2021 OECD Education webinars

Ask an expert: How important are children’s relationships with family and peers in the digital age?

Good relationships are good for people.

But with the nature of families and friendships changing, experts are exploring a number of questions about what has changed and what hasn’t.

How do children socialise and play together in the modern age?

How have relationships with parents and peers changed in a digital world?

What are the implications for teaching and learning?

In our seventh “Ask an expert” webinar we discuss these issues and more.

Panellists:
– Heidi Lesscher, Assistant Professor, Utrecht University, Netherlands
– Andra Siibak, Professor of Media Studies and Program Director of media and communication doctoral program, University of Tartu, Estonia

Moderators: Francesca Gottschalk and Jordan Hill, OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

To play or to learn? Five-year-olds tell us what matters most

The OECD International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study asked over 4 500 five-year-olds what they liked best about their kindergarten or school. Almost all children gave very specific answers, and many explained the reasoning behind their views.

In this webinar, a panel of international experts joins us to understand what we can learn from these children and how this can help education systems provide the best possible early learning environments.

Key questions we address are:

-Why should education leaders and practitioners listen to children’s views, including children in the early years?
-What is the role of play in early cognitive and social-emotional development?
-Is there a trade-off between intentional teaching and learning, and unstructured play?

Speakers include:

– Dr Cristina Stringher, Early Childhood Research, INVALSI
– Dr Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Chair of Learning Through Play, LEGO Foundation
– Dr Roberta Golinkoff, School of Education, University of Delaware
– Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills
– Moderated by Alison Burke, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Supporting change in education: How countries are using indicators to monitor the progress of reforms

Evidence is key in policy making. Countries across the OECD are increasingly recognising that no new education policy will work unless it is based on clear and robust evidence that demonstrates how and why the policy is needed.

A big part of establishing that evidence base is the selecting and developing of appropriate indicators, which can be used to monitor how well the policy is working.

Building on the OECD Education Policy Implementation framework, the OECD has published a paper that discusses the importance of such indicators in the implementation process, as well as highlighting some of their limitations. The OECD is also publishing related reports from Austria and Estonia on how they are developing their education data and monitoring systems.

Join us for a discussion on the research and on how countries such as Austria, Denmark and Estonia select, develop and use indicators as part of their education reforms and monitoring systems. The discussion will provide insights to policy makers, assess the use and misuse of indicators in education, and guide future use of indicators in education policy implementation.

Speakers include:

– Pierre Gouëdard, Policy Analyst, Policy Advice and Implementation Division, OECD
– Marie-Hélène Doumet, Senior Analyst, Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, OECD
– Tatjana Kiilo, Head of Analysis Department of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research
– Rasmus Schulte Pallesen, Special Advisor to the Danish Agency for IT and Learning
– Sebastian Holler, Project Manager at the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research
– Beatriz Pont, Senior Analyst, Policy Advice and Implementation Division, OECD

International evidence on how education fared during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns

A forum convened by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the OECD

A number of high-quality studies on the experience of learning during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns (March-June 2020) have now been released, addressing how school children and youth were educated during this period, but also what effect it had on their well-being and learning outcomes.

This joint AERA-OECD forum discusses Schooling During a Pandemic, an OECD report providing the first synthesis of these statistical studies, coming mainly from France, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

What has been the effect of the health crisis on the time spent on learning and achievement gaps? And what do we know about how it affected different groups of students?

In this international forum moderated by Felice J. Levine, Executive Director of AERA, you will hear discussion on these questions and more.

Speakers

Overview of Schooling During a Pandemic
– William Thorn, former Senior Analyst at OECD
– Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, Deputy Head of Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, OECD

Lessons Learned – Country Perspectives
– Birgitta Rabe, Professor, University of Essex, United Kingdom
– Fabienne Rosenwald, Director for Evaluation and Foresight, Ministry of Education, France

Commentator and Collective Conversation
– Rukmini Banerji, CEO, Pratham Education Foundation, India
– Greg Duncan, Distinguished Professor, UC Irvine, United States

Teaching for Climate Action: Schools Shaping the Future
(Live from COP26 in Glasgow)

The education sector has a unique role to play in building a greener 21st century.

The OECD, UNESCO and Education International have launched a joint initiative to gather teaching expertise on what makes a difference in empowering students for climate action.

This event, live from COP26 in Glasgow, presents the initial insights that have emerged and highlights the future directions that climate action in education can take.

