Detailed analyses
2.1.4 Educational outcome index
Having compared the performance of countries in terms of the individual outcome indicators, we next combine these indicators in a composite educational outcome index. The outcome index combines the following three outcome indicators: (i) the mean pisa maths score; (ii) the mean pisa reading score; and (iii) the (negative of the) percentage of the variation in pisa maths scores explained by socioeconomic status.22 The index scores are presented in Figure 2.5, while the construction of the index is explained in the notes below the figure. As can be seen:
1 The countries in Eastern Asia (Korea and Japan) outperformed all European countries in 2012 (as well as all others). Their average scores lay around two standard deviations above the mean of the reference group.
2 Korea and Japan were followed by Finland, Canada and Estonia, all of which had average scores that lay around 1.4 standard deviations above the reference mean.
3 Performance was weakest in Bulgaria, Romania, and the Slovak Republic, with average scores that lay around one to two standard deviations below the reference mean.
4 Western European countries did not perform very differently on average from their peers in Northern Europe and Oceania, with scores that lay around half a standard deviation above the reference mean.
18
Although often used as proxies for cognitive skills (Mincer 1970, 1974), the two indicators discussed here could also be seen as measures of output rather than outcome.
19
Having a basic
qualification corresponds to having attained at least upper secondary education (isced 1997 Level 3). For the Netherlands, this means having completed at least
‘havo’ (senior general secondary education),
‘vwo’ (pre-university education) or ‘mbo (senior secondary vocational education) level 2,3 or 4’.
20
Having attained tertiary education corresponds to having completed isced 1997 levels 5a, 5b or 6. For the Netherlands, this means having completed for example a university Bachelor (5a),
We report data for 2013 only because the figures for earlier years are in many cases not comparable with the 2013 figures.
22
To ensure that the index is reasonably up to date, we include only outcome indicators that are available for 2012 and thus exclude the iccs measures. We also exclude attainment levels because they capture the quantity but not the quality of education.
Region Country
0 20 40 60 80 100
Western
Europe Switzerland
Austria Germany Ireland Luxembourg France Netherlands United Kingdom Belgium Northern
Europe
Finland Sweden Norway Denmark Southern
Europe
Cyprus Greece Italy Spain Portugal Malta Central and
Eastern Europe
Slovenia Czech Republic Poland Slovak Republic Croatia Lithuania Estonia Hungary Latvia Bulgaria Romania
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America Canada
United States Eastern
Asia Korea
Japan
Figure 2.3 Percentage of the population of 25 to 34 year-olds with a basic qualification, 2013
Notes: Having a basic qualification corresponds to having attained at least upper secondary education (ISCED 1997 Level 3). Source: Eurostat and OECD online databases.
Region Country
0 20 40 60 80
Western Europe
Ireland Luxembourg United Kingdom France Switzerland Netherlands Belgium Germany Austria Northern
Europe Norway
Sweden Denmark Finland Southern
Europe Cyprus
Spain Greece Portugal Malta Italy Central and
Eastern Europe
Lithuania Estonia Poland Latvia Slovenia Hungary Slovak Republic Bulgaria Czech Republic Croatia Romania
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America
Canada United States Eastern
Asia
Korea Japan
Figure 2.4 Percentage of the population of 25 to 34 year-olds attaining tertiary education, 2013
Notes: Having attained tertiary education corresponds to having completed ISCED 1997 levels 5a, 5b or 6. Source: Eurostat and OECD online databases.
Region Country
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Western Europe
Netherlands Switzerland Ireland Germany United Kingdom Belgium Austria France Luxembourg Northern
Europe Finland
Norway Denmark Sweden Southern
Europe Italy
Spain Portugal Greece
Malta Cyprus
Central and Eastern Europe
Estonia Poland Czech Republic Latvia Slovenia Croatia Lithuania Hungary Slovak Republic Romania Bulgaria
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America
Canada United States Eastern
Asia
Korea Japan
Figure 2.5 Educational outcome index, 2012 (in index scores)
The outcome index is constructed as follows. First, we identify the 24 countries with available outcome data for all sectors: AT, BE, DE, FR, GB, IE, LU, NL, DK, FI, SE, ES, IT, PT, BG, CZ, EE, HU, LT, LV, PL, RO, SI, and SK. We calculate the 2012 means and standard deviations of the three educational outcome indicators for this reference group of 24. We then compute standardised 2012 scores for each of these three indicators by subtracting the mean and dividing by the
5 Central and Eastern European countries and Southern European countries performed worst on average, with scores that lay around a quarter to half a standard deviation below the reference mean.
6 The performance in Central and Eastern Europe was mixed, with a strong performance in Estonia and Poland but a weak performance in Bulgaria and Romania.
