<ul> <li>When students believe that investing effort in learning will make a difference, they score significantly higher in mathematics. </li> <li>The fact that large proportions of students in most countries consistently believe that student achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than inherited...</li></ul>

<ul> <li>Students who know how to summarise information tend to perform better in reading. </li> <li>If disadvantaged students used effective learning strategies to the same extent as students from more advantaged backgrounds do, the performance gap between the two groups would be almost 20% narrower. </li></ul>

<UL> <LI>Privately managed schools tend to attract more advantaged student populations; but the difference between the socio-economic profiles of public and private schools is narrowed when privately managed schools receive higher levels of public funding.</LI> <LI>The difference between the socio-economic...</li></li></ul>

Are socio-economically disadvantaged students condemned to perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of poor academic achievement, poor job prospects and poverty? Not if they attend schools that provide them with more regular classes.<P> Resilient students in the 2006 and 2009 PISA surveys displayed...</p>

<ul> <li> One in eight students across OECD countries has repeated a grade at least once before the age of 15. </li> <li> Many countries reduced the rate of grade repetition between 2003 and 2012. </li> <li> One in five disadvantaged 15-year-olds has repeated a grade. Even among students with similar academic...</li></ul>

<ul> <li>Strong performers and successful reformers in education share some key characteristics: a belief in the potential of all their students, strong political will, and the capacity of all stakeholders to make sustained and concerted efforts towards improvement. </li> <li>Countries/Economies that have...</li></ul>

<ul> <li> To do well on PISA’s first assessment of creative problem-solving skills, students need to be open to novelty, tolerate doubt and uncertainty, and dare to use intuition to initiate a solution. </li> <li>Just because a student performs well in core school subjects doesn’t mean he or she is...</li></ul>

<ul> <li> In most school systems, over 50% of 15-year-olds students attend schools that compete with another school to attract students from the same residential area. </li> <li>Across countries and economies, performance is unrelated to whether or not schools have to compete for students. </li> <li>When choosing a...</li></ul>

<ul> <li>Immigrant students who share a common country of origin, and therefore many cultural similarities, perform very differently across school systems. </li> <li>The difference in performance between immigrant students and non-immigrant students of similar socio-economic status is smaller in school systems...</li></ul>

<UL> <LI>Most 15-year-olds in OECD countries have some understanding of environmental issues and feel that threats to the environment are a serious concern for them and/or for other people in their country.</LI> <LI>Scientific understanding of the environment is key if students are to have a realistic...</li></li></ul>