The panel includes:

– Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO
– Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills
– Haldis Holst, Deputy General Secretary, Education International
– Larry Flanagan, General Secretary, Educational Institute of Scotland

Moderated by Rodolfo Lacy, OECD Director for the Environment.

How can governments and teachers work together to make education more equitable, resilient and student-centred?

The success of any reform in education almost always relies on the buy-in from teachers. Too often are big changes implemented from above without first drawing upon the experience and expertise of teachers working in schools. At the same time, classrooms are becoming more diverse places where students from various backgrounds share their learning experiences, meaning that teachers often act as the first responders to large demographic shifts in society. This makes the need to involve them in the reform process more urgent than ever.

Through consultations with governments and teacher unions, the OECD has identified three key needs that countries should keep in mind when seeking to improve their education systems:

• the need to redefine educational success;
• the need to support the whole child;
• and the need to redefine equity in education.

These needs were the focus of discussions of the 2021 edition of the International Summit of the Teaching Profession, hosted by the United States and organised in collaboration with the OECD and Education International.

In this webinar, Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, will present key OECD data on these topics and discuss how the teaching profession and governments can work together to refit education for the 21st century.

This will be followed by a presentation on the OECD’s latest paper on inclusive teaching, delivered by Ottavia Brussino, Analyst in the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills.

Ask an expert: What pressures do children feel in the 21st century and what can we do about it?

Childhood has changed significantly over recent decades. On a number of measures children’s lives have clearly improved: better public safety and support for their physical and emotional well-being.

At the same time, children are reporting more stress and less sleep. Children in the 21st century are reporting more anxiety, including from increased pressure to excel in an ever more competitive educational environment. And over the last almost 30 years, socially prescribed expectations for perfection have increased, exacerbated by social media and the success culture that drives it.

These issues beg the questions: What are the main sources of stress and pressure for children in the 21st century? Are these different than before, and have they been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? And what can we, parents, teachers, policy makers and communities, do to help?

Watch our sixth “Ask an expert” webinar where we discuss these issues and more.

The experts:

– Livia Tomova, Henslow Research Fellow, Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge
– Rachel Rodgers, Associate Professor of Applied Psychology at Northeastern University, and Director of the Applied Psychology Program for Appearance and Eating Research (APPEAR)
– Adrian Meier, Assistant Professor for Communication Science, Friedrich Alexander University (FAU)

Moderators: Tracey Burns and Francesca Gottschalk, OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

Teaching, learning and assessing 21st century skills in education: Thailand’s experience

Concerned about improving educational outcomes and ongoing challenges of globalisation and labour market demands, Thailand has recently made two critical education reforms.

The country has developed a new competency-based curriculum and created the independent agency, Equitable Education Fund (EEF), to develop effective policy reforms from national to classroom levels to support 21st century skills in Thailand.

Thailand’s Ministry of Education and EEF built partnerships with the OECD project on creativity and critical thinking and others and engaged in a programme of work, not just to make changes in individual schools but to create fundamental change at the system level.

Join us to explore and draw lessons from the Thai experience as we look at how countries have moved from idea to implementation in fostering and assessing creativity and critical thinking.

Speakers include:

– Ms. Treenuch Thienthong, Minister of Education, Thailand
– Dr. Sirikorn Maneerin, Advisor to Minister of Education, Thailand
– Prof. Vicharn Panich, Advisor to the Board of EEF
– Dr. Kraiyos Patrawart, Deputy Managing Director, EEF
– Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills

Moderated by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, Senior Analyst and Deputy Head of Division at the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Data-driven decisions in education: Lessons from Kazakhstan

For the last 10 years, Kazakhstan’s IAC (Information Analytic Centre) has been at the centre of the country’s education reform journey.

By taking an evidence-first approach to policy making, IAC has played a key role in developing the education system through rigorous data collection, analysis, and then careful implementation.

In addition to its national activities, IAC has established itself globally by partnering with the OECD to enable Kazakhstani participation in international surveys such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS).

What can other countries learn from Kazakhstan’s method? What were the challenges faced? And what are the plans for the future?

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director of Education and Skills, discusses this unique education reform journey with a panel of experts from all levels of the education system in Kazakhstan.

Speakers include:

– Askhat Aimagambetov, Minister of Education Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan
– Madina Tynybayeva, President, Information Analytic Centre, Kazakhstan
– Aida Sagintayeva, Dean, Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education

Were socio-economically advantaged students better equipped to deal with learning during COVID?

