Two OCCAM contributors (John Jerrim and myself) participated in the Advisory Board of UNICEF’s latest Report Card on educational inequalities in rich countries. It was a great experience, not least because of the diversity of perspectives on the topic. There were many underlying conceptual dilemmas, data problems and difficult choices to be made in selecting the indicators and the ensuing ranking of countries. The UNICEF research team finally decided on all these methodological choices, which was fortunate in view of the lack of consensus within the Advisory Board.
Philosophers from Aristotle to Rousseau have held the belief that functioning democracies are founded on an educated citizenship. Evidence suggests that better educated individuals are more likely to be politically involved. However, the association between education and political involvement varies across countries and we do not know if and how variations across countries depend on how the political system is organised.
Louis Volante, Sylke V. Schnepf, John Jerrim & Don A. Klinger The OECD has traditionally conceptualized excellence in education by highlighting education systems that have high achievement and negligible gaps in PISA performance between boys and girls, immigrants and non-immigrants, and students from high versus low socioeconomic status (SES) groups. Our recent Springer (2019) book […]
