsive to changing user requirements. Too often, though, it was apparent that the needs of students, teachers, staff and school leaders were simply an afterthought.

The potential impact of user-centred design is substantial if we pause to consider that by the time students in OECD countries reach 15 years-old, they will have spent on average over 7,500 hours inside a school building. The same holds true for their teachers and school leaders who are regularly obliged to adapt to existing layouts in schools, rather than being empowered to actively shape them.

We often overlook the importance of building and renovating physical learning spaces in a way that positively supports –  rather than actively impedes – the introduction of innovative pedagogy, curricula and technologies.

Schools are more than just places of learning for children – they are workplaces, too.

Schools are more than just places of learning for children – they are workplaces, too. The adults who breathe life into a school building and have chosen to spend their careers building a vibrant learning community within its walls are under increasing pressure to meet ever-rising expectations from parents, school districts and society at large. Responding adequately will require the teaching profession to devote more time to peer-learning, mentoring and professional development, which is largely conducted on-site and grounded in their daily work. So school buildings also need to offer appropriate spaces for teachers to collaborate, learn and innovate together in multidisciplinary teams – yet they too often fail to meet this expectation.

Today, we are pleased to launch the OECD School User Survey: Improving learning spaces together, which gives voice to those who use schools on a daily basis. This unique OECD tool consists of three self-assessment questionnaires designed for students, teachers and school leaders. They can be used to collect and triangulate evidence on the actual use of learning spaces, and to solicit user perspectives, as well.

The OECD School User Survey focuses on five areas related to the learning spaces in schools:

• Physical environment and its use
• Use of technology
• Comfort and safety
• Perceptions of learning environments
• Overall satisfaction with the school facilities

Survey results can be used at the school level to support continuous improvement and the intelligent use or refurbishment of educational facilities. They can provide deeper insights into how physical learning environments shape teaching practices and affect students’ learning outcomes and well-being. They can also contribute to monitoring the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goal (4.1.a.) on the quality of the physical learning environment in schools.

We hope that this tool will be useful to school leaders, teachers, local authorities, school facilities managers and national governments around the world as they seek to maximise the educational impact of their investments in building and refurbishing physical learning environments. By making this survey tool freely available in the public domain, we would like to encourage schools around the world to experiment with, learn from and share their survey results with their peers.

Our next step will be to explore options for making the OECD School User Survey available online in multilingual versions. For ultimately, our goal is not just to make better use of limited education resources and existing school buildings – it is to improve the learning outcomes and well-being of students everywhere.

Learn more:

• OECD School User Survey: Improving learning spaces together

What can PISA tell us about teacher policies?

By Francesco Avvisati
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Photo credit: Jeffrey Hamilton/Unsplash

Teachers are the most important resource in today’s schools. Teacher salaries and training represent the greatest share of education spending in every country, and for good reason: students who are taught by the best teachers have much higher chances of succeeding in learning and life. It should come as no surprise, then, that policy makers across the world have focused greater attention on teaching, as they strive to improve student learning and make education more equitable and inclusive.

A new report published today aims to guide policy-makers in their quest for effective teacher policies by analysing data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other OECD databases. Our report, Effective Teacher Policies: Insights from PISA, examines how the best-performing countries select, develop, evaluate and compensate teachers; how teacher sorting across schools affects the equity of education systems; and how countries can attract and retain talented candidates to the teaching profession.

It is entirely within our means to attract, retain and develop high-quality teachers.

The report shows that not all students have equal access to high-quality teaching, and that this inequality can explain much of the learning gaps observed between the most advantaged and disadvantaged students – both within and across countries. (See this month’s PISA in Focus for more.) In about half of the 69 countries and economies examined, teachers in schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students tend to have lower qualifications or credentials than teachers in the most advantaged schools. And in education systems where this is observed – including France, Italy, the Netherlands and the public school system in the United States – the gap in student performance related to socio-economic status tends to be wider than in countries such as Canada, Finland, Japan, or Korea, where teacher qualifications, credentials and experience are more balanced across schools.

The report also finds that in some countries, teachers truly are seen as lifelong learners, who constantly seek to improve their practice with support from principals and colleagues. High-performing countries such as Australia and Singapore help teachers bridge between theory and practice with a mandatory and extended period of practical classroom training at the start of their career. These countries cultivate a habit of inquiry and reflection throughout teachers’ careers, as well – for example, through school workshops to address major issues or by using teacher evaluation instruments to develop a learning plan for all teachers.