According to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), most students in 2018 responded that they believe in their ability to get through a difficult situation and are motivated to learn as much as possible.

But socio-economically disadvantaged students exhibit less of these beliefs and dispositions.

This may have serious implications for the unequal distribution of learning losses during the pandemic, meaning that poorer students may have been left behind to an even greater degree than we thought.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, presents a new analysis of PISA 2018 data and discusses what it can tell us about how prepared students across the world were for the hardships of learning during the COVID-19 crisis.

How can curriculum reform contribute to educational recovery in Scotland and elsewhere?

The recovery of education systems from COVID-19 is vital to the future social and economic health of societies.

Based on their work during the pandemic, the OECD and Education International have jointly established ten principles to contribute to the debate about how education systems can recover and reach greater levels of quality and equity.

One aspect is about rethinking curriculum design and delivery.

This webinar explores how Scotland will build on its recent curriculum reform in the context of the recovery, and adapt it to address equity challenges.

The panel:

• Shirley-Anne Somerville, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, Scotland
• Larry Flanagan, General Secretary, Educational Institute of Scotland
• Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills
• Susan Hopgood, President of Education International

Moderated by Tony Mackay, President of the National Centre on Education and the Economy in the United States.

How can teachers get the best out of their students? Insights from TALIS 2018

Developing, maintaining and promoting a good professional teaching workforce is imperative for education systems around the world.

However, in compulsory schooling, teachers and principals face a range of challenges at each level of education, some unique to the level, others more broadly experienced throughout school – but all can have an effect on their students.

What are some of the educational challenges unique to each education level? What are the factors that could explain differences in the levels of professionalism across education levels?

Join us for a webinar where Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, will present data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 findings, looking specifically at primary and upper secondary education.

The state of education around the world: Findings from Education at a Glance 2021

On 16 September, the OECD releases its 2021 edition of Education at a Glance, the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world.

It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD countries and partner economies, looking at everything from the organisation of schools and schooling to the financial resources invested in education institutions.

The 2021 edition of Education at a Glance has a focus on equity in education, offering an assessment of where OECD and partner countries stand in providing equal access to quality education at all levels.

This year’s edition is also accompanied by a spotlight on the impact of COVID-19 in education.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, presents the findings from Education at a Glance 2021, discusses how education systems are faring during the pandemic and takes your questions!

Ask an expert: How can we encourage an active and ethical digital generation?

Helping students become active and ethical participants in a complex, digitally-mediated world is key to ensuring the next generation’s success.

This means equipping children with the skills and competencies to actively, responsibly and positively engage in communities both on line and off line.

But what skills do children need to do that? How can we balance digital opportunities with risks? And importantly, how can education help?

In our fifth “Ask an expert” webinar we discuss children as digital citizens and how they can be empowered as agents of change with:

– Professor Sonia Livingstone, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics (London, UK)
– Andy Demeulenaere, Coordinator of Mediawijs, Flemish Knowledge Centre on Digital and Media Literacy (Brussels, Belgium)
– Tracey Burns, Senior Analyst, OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

Moderator: Francesca Gottschalk, OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

Mesurer l’impact du COVID-19 sur l’enseignement et la formation professionnels

Les fermetures généralisées d’institutions éducatives ont fait la une des journaux à travers le monde pendant la pandémie, avec plus d’un milliard d’élèves confrontés à des perturbations dans leur scolarité.

Mais ce qui n’a pas fait la une des journaux est la perturbation causée au secteur de l’enseignement et de la formation professionnels (EFP).

L’EFP a été confronté à des défis particuliers pendant la crise, notamment le fait que les environnements numériques d’apprentissage sur lesquels la plupart des institutions éducatives ont dû s’appuyer pendant leurs fermetures ne fonctionnent pas aussi bien pour l’enseignement pratique – une composante essentielle de l’EFP – comme ils le font pour l’enseignement plus académique.

L’OCDE a collecté des statistiques comparatives sur un certain nombre de systèmes éducatifs pour suivre les évolutions tout au long de la pandémie, y compris l’impact sur le secteur de l’EFP.

Regardez pour en savoir plus sur les résultats de ces données et sur la situation du secteur de l’EFP en ces temps difficiles.

