Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden are the countries in Europe most likely to achieve the sustainable development targets for education by 2030, says the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a report published on 15 September.
The report examines countries’ efforts to ensure access for all to high-quality education on an equal footing and to promote life-long learning. It studies the situation in its member countries and a number of partner countries for which sufficient data are available on the ten sustainable development goals(SDG) for education. At the European Union level, 22 countries are examined using a toothcomb (the EU28 bar Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Lithuania, Malta and Romania). The report concludes that only six of these countries reach the required level in at least five of the ten SDGs for education.
The OECD report expresses particular concern at the situation of women, immigrants and teachers. It points out that women have more problems in moving from education to work and continue to be underrepresented in some sectors. Immigrant pupils and students generally take longer than their indigenous colleagues to reach the same level of training. In terms of teachers, the report notes precarious conditions in the profession, with the pay of upper secondary school teachers falling by a third in OECD countries. Moreover, educational staff are ageing. In 2014, a third of primary teachers were aged 50 or higher in the OECD, with particularly high levels of older teachers in Italy, Germany and Lithuania.
The report can be found at: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2016_eag-2016-en ">http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2016_eag-2016-en . (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)