Browse by: "2021"

This report looks at the policies and programmes Chile has been putting in place over the past few decades to foster the development of public transport in remote communities. In particular, it has been taking a regional approach and encouraging private investment in transport.

The digital environment has become an integral part of children’s everyday lives and interactions. The benefits can be tremendous, but there also risks. In 2011, the OECD adopted a Typology of Risks in an effort to broadly categorise those risks. Since then the digital environment has changed significantly, as risks have evolved in nature and new ones have emerged.

This report informs the OECD’s broader work on children in the digital environment by examining these trends and presenting an updated Typology of Risks. The Typology provides a high-level overview of the risk landscape, and outlines four risk categories and their manifestations. The Typology also identifies and analyses risks that cut across these four risk categories, and that can therefore have wide-ranging effects on children’s lives.

This paper advances our understanding of the spatial dimension of productivity by investigating the link between subnational governance arrangements and urban labour productivity. It presents a detailed study of the direct and indirect effects of decentralisation (local autonomy), government quality and fragmentation and empirically demonstrates the need for a comprehensive approach when considering the effects of governance-related characteristics on regional economic outcomes. Multi-level analysis of data for Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) in Europe during 2003-2014 suggests that labour productivity tends to be higher in regions with higher quality of government. Productivity, on average, is lower in more decentralised countries. However, under “the right” conditions (high quality of government and low fragmentation), decentralisation is positively linked to productivity. Overall, cities with high levels of government quality and local autonomy but low horizontal fragmentation tend to be the most productive.

Effective teaching starts with high-quality preparation that provides prospective teachers with a strong foundation on which they can continue to build throughout their career. Initial teacher preparation should provide beginning practitioners with a coherent learning experience that integrates coursework, practical training, induction and early career development. This requires education systems to conceive of initial teacher preparation as part of a career-long learning continuum, to expand the range of actors involved in the process, and to create and sustain strong partnerships and feedback loops between schools and teacher education institutions. While the importance of practice-based components in initial teacher education (ITE) is now widely recognised, the COVID-19 disruption of schooling has created new challenges for their implementation. This Policy Brief draws on evidence from the OECD School Resources Review and beyond to explore the following questions:

• What do we know about effective initial teacher education programmes?
• How to link teachers’ initial education to induction and continuing professional learning?
• How to adapt initial teacher preparation to remote and hybrid teaching contexts

Les enseignants et les écoles du monde entier font face à l’un des plus grands bouleversements qu’aient jamais connu les systèmes d’éducation. Les méthodes et pratiques en place depuis des décennies se sont vues modifiées, remaniées ou supprimées afin de limiter les risques de contagion pour les élèves, les enseignants et les parents, tout en assurant la continuité de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage. Cette crise met au premier plan le rôle et l’importance des enseignants, mais est également source de nouvelles exigences et pressions dans une profession déjà difficile. Quand la crise de la COVID-19 a éclaté, les enseignants de nombreux systèmes d’éducation ont dû exercer leur métier dans un nouveau contexte, marqué par les interactions en ligne et l’incertitude autour de la réouverture des établissements scolaires. Une fois cette réouverture actée, elle s’est accompagnée de diverses mesures de sécurité sanitaire et de la menace constante de voir les établissements scolaires refermer – autant d’éléments susceptibles d’avoir eu de profondes répercussions sur la satisfaction professionnelle des enseignants et leur niveau de stress.

This paper analyses the role of job mobility for job reallocation and aggregate wage growth in Norway and the United States using linked employer-employee data. It provides four main findings. First, despite lower overall job mobility in Norway, the speed of worker reallocation from low-wage to high-wage firms is similar to that in the United States. Second, job reallocation tends to be counter-cyclical in Norway, but pro-cyclical in the United States, due to the weaker tendency of high-wage firms in the United States to hoard workers during economic downturns. Third, the reallocation of workers from low to high wage firms through job-to-job mobility disproportionately benefits high-skilled workers in Norway and low-skilled workers in the United States. Fourth, the slowdown in aggregate wage growth primarily reflects a weakening of on-the-job wage growth in both countries rather than a reduced role of job reallocation between low and high-wage firms (although this does also play a role in the United States).

Teachers’ time is a critical resource for education systems and a key input for student learning. Like any type of resource, teachers’ time can be used more or less effectively to promote a range of outcomes such as student learning, equity and well-being. Whether teachers are given an additional hour in the classroom, an hour to prepare their lessons or an hour to engage in professional learning can affect both the cost and the quality of education. Based on OECD survey data and indicators, this paper provides a systematic overview of how teachers across the OECD report using their time and how their time use is regulated in national policy frameworks. Building on the findings from the OECD School Resources Review series, the paper then explores human resource policies that can support education stakeholders in rethinking priorities, roles and responsibilities in school education and promote an effective use of teachers’ time.

This report assesses the impact of digitalisation on competition by examining the evolution of mark-ups and multifactor productivity (MFP) across firms of different sizes. It finds that size is positively related to mark-ups and that this relationship has strengthened over time. This trend has been accompanied by an increase in the relative productivity advantage of larger firms and both changes are more pronounced in digital-intensive sectors, suggesting that digitalisation may be an underlying driver. Policy makers may need to consider appropriate responses if digital technologies affect larger and smaller firms in a heterogeneous manner.

This report looks at the need for Greece to redesign its inter-island transport system to make it more operational and sustainable. It takes into account the challenges of designing networks for island ecosystems and island clusters, which present even greater difficulties. Specifically, it examines applying the Island Transport Equivalent policy tool to increase island accessibility and growth potential.