Avec la participation de :

El Iza Mohamedou, Chef du Centre de l’OCDE pour les compétences
Florent Stora, Conseiller diplomatique à la représentation permanente de la France auprès de l’OCDE
Christophe Bondroit, Responsable pédagogique chez IFAPME, Belgique
Éric Charbonnier, Analyste à la Direction d’éducation et des compétences chez l’OCDE

Climate action: The role for education

Transforming how our next generation thinks about the environment requires profound changes in teaching and learning. Research shows that teachers are committed to teaching about climate change and sustainability, but too often are not provided with the training, tools, time, professional autonomy or support they need to do so effectively.

Since teachers lie at the heart of any change in education, including education on the climate, the OECD, UNESCO and Education International are launching a joint initiative to gather teaching expertise on what makes a difference in empowering students for climate action, and develop a mentoring network to help teachers learn from each other as well as from leaders in the field.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, Susan Hopgood, President of Education International, Vibeke Jensen, UNESCO’s Director of Peace and Sustainable Development, and key stakeholders from across the international education community launch this collaborative initiative.

The webinar focuses on the unique role that the education sector can play in building a greener 21st century.

Measuring COVID-19’s impact on vocational education and training

Widespread school closures made headlines across the world during the pandemic, with over 1 billion of students experiencing disruptions to their schooling. The vocational education and training (VET) sector has faced particular challenges during the crisis, most notably the fact that the digital learning environments that most education institutions had to rely on during closures don’t work as well for practice-oriented learning – a core component of VET instruction – as they do for academic learning.

The OECD has collected comparative statistics and policy information across a number of education systems to track developments throughout the pandemic, including the impact on the vocational education and training sector. Join us to learn more about the results of this analysis and where the VET sector finds itself in these difficult times.

We hear from:

– Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills
– El Iza Mohamedou, Head of the OECD Centre for Skills
– Jessica Winnall, Deputy Executive Director, National Careers Institute, Australia
– Kristin Mathilde Drahus, Adviser, Department of Statistics and Data Management, Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training

How can we support meaningful interactions in early childhood education and care?

Children’s learning, development and well-being are directly influenced by their daily interactions with other children, adults, their families and the environment. This interactive process is known as “process quality”, and leads to a key question: Which policies set the best conditions for children to experience high-quality interactions in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings?

Join us as we present findings from the latest edition of the OECD Starting Strong project. Co-hosted by the Bernard van Leer Foundation and ISSA, this launch webinar will look at five main policy levers and their effect on process quality, focusing particularly on curriculum and pedagogy, and workforce development.

Speakers include:

– Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills
– Henriette Heimgaertner, Co-founder & former Managing Director of the Berlin Early Childhood Institute for Quality Development
– Prof. Dr. Michel Vandenbroeck, Head of the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University

Moderator:

Dr. Mihaela Ionescu, Program Director at ISSA – the International Step by Step Association

Thinking about the future: How teenage attitudes towards careers are connected to employment in later life

How can schools be confident that students are well prepared to enter the world of work?

With concerns over youth unemployment growing, the OECD is undertaking an unprecedented analysis of national longitudinal datasets that explore the relationship between teenagers’ attitudes towards their future career and their actual employment outcomes as young adults.

In this webinar, co-sponsored by the International Centre for Career Development and Public Policy (ICCDPP), we look at young people’s thoughts about employment and what they tell us about better employment outcomes.

Key questions include: Does it matter if a teenager is uncertain about their career plans or struggles to see the relevance of their education to later employment? How can career advisors encourage and enable career-minded thinking? What is the wider importance of research in enhancing career guidance?

We hear from:

– Sareena Hopkins, ICCDPP Board member and Executive Director of the Canadian Career Development Foundation
– Stephen Logan, Deputy Headteacher, Malet Lambert School, Hull, United Kingdom
– Anthony Mann, Senior Policy Analyst, OECD
– Moderated by Catalina Covacevich, Analyst, OECD

Ask an expert: How can we help children develop their digital skills?

Digital skills are an essential component to life in the 21st century. But what do we mean by digital skills? How can schools and families work together to promote digital literacy in all children, even the most disadvantaged? And how can digital skills be leveraged to empower children not only in virtual spaces, but also in real life?

In our fourth “Ask an expert” webinar we discuss these issues and more.

With a panel of international experts we will discuss the important role of education in developing digital skills, digital literacy and media literacy.

We hear from:

– Ola Erstad, Professor at the Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway
– Ellen Helsper, Professor of Socio-Digital Inequalities, Media and Communications Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom
– Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts/HabiloMédias, Canada

Moderators: Tracey Burns and Francesca Gottschalk, OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

Sharing, caring, daring: Social-emotional development at age five

Social-emotional skills, such as curiosity and empathy, support early cognitive development as well as affecting long-term outcomes like income and mental health.

