Adult migrants in all OECD countries are a diverse group, with different profiles and levels of education. Even if they hold tertiary degrees, they are more likely to have poorer labour market outcomes, including lower earnings. Participation in the labour market is more difficult for foreign-born adults who arrived at a later age and acquired…

Background: Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) revealed that countries systematically differ in their respondents' literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments skills; skill levels also vary by gender, age, level of education or migration background. Similarly,…

As the annual number of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa to both the United States and Europe has grown for most years this decade, a Pew Research Center analysis of 2015 U.S. Census Bureau and Eurostat data finds that sub-Saharan immigrants in the U.S. tend to be more highly educated than those living in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and…

While policy debate is often focused on the whole teaching profession, primary and secondary teachers differ in more ways than one. While all countries require teachers to have at least a bachelor degree to enter the profession in primary or lower secondary education, the structure and content of the programmes vary and are less geared towards…

Problems associated with the environment loom large over the future well-being of young generations. A previous issue of PISA in Focus (PISA in Focus 87) shows that in 2015 many 15-year-old students believed that the future -- their future -- was going to be worse, environmentally, than the present. In particular, only a minority of students…

The "OECD Skills Studies" series aims to provide a strategic approach to skills policies. It presents OECD internationally comparable indicators and policy analysis covering issues such as: quality of education and curricula; transitions from school to work; vocational education and training (VET); employment and unemployment; innovative…

This paper analyses the "border" position of counselling services in Italian universities. The concept of "border" has great relevance in the work of psychoanalytically oriented university students' counsellors. Counselling is part of a continuum of interventions, from befriending to psychotherapy. This closeness encompasses…

In education policy, as in many other policy fields, well-designed policy reforms may fail to get enacted because policymakers may suddenly become confronted with a public backlash against their reform agenda. Thus, understanding the dynamics of public opinion is important in order to be able to assess the chances of successful reform. There is a…

In this paper, we analyze class size effects on college students exploiting data from a project offering special remedial courses in mathematics and language skills to freshmen enrolled at an Italian medium-sized public university. To estimate the effects of class size, we exploit the fact that students and teachers are virtually randomly assigned…

In this paper, we estimate the effect of pupil's relative age within the first grade of primary school on mathematics and reading test scores at age 15. The main objective is to evaluate the long-term causal effect of relative age in the first grades of primary school on pupil's test in 16 different countries. We use the national rule for…

Different moderators/mediators of risk are involved in developmental dyslexia (DD), but data are inconsistent. We explored the prevalence of season of birth and its association with gender and age of school entry in an Italian sample of dyslexic children compared to an Italian normal control group. The clinical sample included 498 children (345…

This first "OECD Skills Outlook" presents the initial results of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), which evaluates the skills of adults in 22 OECD member countries and two partner countries. The PIAAC survey was designed to provide insights into the availability of some key skills and how they are used at work and at home through the…

The acquisition of reading skill was studied in 503 Italian children in first to eighth grade using a task that required reading of lists of words and non-words. Analysis of the metric characteristics of the measures indicated that reading speed but not accuracy was normally distributed across all ages considered. The role of specific effects…

The main and interactive effects of parental behavioral control and parental support on adolescent adjustment were examined with students ages 15-19 in Italy (N = 391, 59.1% male) and The Netherlands (N = 373, 45.3% male). In general, parental support was associated with better adjustment and parental control was associated with worse adjustment.…

This paper reviews recent measurement work on User-Created Content (UCC) undertaken in OECD countries. It shows that UCC is emerging as a significant area of economic and social activity worthy of consideration for official measurement and discusses the implications for the OECD Model Survey on ICT Access and Use by Households and Individuals.…