Comparative Education Policy

Abraham Collier (contributors: Elisa Soyer, Lukas Meeth, Trish Suresh) The education system in France is one of the oldest and most admired in the world, with strong performance on PISA and other international standardized tests. However, those same PISA scores indicate a central weakness in France’s primary and secondary systems: inequality based on social background. Smart students from less wealthy families simply don’t have the same opportunities that they do in an average OECD country, and students from rural families are less likely to graduate from upper secondary than their urban counterparts. Potential Drivers of Inequality To understand possible drivers of this inequality, a team of master level students from the Paris School of International Affairs recently undertook an examination of the French system relative to other OECD peers. Their research yielded the following areas of divergence: 1.      Resource allocation between schools an...

Chiara Maria Achermann and Jacques Rosenberg   Korea’s focus on — and success in — education Korea’s education policy has proven to be a benchmark for many countries. Taking a closer look at what Korea does in practice can be useful for understanding what works and what doesn’t in education. According to the OECD, “almost one in five 15 year-old-students across OECD countries does not reach a minimum level of skills to function in today’s society, and there are large performance differences between students of different socio-economic backgrounds” (OECD, 2015, 44). We can agree that a child’s success depends on equity in and quality of education. But what does this mean? Basically, equity and quality means fairness and inclusion. Fairness means that no personal or social circumstances should stand in the way of a child’s potential, curiosity, and path to future success. Inclusion implies that every child should attain at least a minimum skills level (OECD, 2015, 43). ...