New data from the OECD International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS) show gender and socio-economic gaps in children’s early social-emotional skills development.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, and Rowena Phair, Project Leader of IELS, present the key findings of our latest publication Sharing, caring, daring: Social-emotional development at age five.

How can education recover from the pandemic effectively and equitably?

The recovery of education systems from COVID is vital to the future social and economic health of societies.

Based on their work during the pandemic, the OECD and Education International have jointly established ten principles which are intended to contribute to the debate about how education systems can recover and reach greater levels of quality and equity.

These principles are intended to encourage a greater level of collaboration between education authorities and the teaching profession in achieving these goals, and to contribute to a framework for international co-operation and peer learning.

To discuss how to implement these aims, we hear from:

– Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills
– Susan Hopgood, President of Education International
– Anna Ekström, Minister of Education, Sweden
– Johanna Jaara Astrand, President of Lärarförbundet (the Swedish Teachers’ Union), Sweden

Moderated by Tony Mackay, President of the National Centre on Education and the Economy in the United States.

Ask an expert: Why play is so important for child learning and development

Play is undeniably an essential part of childhood. It is so important that the right to play is enshrined in the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child. But why is play so important? How does it affect child learning, well-being and development? And how has play changed in the digital age?

Join us for our third “ask an expert” webinar. With a panel of international experts, we will discuss the serious side of play. We will explore the important role play and risk-taking has in children’s lives, and how digital play is changing the game.

We will hear from:

– Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, Professor, Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education, Norway
– Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Chair of Learning Through Play, LEGO Foundation, Denmark
– Benoit Bediou, Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Psychology, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Moderated by:

Tracey Burns and Francesca Gottschalk, OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

Embedding creativity in education: Ireland’s whole-of-government approach

Recognising the value of creativity to young people’s lives and wellbeing, the all-of-government Creative Ireland Programme, through its Creative Youth Plan, champions the importance of taking a whole-system approach to embedding creativity in education.

Join us to explore and draw lessons from the Irish experience as we look at how countries have moved from idea to implementation in fostering and assessing creativity and critical thinking. 

Moderated by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, Senior Analyst and Deputy Head of Division at the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, with:

– Tania Banotti, Director of the Creative Ireland Programme
– Gary Ó Donnchadha, Deputy Chief Inspector, Department of Education, Ireland
– Tomás Ó Ruairc, Director of the Teaching Council, Ireland
– Di Fisher-Naylor, Director of Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) foundation

Taking place in the lead-up to Ireland’s national creative youth conference, this conversation will provide insight on the value of an whole-of-government approach to creativity in education.

Developing literacy skills in a digital world: New findings from PISA

Reading is a far more complex task today than it once was. The Internet has transported the written word from the confines of a few carefully curated books to the phone screens in everyone’s pocket, and accredited publishers are no longer the gatekeepers of what and how we read – today, anyone can publish with almost no constraints.

How can we verify what we read online? What skills are involved in evaluating the trustworthiness of a source and understanding the information provided?

In 2018, PISA addressed reading as its main subject, and the reading framework was devised to include essential reading skills in a digital world, to provide important insights into how 15-year-old students are developing reading skills to navigate the technology-rich 21st century, and how this varies by geography, social background or gender. It also explores what teachers can do to help students navigate ambiguity and manage complexity.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, presents the latest findings from PISA 2018, published in the upcoming report 21st-Century Readers: Developing Literacy Skills in a Digital World.

Rethinking the classroom after COVID-19: Insights and innovations from teachers

Teachers and schools have responded in extraordinarily creative and dedicated ways to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, consistently finding new, often unprecedented solutions that challenge our traditional conceptualisation of teaching and learning.

Some of the changes and innovations that we have seen may last well into the future. The OECD, UNESCO and the Teacher Task Force have been gathering and discussing the new insights that emerged from these difficult times with teachers from all around the world.

Join us for a webinar where we will take stock of the lessons learnt during the pandemic and how we can build back better and even stronger together. OECD Director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher will be joined by Haldis Holst, Deputy General Secretary of Education International, and Borhene Chakroun, UNESCO’s Director for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems, as they discuss with four teachers about their insights on teaching during COVID-19.

The state of school education: One year into the COVID pandemic

In 2020, 1.5 billion students in 188 countries/economies were locked out of their schools. Students everywhere have been faced with schools that are open one day and closed the next, causing massive disruption to their learning.

