12/09/2006 - Education is a gateway to employment and in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels continue to rise, with many countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications in particular, according to data in the 2006 edition of the OECD’s annual publication Education at a Glance.
But while more than one third of students across OECD countries – and around 50% in some countries -- now obtain university degrees – a persistently large share of young people do not complete secondary school, today’s baseline for successful entry into the labour market.
On average across OECD countries, only 56% of adults without upper secondary qualifications are in employment. Of those who are, 26% earn one-half or less than one-half of the national median earnings. While many countries have seen steeply rising benefits from university education, including some of those where university education has expanded most, people who have not completed upper secondary school, and particularly women, continue to face serious labour-market penalties.
To address this, OECD analysts say, countries will need to scale back inherently class-biased and often regressive ways of funding educational opportunities, the effects of which often show up in educational attainment measurements. On average across OECD countries, for example, students from the most socio-economically disadvantaged quartile of the population are 3.5 times more likely than their peers to be in the bottom quartile of mathematics performers, and in no country is this less than twice as likely to be the case
A compendium of national education statistics on indicators ranging from class sizes to teacher salaries, Education at a Glance provides governments and education specialists with internationally comparable data as a basis for policy debate and decisions. Among other things, this year’s edition shows that:
Education at a Glance 2006 is available to journalists on the OECD's password-protected website. For further information, journalists are invited to contact the OECD's Media Division (tel.  1 45 24 97 00).
Education at a Glance 2006 can be purchased in paper or electronic form through the OECD’s Online Bookshop. Subscribers and readers at subscribing institutions can access the online version via SourceOECD.
Further information on Education at a Glance 2006 can be found at http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2006 , as can country chapters on Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.