2.2 Inputs
Having compared the performance of countries in terms of the various outcome indicators, we now document how much countries invest in terms of educational inputs, such as spending on schools. Which countries are the biggest spenders on education and which countries spend the least, for example? Three comments are in order here. First, at this stage our analysis is purely descriptive and we do not address the possible causal impact of educational inputs on outcomes (we do this in Section 2.4 as part of our analysis of the determinants of our main outcome measure).
Second, a casual inspection of the data revealed that the level of inputs in a country typically does not vary much over time. We therefore limit our presentation of the input indicators to the most recent year for which we have data. And third, we should point out that there are issues with the cross-country comparability of the input data (see the notes to Figures 2.6 to 2.9).
Investment in education relative to national wealth
A straightforward way to assess how much countries invest is to look at total spending on education as a share of national wealth. Figure 2.6 reveals that:
1 Most countries spent between 5% and 7% of their gdp on educational institutions in 2011 (the oecd average was 6%, oecd 2014b).
2 The countries that spent more than 7% are Cyprus, Malta, Denmark, Korea, New Zealand and Norway. The countries that spent less than 5%
are Romania, Bulgaria, the Slovak Republic, Hungary, Italy and Croatia.
Private spending as a share of total expenditure
It is sometimes argued that private spending (as opposed to public spend-ing) increases accountability and introduces incentives for efficient behaviour in schools (Woessmann et al. 2007).23 In 2011, private spending accounted for 16% of all spending on educational institutions on average across oecd members (oecd 2014b).24 Figure 2.7 shows the percentages for the individual countries studied in this volume and reveals a substantial degree of variation:
1 Private spending constituted more than 30% of all spending in Korea, the United States and Japan, but less than 3% in Norway, Finland and Sweden.
23
Parents who pay tuition for their children, for example, may be more inclined to hold schools and teachers accountable than public funding bodies.
In addition to private funding, the private operation of schools is also often mentioned (see Section 2.4).
24
Tertiary institutions were most reliant on private funds (31% of all funds), while primary, secondary and post-secondary institutions were less reliant (8% of all funds).
Region Country
0 2 4 6 8 10
Western
Europe Belgium
United Kingdom Netherlands Ireland France Austria Switzerland Germany Luxembourg Northern
Europe
Denmark Norway Finland Sweden Southern
Europe
Cyprus Malta Spain Portugal Italy Greece Central and
Eastern Europe
Slovenia Lithuania Poland Latvia Estonia Czech Republic Croatia Slovak Republic Hungary Bulgaria Romania
Oceania New Zealand
Australia Northern
America United States Canada Eastern
Asia Korea
Japan
Figure 2.6 Total expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP, 2011
Notes: For Hungary, Norway (in primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education only) and Switzerland (tertiary education only), the data refer to public expenditures only. For Canada, the reference year is 2010. For Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, and the Slovak Republic, the definition differs from that used by other countries. Source: Eurostat and OECD online databases.
Region Country
0 10 20 30 40
Western Europe
United Kingdom Netherlands Germany France Austria Switzerland Ireland Belgium Luxembourg Northern
Europe Denmark
Sweden Finland Norway Southern
Europe Cyprus
Spain Malta Italy Portugal Greece Central and
Eastern Europe
Bulgaria Slovak Republic Poland Czech Republic Latvia Lithuania Slovenia Croatia Estonia Romania Hungary
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America
United States Canada Eastern
Asia
Korea Japan
Figure 2.7 Private expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of total spending, 2011
Notes: For Canada, the reference year is 2010. For Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and the United States, the definition differs from that used by other countries. Source: Eurostat and OECD online databases.
How much is spent per student?
An alternative way of assessing how much countries invest is to look at how much is spent per student. oecd members spent an average of around usd 9,500 per student per year in 2011 (oecd 2014b). Tertiary students receive most (around usd 14,000), followed by secondary students (usd 9,300) and primary students (usd 8,300). Figure 2.8 shows the numbers for the individual countries studied in this volume and reveals considerable variation:
1 Annual spending per student in all three types of education was lowest in Romania and Bulgaria. The countries that spent most were Switzerland and Norway ( primary education), Malta, Switzerland (again) and Luxembourg (secondary education) and the United States and Canada (tertiary education).
Employment in education as a share of the labour force
In addition to spending, the level of investment can also be assessed by looking at the share of the potential labour force that is employed in education (Figure 2.9).
1 In 2013, that share was on average 5% for the countries studied in this volume. In most countries, between 3.5% and 6.5% of the potential labour force was employed in education. The only exceptions were Sweden, the United Kingdom and Denmark (> 6.5%) and Romania, Croatia and Cyprus (< 3.5%).
