The OECD and “Education at a Glance” – Providing Educational Data for Policy Making

A notable contribution of the OECD to policy development is the annual report “Education at a Glance (EAG)”. This informs the discourse on education, helping policy-makers, educators,
researchers, and other stake-holders build more effective and equitable education systems. In this article, we summarize the general trends in education which the most recent “Education
at a Glance 2017” revealed, as well as the three new indicators and areas of focus that it introduced. The EAG annual report covers all levels of education, but here we focus on trends in tertiary education which was given greatest attention in the latest edition. The 2017 edition of “Education at a Glance” covers all thirty-five high-income OECD member countries. It also analyses eleven partner countries that represent a broader range of economies from lower-middle income to high income countries. These are Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. In addition to the presentation of core data and analysis, the report has a new focus on fields of study, investigating both trends in enrolment at upper secondary and tertiary level, student mobility, and labour market outcomes for the qualifications obtained. It also introduces for the first time an entire chapter on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).