OECD (2000)

Introduction
forging new partnerships to allow the different actors and stakeholders in education to participate more
fully and to share the costs and benefits more equitably. As a result, public funding is now increasingly seen
as providing only a part, although a very substantial part, of the investment in education. Private sources of
funds are playing an increasingly important role. To shed light on this, the indicators in this year’s edition
place more emphasis on the relative proportions of funds for educational institutions that come from public
and private sources, as well as trends in these proportions since 1990. In addition, a new indicator, B3, has
been introduced to compare the levels and types of public subsidies to households to cover student living
costs and educational expenses.
Decisions on how educational funds are spent are also likely to be influenced by which level of government
has responsibility for, and control over, the funding of education. An important factor in educational
policy is thus the division of responsibility for educational funding between national, regional and
local authorities. Such aspects of decision-making have been newly integrated into Indicator B6 on the
initial and final sources of public funding.
To respond to increasing public and government concern over the outcomes of education, about
one-third of the indicators in this edition have been devoted to the individual, social and labour market
outcomes of education. The indicator on educational attainment (A2), traditionally used as a proxy for the
stock of human capital, is supplemented by information on literacy skills in the adult population. Furthermore,
the indicators on completion of secondary and tertiary education (C2 and C4) now provide a more
differentiated, more comparative picture of the qualifications obtained. With regard to the labour market
outcomes of education, there is a more detailed picture than in past editions of the relationships
between education, employment and earnings (Chapter E), with particular emphasis on the situation of
the youth population.
Finally, the picture of the mathematics and science achievements of primary and lower secondary
students presented in earlier editions has been expanded with a report on the attitudes of students
towards science in relation to their achievement in science (F2). This is important because education systems
not only aim at uniformly high levels of academic achievement, but also seek to develop and support
positive attitudes among students towards learning and achievement and to foster both the
motivation and the ability of students to continue learning throughout life. In addition, a new indicator
(F3) explores what 4th and 8th grade girls and boys believe accounts for performance in mathematics,
and it explores the relationship of their beliefs to their actual achievement in mathematics.
Trend data offer an insight into developments in the supply of and demand for learning opportunities
Broad shifts in the economic and social structures of OECD countries have increased the demand for
educational reform, specifically for the development of strategies to adapt education and training systems
to these new conditions. The development of policy options and strategies for change can best be achieved
through an understanding of how education and training systems have evolved. The 2000 edition of Education
at a Glance therefore complements its review of variation between countries with trend indicators in
order to show how the supply of learning opportunities has evolved and how the expansion of learning
opportunities has been financed. Although many of these indicators cover only a relatively short period of
time, they trace a rapid growth in the proportion of young people undertaking upper secondary and tertiary
education in many countries (C1 to C4) and a consequent rise in spending (B1 to B4). As the size of the youth
population in most countries has stopped shrinking, and in some cases is expanding (A1), the increase in
demand for education has imposed costs that governments are finding harder to bear.
New indicators have been designed to shed light on the transition from school to work
The labour-market situation of young persons has returned to the forefront of public debate in recent
years. There is a general perception that the transition from education to work has become more difficult,
despite the fact that the size of youth cohorts has been declining in most countries and that young people
entering the labour market today have generally received more education than was the case ten years ago.
© OECD 2000
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