2.3 Outputs
According to the heuristic model in Chapter 1, inputs are used to produce outputs, which should then result in better outcomes. Having looked at inputs and outcomes, we now turn to educational outputs. We use four indicators for this: the enrolment rate for 15 to 19 year-olds; the entry rate into tertiary education; the upper secondary graduation rate; and the tertiary graduation rate. Since the level of outputs in a country typically does not vary much over time, our presentation of the output indicators is limited to the most recent year for which we have data. We should point out that there are issues with the cross-country comparability of the output data (see the notes to Figures 2.10 to 2.12 and A2.3).
How many 15 to 19 year-olds are enrolled in education?
A first way of assessing the education sector’s output is to look at the proportion of 15 to 19 year-olds who are being educated (the enrolment rate). In 2012, the average enrolment rate of 15 to 19 year-olds in the coun-tries studied in this volume was 85%. Figure 2.10 shows the enrolment rates for individual countries.
Region Country
0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000
Western
Europe Switzerland
Austria Netherlands Belgium Ireland Germany United Kingdom France Luxembourg Northern
Europe
Norway Sweden Denmark Finland Southern
Europe
Cyprus Malta Spain Italy Portugal Greece Central and
Eastern Europe
Slovenia Czech Republic Poland Estonia Slovak Republic Hungary Lithuania Latvia Croatia Bulgaria Romania
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America United States Canada Eastern
Asia Japan
Korea
primary education secondary education tertiary education
Figure 2.8 Annual (public and private) expenditure per student in primary, secondary and tertiary education in purchasing power parity (PPP) US dollars based on full-time equivalents, 2011
Notes: No data for GR, CA (secondary education) and LU (tertiary education)). For LU, data for primary education are not reported due to lack of comparability.
For CA (tertiary education), HU, IE, PO and CH, the data refer to public institutions only. For CA, the reference year is 2010. For BE, HR (primary and secondary education only), DK, IT (secondary education only), NO, PL, SK, SE (primary and secondary education only) and GB, the definition differs from that used by other countries. Sources: Eurostat and OECD online databases (SCP treatment).
Region Country
0 2 4 6 8 10
Western
Europe United Kingdom
Belgium Luxembourg Switzerland Austria Netherlands Germany Ireland France Northern
Europe
Sweden Denmark Norway Finland Southern
Europe
Malta Portugal Greece Italy Spain Cyprus Central and
Eastern Europe
Estonia Latvia Slovenia Lithuania Hungary Poland Czech Republic Slovak Republic Bulgaria Croatia Romania
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America
United States Canada
Eastern
Asia Japan
Korea
Figure 2.9 Employment in education as a percentage of the potential labour force, 2013
Notes: Employment in education as a percentage of the potential labour force was constructed by expressing employment in education (ages 15 to 64) from the Eurostat online database as a percentage of the population (aged 15 to 64) from the US Census Bureau.
Region Country
0 20 40 60 80 100
Western
Europe Ireland
Netherlands Belgium Germany France Switzerland Austria United Kingdom Luxembourg Northern
Europe
Denmark Norway Finland Sweden Southern
Europe
Portugal Spain Greece Italy Malta Cyprus Central and
Eastern Europe
Lithuania Latvia Poland Slovenia Czech Republic Hungary Estonia Slovak Republic Croatia Romania Bulgaria
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America Canada
United States Eastern
Asia Korea
Japan
Figure 2.10 Number of 15-19 year-olds enrolled in education as a percentage of all 15-19 year-olds, 2012
Notes: For Canada, the reference year is 2011. Differences in the coverage of the population data and the enrolment data imply that the enrolment rates may be underestimated for countries such as Luxembourg that are net exporters of students and may be overestimated for those that are net importers.
Source: Eurostat and OECD online databases.
1 In most of them, between 80% and 90% of 15 to 19 year-olds were enrolled in education. Countries where enrolment exceeded 90% are Lithuania, Latvia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Countries with enrolment rates below 80% are Cyprus, Malta, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria and Austria.
How many students are expected to enter tertiary education?
A second way of evaluating the education sector’s output is to look at the extent to which it develops the high-level skills and knowledge needed for a modern knowledge-based economy. An important question in this context is how many students are expected to enter tertiary education. In its most basic form, the ‘entry rate into tertiary education’ captures the percentage of an age cohort that are expected to enter tertiary education over their lifetime. The entry rate for children aged 5, for example, rep-resents the percentage of 5 year-olds who, at some point in their future lives, are expected to enter tertiary education. To estimate the probability of entry at each age level, information on current new entrants and their age distribution is used. In other words, the current age pattern of entry into tertiary education is used as a best estimate of the future behaviour of today’s young adults (oecd 2014b). There are two practical reasons why this estimate may be artificially inflated. First, international students enrolling for the first time in a country are counted as new entrants, regardless of their previous education in other countries. Second, current entry rates of older cohorts may be higher than future entry rates because access to education for young people continuously increases (in the future, fewer people are expected to start tertiary education at a later age). To correct for these biases, we do not count international and older students. In particu-lar, Figure 2.11 shows entry rates into tertiary education of students up to age 25, after excluding international students from the estimation (oecd 2014b). These entry rates indicate the proportion of today’s young people who will have entered a tertiary education programme by the time they have reached the age of 25.25 Because of the limited number of countries for which this variable is available, we also show the same entry rates when including international students in estimation:
1 When looking at the latter, the proportion of young people who will have entered tertiary education before the age of 26 mostly varies between 40% and 60%. In Australia, Poland, Slovenia and Latvia, this proportion is above 60%. In Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, Estonia and France, it is below 40%.26
2 When considering the entry rates after excluding international students from the estimation, Poland and Slovenia are the only countries with entry rates above 60%. Switzerland, Austria and the United Kingdom have entry rates below 40%. The impact of international students on entry rates is most pronounced in three Anglo-Saxon countries (Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand).
