Featuring more than 150 charts, 300 tables, and over 100 000
figures, it provides data on the structure, finances, and performance of education
systems in the OECD’s 34 member countries, as well as a number of partner
countries. It results from a long-standing, collaborative effort between OECD
governments, the experts and institutions working within the framework of the
OECD Indicators of Education Systems (INES) programme and the OECD Secretariat.
Key findings
Educational attainment
Around 84% of today’s young people will complete upper
secondary education over their lifetimes. In most countries, young women are
now more likely to do so than men, a reversal of the historical pattern.
Close to 40% of 25-34 year-olds across OECD countries now have a university-level
education. That proportion is 15 percentage points larger than of 55-64 year-olds
who have attained a similar level of education. In many countries, this difference
exceeds 20 percentage points.
Tertiary-educated individuals are likely to earn twice as much as the median
worker. In Chile, Brazil and Hungary, tertiary-educated people earn more than
double the income of a person without upper secondary education.
Education spending
OECD countries spend on average USD 9,487 per student per year
from primary through tertiary education: USD 8,296 per primary student, USD
9,280 per secondary student, and USD 13, 958 per tertiary student.
High teachers’ salaries and low student-teacher ratios are often the main
costs among the ten countries with the highest spending per student in secondary
educational institutions.
OECD countries spent an average of 6.1% of GDP on education in 2011. Public
funding accounts for 84% of all spending on educational institutions. Only six
countries cut public spending in real terms between 2008 and 2011: Estonia (-
10%), Hungary (- 12%), Iceland (- 11%), Italy (- 11%), the Russian Federation
(- 5%) and the United States (- 3%).
From school to work
The economic crisis encouraged more young people to stay in
education: the proportion of 15-29 year-olds who are no longer in education
shrank from 54% in 2008 to 51% in 2012, on average across OECD countries.
A typical 15-year-old in an OECD country could expect to spend about seven additional
years in formal education over the next 15 years. Before turning 30, they could
expect to hold a job for over five years, be unemployed for nearly one year
and be neither in education nor seeking work for over one year.
More than half of adults take part in education in a given year. This ranges
from two out of three in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, to one out of three in
the Slovak Republic and one out of four in Italy.
In the classroom
Students receive an average of 7475 hours of compulsory education
at primary and lower secondary level. Students in Australia have the most, at
over 10,000 hours, and in Hungary the least, at less than 6,000 hours.
The statutory salaries of teachers with 15 years’ experience average USD
39,024 at primary level, USD 40,570 at lower secondary and USD 42,861 at upper
secondary level. But teachers in about two-thirds of countries have seen their
salaries fall in real terms since 2009.
Most teachers are women but the share decreases as the education level rises:
97% at pre-primary, 82% at primary, 67% at lower secondary, 57% at upper secondary
and 42% at tertiary level
Further information on Education at a Glance, including country notes,
multilingual summaries and key data, is available at www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm.