Private schools cater for around 1 in 5 students from pre-primary to the end of secondary education, a share that has not changed materially since 2015. They enjoy greater autonomy, suffer fewer shortages of all kinds and handled the COVID-19 pandemic better than public schools. Although their...

On average, primary school students in OECD countries receive 805 hours of instruction per year, and lower secondary students 916 hours, spread over 38 school weeks. However, these averages mask wide variations across countries. The total length of school vacations averages around 14 weeks per...

Despite numerous measures, gender stereotypes about abilities in mathematics and reading persist in schools, affecting both boys' and girls' schooling and educational choices. Inequalities also persist outside the classroom, where women, despite greater educational attainment, experience lower...

Teachers' salaries are widely debated around the world, with divergent views among the actors of education. Salaries have risen very little over the last decade and have even fallen in real terms in almost half of OECD countries between 2015 and 2022. However, salary levels are just one of the...

Governments vary greatly in the way they decide the level of funding for public primary schools, although typically it involves using a combination of rule-based and discretionary criteria. They also tend to place restrictions on how funding is used by earmarking it for particular categories of...

Women are strongly over-represented among primary and secondary teachers. This can be explained at least partly by gender stereotypes, but also by the attractiveness of the profession to working mothers and by differences in the relative wage levels in teaching for men and women. Recognising...

The labour market outcomes for native- and foreign-born adults during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic vary considerably across countries – with inequalities in employment even falling in some cases compared to 2017. In contrast with the 2008 financial crisis, greater educational...

Understanding the gender dynamics in educational transitions can help target policies to support equitable access to education as well as its quality and labour-market outcomes. In almost all OECD countries, the gender gap in favour of women is wider in tertiary education than at upper secondary...

School heads in public institutions are required to work on average 7-8 hours a day, as is the case for most office-based jobs. The hours worked and the list of tasks and responsibilities vary widely across countries. On average across OECD countries, they earn more than teachers and other...

A tertiary degree yields better earnings, especially in countries with a small share of tertiary-educated adults in the population. However, this earnings advantage varies significantly by field of study. In some countries, workers with a tertiary degree in arts and humanities earn less than...