25
In tertiary education, a distinction is made between type A and type B programmes. In some countries, a considerable proportion of students enter a type A programme after completing a type B programme.
To avoid over-counting and because type A programmes are most prevalent, we focus on entry rates into tertiary type A education. This corresponds to isced
In Belgium, the entry rate into type B program-mes is higher than the entry rate into type A programmes, and hence counterbalances Belgium’s relatively low type A entry rate.
Region Country
0 20 40 60 80
Western Europe
Netherlands United Kingdom Ireland Germany Austria France
Luxembourg Switzerland Belgium
Northern
Europe Norway
Denmark Finland Sweden Southern
Europe Portugal
Spain
Malta Italy Greece Cyprus
Central and Eastern Europe
Slovenia Poland Latvia Slovak Republic
Romania Lithuania Czech Republic Hungary Estonia
Croatia Bulgaria
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America
United States Canada Eastern
Asia
Korea Japan
including international students excluding international students Figure 2.11 Entry rates into tertiary type A education of students up to age 25, 2012 (in percentages)
Notes: The net entry rates reported in this figure represent the proportion of members of a synthetic age cohort who enter tertiary type A education before the age of 26. The net entry rate is defined as the sum of net entry rates for single ages. The total net entry rate is therefore the sum of the proportions of new entrants to tertiary type A aged i to the total population aged i, at ages ≤ 25 (OECD 2014b, Annex 3, p. 16). Source: OECD (2014b).
Region Country
0 10 20 30 40 50
Western Europe
Netherlands Ireland Austria Germany
United Kingdom Luxembourg Switzerland
France Belgium
Northern
Europe Denmark
Finland Norway Sweden Southern
Europe Portugal
Spain
Malta Italy
Greece Cyprus
Central and Eastern Europe
Poland Slovenia Slovak Republic Latvia
Romania Lithuania Czech Republic Hungary
Estonia Croatia Bulgaria
Oceania Australia
New Zealand Northern
America
Canada United States Eastern
Asia Korea
Japan
Figure 2.12 Tertiary graduation rates (type A, first-time graduates) among students up to age 30, 2012 (in percentages)
Notes: The net graduation rates reported in this figure represent the proportion of members of a synthetic age cohort who graduate (for the first time) from a tertiary type A programme before the age of 31. The net graduation rate is defined as the sum of net graduation rates for single ages. The total net graduation rate is therefore the sum of the proportions of (first-time) tertiary graduates type A aged i to the total population aged i, at ages ≤ 30
72
How many students are expected to complete tertiary education?
Entry into a tertiary education programme, while of interest, does not necessarily imply that students will complete the programme. To assess how many students complete tertiary education, we next look at tertiary graduation rates, which capture the percentage of an age cohort that are expected to complete a tertiary education programme over their lifetime.
Similar to the case of entry rates, the current age pattern of graduation is used as a best estimate of the future behaviour of today’s young adults (oecd 2014b). Again similar to the case of entry rates, graduation rates may be artificially inflated by international students and older students, who are consequently not counted here. Figure 2.12 shows tertiary graduation rates among students up to age 30, after excluding international students from the estimation (oecd 2014b). These graduation rates indicate the proportion of today’s young people who, by the time they have reached 30, will have completed a tertiary education programme.27 Owing to the limited number of countries for which this variable is available, we also show the same graduation rates after including international students in
Similar to the case of entry rates, the current age pattern of graduation is used as a best estimate of the future behaviour of today’s young adults (oecd 2014b). Again similar to the case of entry rates, graduation rates may be artificially inflated by international students and older students, who are consequently not counted here. Figure 2.12 shows tertiary graduation rates among students up to age 30, after excluding international students from the estimation (oecd 2014b). These graduation rates indicate the proportion of today’s young people who, by the time they have reached 30, will have completed a tertiary education programme.27 Owing to the limited number of countries for which this variable is available, we also show the same graduation rates after including international students in