And contrary to popular belief, our report shows that high-performing systems do not enjoy a natural privilege simply due to a traditional respect for teachers. These systems have also developed a high-quality teaching force through deliberate policy choices that were carefully implemented over time. There is, in other words, no room to feel complacent or resigned about the education system of any country. As our report shows, it is entirely within our means to attract, retain and develop high-quality teachers, and to deploy the best teachers where the challenges are greatest, thereby redressing the inequities that limit opportunities for so many students.


Learn more:

• Effective Teacher Policies: Insights from PISA
• PISA in Focus no. 85: In which countries do the most highly qualified and experienced teachers teach in the most difficult schools? 

Are Norwegian universities preparing students for a changing labour market?

By Dirk Van Damme 
Head of the Skills Beyond School Division,  Directorate for Education and Skills

Photo credit: Mikael Kristenson/Unsplash

In many countries, there are increasing concerns about the gap between the qualifications and skills that universities deliver, and those that the labour market demands. Employers are becoming especially vocal about this, claiming that they cannot find graduates with the skills sets they need. And as globalisation and digitalisation continue to transform economies, we can expect to see profound changes in the skills that employers demand in the future. In other words, the skills shortages of today might not be the same as those of tomorrow.

Ensuring that the supply of skills more or less matches demand – both today and tomorrow – is no easy undertaking. Higher education has the very difficult task of equipping students with generic and domain-specific knowledge and skills that last for a lifetime. This is almost impossible. Simplistic answers will not do, and past attempts at fine-grained “manpower planning” (i.e., estimating the demand for specific qualifications in the future and conditioning entry into studies accordingly) have often ended in failure. People often respond to different opportunities or experience life-events that change the course of their professional paths, sometimes by taking jobs that are not related to their study. And jobs demand often changes significantly, even within the four or five years that the study requires.

Consequently, higher education institutions in Norway and other countries seem to take a very relaxed attitude to labour market demands, and tend to maintain that giving students the choice to enrol in a given programme of study is still the best guarantee of motivation and success. They expect graduates to be able to cope with change and uncertainty throughout their lifetimes, whatever their field of study. In these countries, freedom of choice remains an important social value – but is this approach sufficient.

Today, we published Higher Education in Norway: Labour Market Relevance and Outcomes, a review of the Norwegian system’s capacity to link skills demand and supply. In many aspects, the situation in Norway is very positive. Indeed, high graduate employment rates and relatively high earnings in a booming economy suggest that there are almost no problems to worry about. But high employment rates and a compressed wage structure, in which it is difficult to measure returns on investment, can hide real problems. Good economic fortune can easily lead to complacency, whereas it should be seen as an opportunity to prepare for the future. And the Norwegian government knows that its future world will be different: less dependent on oil, more dependent on technology and more open to the world. Are the skills that university graduates attain the right ones to prepare the country for this transition?

The chart above displays the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving proficiency of Norwegian higher education graduates across a number of fields of study, as measured in the OECD Survey of Adult Skills in 2012. It indicates that there are important differences in graduates’ skills across different fields of study and the variation in these foundation skills is high. Yet these differences are not mirrored in labour market success. Health, welfare and education professionals seem to have relatively low levels of foundation skills, but they enjoy some of the best employment rates and most stable earnings of all graduates, thanks to the continuous demand for skilled labour in their respective sectors. In contrast, graduates from the arts and the humanities have relatively high skill levels, but relatively weak labour market outcomes. Compared to graduates in other fields of study, arts and humanities graduates have a harder time finding jobs that make full use of the knowledge and skills they developed in higher education.

Our report suggests various measures and strategies to strengthen labour market relevance and outcomes of higher education in Norway: for example, by more directly connecting studies to the world of work, strengthening cooperation between institutions and social partners, or improving labour market information and career guidance systems. But a more profound reflection is needed to ensure that the country’s higher education system delivers the skills and qualifications needed in the economy and society of the future. Norwegian universities still place a very high value on domain- and discipline-specific knowledge. But Norwegian graduates will need much deeper and broader transversal skills (cognitive, non-cognitive, social and emotional) to deal with uncertainty and change, and to perform future jobs.

Today, there is no clear consensus view about the role of higher education in developing the skills outside the traditional discipline-specific ones. But it is clear that universities, governments and social partners in Norway have a shared responsibility to actively improve the labour market relevance of higher education.


Read more:
Higher Education in Norway: Labour Market Relevance and Outcomes