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Indigenous peoples have rightful aspirations for their languages and cultures, supported under international conventions, jurisdictional treaties, laws, policies and enquiry recommendations. Additionally, the inclusion of Indigenous languages in education can impact positively on Indigenous students’ learning, engagement, identity and well-being, and can increase involvement of their communities in education. This working paper provides an overview of Indigenous languages learning in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and Canada. These three jurisdictions participate in an OECD initiative Promising Practices in Supporting Success for Indigenous Students, designed to help education systems to improve the experiences and outcomes of Indigenous students in education. The significance of Indigenous languages constitutes common ground between the diverse Indigenous peoples in these three countries. But learning in Indigenous languages and learning Indigenous languages follow diverse pathways with local language programme designs that fit the different historical and contemporary language contexts within and between the countries.

The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: ‘The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: From leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet’.

The paper is the second in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The first paper is titled ‘Young people’s environmental sustainability competence: Emotional, cognitive, behavioural and attitudinal dimensions in EU and OECD countries.

There is a discernible and growing gap between the qualifications that a university degree certifies and the actual generic, 21st-century skills with which students graduate from higher education. By generic skills, it is meant literacy and critical thinking skills encompassing problem solving, analytic reasoning and communications competency. As automation takes over non- and lower-cognitive tasks in today’s workplace, these generic skills are especially valued but a tertiary degree is a poor indicator of skills level. In the United States, the Council for Aid for Education developed an assessment of generic skills called the CLA+ and carried out testing in six countries between 2016 and 2021. This book provides the data and analysis of this 'CLA+ International Initiative'.

This annual publication compiles comparable tax revenue statistics for Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, People’s Republic of China, Cook Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Thailand, Tokelau, Vanuatu and Viet Nam. It also provides information on non-tax revenues for selected economies. Based on the OECD Global Revenue Statistics database, the publication applies the OECD methodology to Asian and Pacific economies to enable comparison of tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among the economies of the region and with other economies worldwide. This edition includes a special feature on strengthening tax revenues in developing Asia. The publication is jointly produced by the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration and the OECD Development Centre, in co-operation with the Asian Development Bank, the Pacific Island Tax Administrators Association and the Pacific Community.

In a rapidly changing world of work, adults in Australia are being challenged to upskill, retrain and consider alternative career paths. Mid-career adults are in a unique position: they have acquired considerable skills and work experience but still have many years left in the labour market before retirement. They thus may need help to build on their existing skills to progress but have time before retirement to recoup their training investments. If well designed, career guidance can facilitate employment transitions for this group and usefully inform their training choices. This report assesses the career guidance services that are currently available to mid-career adults in Australia and puts them into an international perspective. New online survey data shows Australia performs well in OECD comparison with respect to the use of career guidance services, but there is room to strengthen the inclusiveness of these services and to tailor them to the needs of mid-career adults. The report provides concrete recommendations in this regard.

OECD countries deliver publicly-funded employment services through different institutional arrangements. While in most OECD countries the majority of such services are delivered by public employment services, in two in five OECD and EU countries (or regions) they are partly or fully contracted out to external providers, including for-profit and not-for-profit entities. Contracting out employment services to outside providers offers many potential benefits: an increased flexibility to scale capacity in line with changes in unemployment, the possibility of offering services more cost-effectively, the option to better tailor services through the use of specialised service providers and the possibility to offer jobseekers choice of providers. However, achieving these benefits will depend on the actual design and monitoring of the contracting arrangements that are put in place. Focusing on the job brokerage, counselling and case-management employment services typically provided by public agencies, this paper reviews the experiences of OECD countries that have contracted out employment services through outcome-based payment schemes. It highlights the need to carefully consider questions related to the design and implementation of this form of contracting: fostering competition amongst potential providers, setting appropriate minimum service requirements and prices for different client groups, and ensuring the accountability of providers through monitoring and evaluations. These issues are discussed based on country examples, which are also detailed in factsheets contained in the online annex of the paper.

Australia’s financial sector entered the COVID-19 crisis in a strong position, enabling it to play a key role in cushioning the pandemic’s impact. Once the national economy reopens, policymakers will turn their focus to securing a robust, sustainable and inclusive recovery. However, low interest rates are boosting house prices and demand for credit in a banking sector that is already highly exposed to housing and highly indebted households. At the same time, many young and innovative firms – which are the drivers of job creation and productivity growth - struggle to access finance. And financial frictions impede the alignment of financial flows with environmental sustainability. Addressing these obstacles, through regulatory change, developing alternatives to bank finance and facilitating technological transformation, would raise productivity and set the recovery on a more sustainable path. Financial inclusion and financial literacy are comparatively high and financial education is entrenched at schools. Further efforts are still needed to address persistent gaps in outcomes for disadvantaged groups, accompanied by stronger consumer protections to ensure that the recovery is inclusive.