Overcoming School Failure: Policies that Work

Comparative report | Multilingual summaries  
Participating countries reports 
Documents | Events 
Presentation of the review  | Team members

Reducing school failure pays off for both society and individuals

The highest performing education systems across OECD countries are those that combine high quality and equity. However, across OECD countries, almost one of every five students does not reach a basic minimum level of skills to function in today’s societies and students from low socio-economic background are twice as likely to be low performers. 
 
The new comparative report:Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools provides policy recommendations, evidence, relevant cases and implementation strategies on how to support disadvantaged students and schools, as improving opportunities for them benefits education systems and societies as a whole. This report is the result of the thematic review on overcoming school failure: policies that work.

The OECD can continue to support individual countries at their request on how to best promote education policy reforms geared to reduce school failure in an international comparative framework.

• Improving Schools: Tailored education policy country reviews 
• Improving equity in education: a critical challenge by Ben Levin (Professor University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Education Leadership and Policy)
• Tackling inequity  by Barbara Ischinger, Director for Education

Participating country reports

The Country Background Reports were prepared by countries according to a common framework.

The Country Spotlight Reports have been prepared in light of the comparative report and its recommendations.
 

Documents

Analytical papers

• Taking on the Completion Challenge: A Literature Review on Policies to Prevent Dropout and Early School Leaving  (EDU Working Paper No. 53) by Cecilia Lyche, November 2010
• School Choice And Equity: Current Policies in OECD Countries and a Literature Review (EDU Working Paper No. 66) by Pauline Musset, January 2012
• A Literature Review of School Practices to Overcome School Failure (EDU Working Paper No. 68)
  by Brenton Faubert
• A review of the policies and practices evaluated to reduce school failure and improve equity
  by Cathy Blacklock and Brenton Faubert (forthcoming)

Related documents

• Overcoming School Failure: Policies that Work - OECD Project Description
• No More Failures: Ten Steps to Equity in Education
• Policy Brief: Ten Steps to Equity in Education (January 2008)

Events

• The OECD international workshop “Taking stock of progress in overcoming school failure”,
  11-12 February 2010, Paris
• National assessment seminar "OECD-Ontario Seminar on Improving Equity in Education", 
  26 October 2010, Toronto 
• Overcoming School Failure: Policies that Work, National Coordinators Working Meeting,
  26-27 April 2011, The Hague, The Netherlands.
• Final conference Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools, May 2012, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (To be confirmed).

Permanent URL: www.oecd.org/edu/equity