#upper secondary

by Marie-Helene Doumet Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Career decisions are wrought in complexities. Many students start by looking at their interests, selecting a career in line with their personal affinities or aspirations. They will consider their own self-beliefs in their capacity to perform and succeed in a given career, and then factor in labour market prospects, employment, earnings, and the possibilities to progress in their chosen profession over a lifetime.

But career decisions are not only about students’ choices: they also interact with a number of public policy objectives, such as making education systems more efficient, aligning skills to the demands of the labour market, and helping improve social equity. Some countries have sought to promote certain fields or pathways over others through financial incentives or by opening access. Conversely, other fields impose highly selective admissions processes. As students are confronted with more possibilities, it is essential to ensure that they have the proper guidance to navigate through the wealth of pathways open to them. That will ease the sometimes bumpy transition from education to the labour market.

This 2017 edition of Education at a Glance focuses on fields of study – who studies what across different education pathways . Results show that the most common field of study for tertiary students is business administration and law, whereas the fields of natural sciences, mathematics and statistics or information and communications technology (ICT) are the least attractive. Gender differences in enrolments are striking: 24% of entrants into engineering programmes are women compared to 78% in the field of education. The law of supply and demand determines the employment prospects of tertiary graduates. For example,  although they are among the smallest group of tertiary graduates, ICT graduates enjoy one of the highest employment rates. This signals a shortage of supply in the labour market. Data from a new indicator on the national criteria to apply and enter into tertiary education shows that, as tertiary education expands, some countries have turned towards regulating access to certain fields of study in order to link them more strongly with the needs of the labour market.

However, while educational attainment has been expanding over the past decade, there is no guarantee that everyone will progress smoothly through it. In fact, upper secondary graduation is still a challenge for some. A new indicator on upper secondary completion rates shows that almost one in four upper secondary students does not complete the programme within two years of its theoretical end date – of which most drop out of school entirely.

This is not the only area where equity remains elusive. Education at a Glance dedicates a full chapter to the Sustainable Development Goals, analysing where OECD and partner countries stand in their progress towards achieving “inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Results show that while progress has been made, there is still a long way to go on the road to equity and more inclusion in education.

Want to learn more? Education at a Glance 2017 analyses 28 indicators relating to participation in and progress through education, the financial and human resources invested, and the economic and social outcomes expected across OECD and partner countries.You can access and download the data from the OECD Education at a Glance Database; visualise main results for your country from our Compare Your Country interface ; and better understand the methodology underlying the indicators with the updated OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Indicators.

by Éric Charbonnier and Corinne Heckmann Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education

There’s no denying it: when it comes to education and employment, women are on a roll, all over the world.  As described in the latest issue of the OECD’s new brief series Education Indicators in Focus, the achievement gap between boys and girls has narrowed so much at lower levels of education that the focus of concern is now on the underachievement of boys.  On the 2009 PISA reading assessment, for example, 15-year-old girls outperformed boys in every OECD country, on average by 39 points – the equivalent of one year of school. Young women are also making strong progress in higher education in OECD countries.  In 2000, 51% percent of women could be expected to enter a university-level programme at some point in their lives; today, the number is 66%.  In fact, the proportion of women who hold a university-level qualification now equals or exceeds that of men in 29 of the 32 OECD countries for which data are comparable. This figure is below 50% only in China, Japan, Korea and Turkey. At the same time, still more can be done to improve outcomes for girls and young women in the classroom.  In mathematics, for example, 15-year-old boys tend to perform slightly better than girls in most countries, while science performance is more variable.  And in higher education, women remain under-represented at the most advanced levels.  Across all OECD countries, less than half of advanced research qualifications such as doctorates were awarded to women in 2009.  In Japan and Korea, the figure is only around 30%.  This pattern holds in all countries except Brazil, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal and the United States. In addition, some fields of study are still branded as “masculine” or “feminine”. In 2009, more than 70% of higher education students in the field of education were women, and an average of 75% of the degrees in the fields of health and welfare also went to women. By contrast, in most countries, fewer than 30% of all graduates in the fields of engineering, manufacturing and construction were women. Nonetheless, women’s strides in education have led to improved labour market outcomes for women overall. For instance, the gender gap in employment narrowed from 25 percentage points in 2000 to 21 percentage points in 2009 among those without an upper secondary qualification, and from 19 percentage points in 2000 to 15 percentage points in 2009 among those with an upper secondary qualification. And it’s narrower still among those with a higher education qualification, shrinking from 11 percentage points in 2000 to 9 percentage points in 2009. Increasingly, OECD countries are doing more to address gender gaps – both in education and employment.  For example, in the Czech Republic, Germany and the Slovak Republic, the proportion of women graduating with science degrees grew by more than 10 percentage points between 2000 and 2009.  As a result, these countries are now closer to the OECD average of 40% -- a figure that has remained stable over the past decade. In 2000, the European Union announced a goal to increase the number of university graduates in mathematics, science and technology by at least 15% by 2010, and to reduce the gender imbalance in these subjects. So far, however, progress toward this goal has been marginal. On the employment side, the Nordic countries, Germany and Portugal have instituted policies allowing fathers to receive parental leave and income support so their spouses can remain in the workforce.  In Iceland, Norway and Spain, some firms are required to have at least 40% of their boardroom seats assigned to women. Meanwhile, other companies, such as Deutsche Telekom, have introduced voluntary quotas for women in management and family-friendly practices such as flex-times and tele-working. The bottom line is clear: while girls and women have made strong gains, it’s time to finish the job.  To promote gender equality even further, policymakers should be encouraged to pursue policies to increase mathematics and science performance among girls – as well as reading achievement among boys.  Meanwhile, initiatives to break down gender stereotypes in fields of study and progressive corporate policies can do more to increase women’s employment opportunities.

ENTP: we should do it this way

Group member 1: no, that's wrong! We should do it this way

ENTP: I've read the chapter, it's supposed to be done this way

Other group members: no, ENTP, you're wrong. Let's do it like gm1 said!

ENTP(internally): suit yourself

Group: *tries to do the thing the way gm1 said and fails*

Group: why doesn't this work?

ENTP: well if you d-

Gm2: HEY! I've read in the book that we should do *what ENTP suggested first* instead

Group: omg, that's so smart! Why didn't we think about this before?