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The quality of instruction and the activities it replaces determine the success of increased instruction time
Increasing instruction time might seem a simple way to improve students' outcomes. However, there is substantial variation in its effects reported in the literature. When focusing on school day extensions, some studies find no effects, while others find that an additional hour of daily instruction significantly improves test scores. A similar pattern arises when examining the effect of additional days of class. These mixed findings likely reflect differences in the quality of instruction or in the activities that are being replaced by additional instruction. Hence these elements need to be considered when designing policies that increase instruction time.
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Despite increasingly generous parental leave
schemes their advantages over subsidized childcare remain unclear
There is growing agreement among parents in
high-income countries that having a working mother does not harm a preschool
child. Yet, research is ongoing on what the long-term effects on children
are of being looked after at home (primarily by their mothers) or in
childcare. Most studies find positive effects of childcare on child outcomes
for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and moderate effects for
children from more advantaged backgrounds. Policymakers need to improve
compensation and the working environment for the sector if a high quality
level is to be achieved and if the beneficial effects are to be
maintained.
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Parental leave increases the family–work
balance, but prolonged leave may have negative impacts on mothers’
careers
Numerous studies have investigated whether the
provision and generosity of parental leave affects the employment and career
prospects of women. Parental leave systems typically provide either short
unpaid leave mandated by the firm, as in the US, or more generous and
universal leave mandated by the government, as in Canada and several
European countries. Key economic policy questions include whether, at the
macro level, female employment rates have increased due to parental leave
policies; and, at the micro level, whether the probability of returning to
work and career prospects have increased for mothers after childbirth.
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It depends: older children perform better on
standardized tests, but evidence of older school starting ages on long-term
outcomes is mixed
There is a widely held belief that older
students, by virtue of being more mature and readier to learn at school
entry, may have better academic, employment, and earnings outcomes compared
to their younger counterparts. There are understated, albeit important,
costs to starting school later, however. Compulsory school-attendance laws
may allow these same older pupils to drop out of high school earlier, which
could adversely impact their employment; entering the workforce later also
has implications for lifetime earnings and remittances to governments.
Overall, research suggests that school-age entry policies can improve
student achievement in the short term, but the long-term impacts are
currently not well-understood.
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Increased stakes in educational achievement
explain why today’s anxious parents engage in intensive parenting styles
Parents now engage in much more intensive
parenting styles compared to a few decades ago. Today’s parents supervise
their children more closely, spend more time interacting with them, help
much more with homework, and place more emphasis on educational achievement.
More intensive parenting has also led to more unequal parenting: highly
educated parents with high incomes have increased their parenting
investments the most, leading to a growing “parenting gap” in society. These
trends can contribute to declining social mobility and further exacerbate
rising inequality, which raises the question of how policymakers should
respond.
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Having immigrant children in the classroom may
sometimes, but not always, harm educational outcomes of native children
Many countries are experiencing increasing
inflows of immigrant students. This raises concerns that having a large
share of students for whom the host country language is not their first
language may have detrimental effects on the educational outcomes of native
children. However, the evidence is mixed, with some studies finding negative
effects, and others finding no effects. Whether higher concentrations of
immigrant students have an effect on native students differs across
countries according to factors such as organization of the school system and
the type of immigrants.
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Basic skills in literacy and numeracy are
essential for success in the labor market
Even in OECD countries, where an increasing
proportion of the workforce has a university degree, the value of basic
skills in literacy and numeracy remains high. Indeed, in some countries the
return for such skills, in the form of higher wages, is sufficiently large
to suggest that they are in high demand and that there is a relative
scarcity. Policymakers need robust evidence in order to devise interventions
that genuinely improve basic skills, not just of new school leavers entering
the market, but also of the existing workforce. This would lead to
significant improvements in the population that achieves a minimum level of
literacy and numeracy.
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Teacher effectiveness has a dramatic effect on
student outcomes—how can it be increased?
Teacher effectiveness is the most important
component of the education process within schools for pupil attainment. One
estimate suggests that, in the US, replacing the least effective 8% of
teachers with average teachers has a present value of $100 trillion.
Researchers have a reasonable understanding of how to measure teacher
effectiveness; but the next step, understanding the best ways to raise it,
is where the research frontier now lies. Two areas in particular appear to
hold the greatest promise: reforming hiring practices and contracts, and
reforming teacher training and development.
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Public education tends to crowd out parents’
time and money, but careful policy design may mitigate this
Many countries around the world are making
substantial and increasing public investments in children by providing
resources for schooling from early years through to adolescence. Recent
research has looked at how parents respond to children’s schooling
opportunities, highlighting that public inputs can alternatively encourage
or crowd out parental inputs. Most evidence finds that parents reduce their
own efforts as schooling improves, dampening the efficiency of government
expenditure. Policymakers may thus want to focus government provision on
schooling inputs that are less easily substituted.
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Cognitive skills are more relevant in explaining earnings,
socio-emotional skills in determining labor supply and schooling
Common proxies, such as years of education, have been shown to
be ineffective at capturing cross-country differences in skills acquisition, as well as the
role they play in the labor market. A large body of research shows that direct measures of
skills, in particular cognitive and socio-emotional ones, provide more adequate estimations of
individuals’ differences in potential productive capacity than the quantity of education they
receive. Evidence shows that cognitive skills in particular are quite relevant to explain
wages, while socio-emotional skills are more associated with labor force and education
participation decisions.
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