With the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic still raging, many education systems are still struggling, and the situation is constantly evolving.

The OECD – in collaboration with UNESCO, UNICEF and The World Bank – has been monitoring the situation across countries and collecting data on how each system is responding to the crisis, from school closures and remote learning, to teacher vaccination and gradual returns to in-class instruction.

Join Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, for a webinar to present the findings of a survey of around 30 different education systems and their responses to the pandemic, looking at how strategies varied across countries, whether or not certain strategies were favoured, and what the impact of these strategies was.

The future at five: How do gender stereotypes affect five-year-olds’ ideas about their future?

Many of us will remember being asked at a young age what we wanted to be when we grew up. What answer did we give, and why did we give that answer? What shaped our ideas about the working world? Children’s understanding of which jobs are available is often influenced by what they see the adults in their lives doing, which in turn influences their choices and motivation in school. According to new evidence from the OECD International Early Learning and Child Well-Being Study (IELS), gender norms are evident in what many five-year-olds say about what they want to be when they grow up, leading to imbalanced gender representation in certain fields later on in schooling – and later on in life.

Join us for a webinar on what education systems can do to tackle gender stereotyping in the early years of education. Andreas Schleicher will present the latest data from IELS and what it means for education, followed by a panel discussion with experts working in the field of gender equality.

Speakers include:

• Andreas Schleicher, Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills
• Erin Ganju, Manager Director, Echidna Giving
• Nuria Oliver, Academic Director, Girls and Engineering, and Co-founder and Vice President, ELLIS
• Nick Chambers, Chief Executive, Education and Employers

Moderator:

• Justine Sass, Chief, Section of Education for Inclusion and Gender Equality, UNESCO

What can schools do to develop positive, high-achieving students? Insights from PISA and TALIS

The work of teachers matters in many different ways. Not only do they provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in the labour market, but they also help develop the social-emotional skills that are vital for students’ personal development and for their active citizenship. But how do teachers best achieve this?

By linking 2018 data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) with evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – known as the TALIS-PISA link – a new OECD report identifies the teacher and school factors that matter most for student achievement and social-emotional development. The countries that took part in this joint study are Australia, Argentina, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Georgia, Malta, Turkey and Viet Nam. 

The findings of the report are presented by the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher who is also joined by Brett Wigdortz (Teach First, Teach for All and Tiney) and Dr Vanessa Ogden (Fair Education Alliance and Mulberry Schools Trust) to discuss the implications of the reports findings for policy makers, schools and teachers across the world. The discussion is chaired by Natalie Perera, Chief Executive of the Education Policy Institute.

What will education look like in the future?

Looking ahead and beyond the current pandemic, how do we envisage education changing? The events of the past year have accelerated our increasing familiarity and use of technology and online learning, making us wonder whether our education systems are keeping pace. What new possibilities does this present? And what are the challenges to some of the structures we have in place now, for example in higher education?

And crucially, how do we best prepare our young people for the future, while at the same time ensuring that we have the workforce we need?

This interactive webinar, hosted by the OECD and Education and Employers, outlined four different scenarios describing what education might look like in the future, and discussed what each might mean for students.

The audience also had a chance to comment and tell us which future scenario they think is the most likely.

Speakers:

• Brittany Singh Williams, Global Shaper and Educational Strategist, Jamaica
• Peter Ssenkusu, Principal of Maria Assumpta Nursery and Primary School, and lecturer at Makerere University, Uganda
• Andreas Schleicher, Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills
• Tracey Burns, Senior Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Moderated by Nick Chambers, Chief Executive, Education and Employers, UK

Let schools decide: The Norwegian approach to school improvement

In 2017, the government of Norway introduced new measures to provide schools and municipalities with greater freedom to carry out systematic school improvement based on what the schools themselves believe needs to change.

It is known as the “Competence Development Model”, and the main goal is to promote collective teacher professionalism by giving teachers and other local-level stakeholders more control over funding and teachers’ professional development.

The Model allows schools to decide what their needs are and gives them support to address them, for example by linking schools and universities in order to tailor professional development and generate better teaching and learning.

Other countries can learn from the Norwegian approach if they too are seeking ways to support teacher professional development in decentralised environments.

Hege Nilssen, Head of the Directorate for Education and Training in Norway, Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, and the OECD’s Implementing Education Policies team discuss how this innovative model was designed and implemented, and what other countries can learn from it.