Governments are increasingly looking to international comparisons of education opportunities and outcomes as they develop policies to enhance individuals’ social and economic prospects, provide incentives for greater efficiency in schooling, and help to mobilise resources to meet rising demands. The OECD Directorate for Education and Skills contributes to these efforts by developing and analysing the quantitative, internationally comparable indicators that it publishes annually in Education at a Glance. Together with OECD country policy reviews, these indicators can be used to assist governments in building more effective and equitable education systems.

The spread of COVID-19 has sent shockwaves across the globe. The public health crisis, unprecedented in our current lifetime, has caused severe human suffering and loss of life. The exponential rise in infected patients and the dramatic consequences of serious cases of the disease have overwhelmed hospitals and health professionals and put significant strain on the health sector. As governments grappled with the spread of the disease by closing down entire sectors of activity and imposing widespread restrictions on mobility, the sanitary crisis evolved into a major economic crisis expected to burden societies for years to come. According to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook, even the most optimistic scenarios predict a brutal recession. Even if a second wave of infections is avoided, global economic activity is expected to fall by 6% in 2020, with average unemployment in OECD countries climbing to 9.2%, from 5.4% in 2019. In the event of a second outbreak triggering a return to lockdown, the situation would be worse.

Education at a Glance 2020: OECD Indicators offers a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators that reflect a consensus among professionals on how to measure the current state of education internationally. The indicators provide information on the human and financial resources invested in education, how education and learning systems operate and evolve, and the returns to investments in education. They are organised thematically, each accompanied by information on the policy context and interpretation of the data.

Although a lack of data still limits the scope of the indicators in many countries, the coverage extends, in principle, to the entire national education system (within the national territory), regardless of who owns or sponsors the institutions concerned and regardless of how education is delivered. With one exception (described below), all types of students and all age groups are included: children (including students with special needs), adults, nationals, foreigners and students in open-distance learning, in special education programmes or in education programmes organised by ministries other than the ministry of education, provided that the main aim of the programme is to broaden or deepen an individual’s knowledge. Vocational and technical training in the workplace is not included in the basic education expenditure and enrolment data, with the exception of combined school- and work-based programmes that are explicitly deemed to be part of the education system.

Although the provision of formal vocational education and training (VET) can extend from lower secondary to short-cycle tertiary level, more than two-thirds of VET students are enrolled at upper secondary level. In some countries, where vocational education is more common, adults with VET qualifications enjoy high employment rates. However, the employment advantage of a vocational qualification tends to weaken over the life-course. On average across OECD countries, the employment rate of 25-34 year-old adults with an upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary vocational qualification (82%) is similar to that among 45-54 year-olds (83%), whereas employment increases from 73% to 80% among those with a general qualification. In contrast, the employment advantage for tertiary-educated adults widens among older age groups. Earnings are also lower: while adults with an upper secondary vocational qualification have similar earnings to those with a general one, they earn 34% less than tertiary-educated adults on average across OECD countries. Poorer labour-market prospects may have contributed to the decline in the share of adults with an upper secondary vocational qualification across the generations: 21% of 25-34 year-olds held such a qualification in 2019 compared to 26% of 45-54 year-olds on average. In contrast, the share of tertiary-educated adults has risen from 35% among the older generation to 45% among young adults.

SDG 4 and its associated targets set an ambitious agenda that encompasses access, participation, quality and equity in education, at all levels of education. The analysis below focuses on secondary education, and builds on selected SDG 4 indicators to investigate teaching resources in lower secondary education, student outcomes, and the relationship between upper secondary attainment and access to the labour market.