Search

Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals' identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this way question the common classification of individuals into groups (male vs. female, immigrant vs. native etc.), which raises important implications for the policy-making process. In education, analyses with an intersectional lens have the potential to lead to better tailored and more effective policies and interventions related to participation, learning outcomes, students' attitudes towards the future, identification of needs, and socio-emotional well-being. Consequently, as elaborated in this paper, some countries have adjusted their policies in the areas of governance, resourcing, developing capacity, promoting school-level interventions and monitoring, to account for intersectionality. Gaps and challenges related to intersectional approaches are also highlighted.

Module A of the OECD Higher Education Policy Survey (HEPS) 2022 elicited information on policies to promote digitalisation of higher education in OECD member and accession countries. In total, 30 jurisdictions responded, providing comparative information on various areas of digitalisation policy, from regulation and governance to financial and human resources. The survey results provide insight into the role of public authorities in guiding, coordinating and resourcing the digital transformation of higher education institutions. The analysis and comparative tables in this working paper provide insights that can support the development of strategic digitalisation policies.

When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into fruition in the early 1990s, there were high hopes and expectations on what this emerging economic block could achieve. Although the agreement involved extensive conversations that led to regulations that facilitated trade across the region--the main intent of NAFTA--the same was not true for the higher education environment. Critics have argued that NAFTA's heavy focus on trade left little room for similar harmonization on issues like higher education. From this perspective, it is evident that if efforts to improve higher education are to gain traction in the trilateral relationship, they must be linked with regional trade and competitiveness. Yet even though NAFTA was not the vehicle for further cooperation on higher education, colleges and universities across Canada, Mexico, and the United States did embrace the opportunity and enthusiastically engaged in conversations that prompted trilateral collaboration. This article follows the key agreements that influenced and guided the early stages of NAFTA collaboration among higher education institutions, as well as developments that kept engagement across the three countries active. It also provides an initial list of areas in which future collaboration might focus. [The report was published in partnership with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. This working paper will be published as a chapter in the forthcoming book, "North America 2.0: Forging a Continental Future."]

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the first to assess consistency of results by agency. We find results vary by agent, but consistent with Flynn effects, gains are larger in math than reading, except for the most recent period. Non-whites progress at a faster pace. Socio-economically disadvantaged white, black, and Hispanic students make greater progress when tested in elementary school, but that advantage attenuates and reverses itself as students age. We discuss potential moderators.

This paper studies the impact of PROBEMS, a scholarship program in Mexico aimed at improving graduation rates and test scores among upper secondary school students from poor backgrounds. The identification strategy is the random allocation into the program, which took place in 2009. The strategy allows measurement of the effects of PROBEMS on test scores and graduation rates three years later in 2012. The paper finds that, on average, the program has no discernible impact on graduation rates or math or Spanish test scores. The size of the sample allows investigation of the reasons for this disappointing result. The paper finds that the program is substantially mis-targeted, with the majority of the recipients not coming from the most disadvantaged families. However, the most plausible explanation for the absence of positive impacts is that many eligible students do not seem to have the minimum learning level to face successfully the academic requirements of upper secondary school. An important policy implication is that a well-targeted scholarship program should be complemented with a remedial education intervention. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice.]

In the past decade, hundreds of impact evaluation studies have measured the learning outcomes of education interventions in developing countries. The impact magnitudes are often reported in terms of "standard deviations," making them difficult to communicate to policy makers beyond education specialists. This paper proposes two approaches to demonstrate the effectiveness of learning interventions, one in "equivalent years of schooling" and another in the net present value of potential increased lifetime earnings. The results show that in a sample of low- and middle-income countries, one standard deviation gain in literacy skill is associated with between 4.7 and 6.8 additional years of schooling, depending on the estimation method. In other words, over the course of a business-as-usual school year, students learn between 0.15 and 0.21 standard deviation of literacy ability. Using that metric to translate the impact of interventions, a median structured pedagogy intervention increases learning by the equivalent of between 0.6 and 0.9 year of business-as-usual schooling. The results further show that even modest gains in standard deviations of learning--if sustained over time--may have sizeable impacts on individual earnings and poverty reduction, and that conversion into a non-education metric should help policy makers and non-specialists better understand the potential benefits of increased learning. [This paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, Africa Region and the World Development Report 2018 Team.]

Over the last two decades, Mexico has experienced macroeconomic stability, an open trade regime, and substantial progress in education. Yet average workers' earnings have stagnated, and earnings of those with higher schooling have fallen, compressing the earnings distribution and lowering the returns to education. This paper argues that distortions that misallocate resources toward less-productive firms explain these phenomena, because these firms are less intensive in well-educated workers compared with more-productive ones. It shows that while the relative supply of workers with more years of schooling has increased, misallocation of resources toward less productive firms has persisted. These two trends have generated a widening mismatch between the supply of, and the demand for, educated workers. The paper breaks down worker earnings into observable and unobservable firm and individual worker characteristics, and computes a counterfactual earnings distribution in the absence of misallocation. The main finding is that in the absence of misallocation average earnings would be higher, and that earnings differentials across schooling levels would widen, raising the returns to education. A no-misallocation path is constructed for the wage premium. Depending on parameter values, this path is found to be rising or constant, in contrast to the observed downward path. The paper concludes arguing that the persistence of misallocation impedes Mexico from taking full advantage of its investments in the education of its workforce. [This paper is a product of the Strategy and Operations Team, Development Economics Vice Presidency.]

How do labor income shocks affect household investment in upper secondary and tertiary schooling? Using longitudinal data from 2005-15 for Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, this paper explores the effect of a negative household income shock on the enrollment status of youth ages 15 to 25. The findings suggest that negative income shocks significantly increase the likelihood that students in upper secondary and tertiary school exit school in Argentina and Brazil, but not in Mexico. For the three countries, the analysis finds evidence that youth who drop out due to a household income shock have worse employment outcomes than similar youth who exit school without a household income shock. Differences in labor markets and safety net programs likely play an important role in the decision to exit school as well as the employment outcomes of those who exit across these three countries.

The worldwide school closures in early 2020 led to losses in learning that will not easily be made up for even if schools quickly return to their prior performance levels. These losses will have lasting economic impacts both on the affected students and on each nation unless they are effectively remediated. While the precise learning losses are not yet known, existing research suggests that the students in grades 1-12 affected by the closures might expect some 3 percent lower income over their entire lifetimes. For nations, the lower long-term growth related to such losses might yield an average of 1.5 percent lower annual GDP for the remainder of the century. These economic losses would grow if schools are unable to re-start quickly. The economic losses will be more deeply felt by disadvantaged students. All indications are that students whose families are less able to support out-of-school learning will face larger learning losses than their more advantaged peers, which in turn will translate into deeper losses of lifetime earnings. The present value of the economic losses to nations reach huge proportions. Just returning schools to where they were in 2019 will not avoid such losses. Only making them better can. While a variety of approaches might be attempted, existing research indicates that close attention to the modified re-opening of schools offers strategies that could ameliorate the losses. Specifically, with the expected increase in video-based instruction, matching the skills of the teaching force to the new range of tasks and activities could quickly move schools to heightened performance. Additionally, because the prior disruptions are likely to increase the variations in learning levels within individual classrooms, pivoting to more individualised instruction could leave all students better off as schools resume. As schools move to re-establish their programmes even as the pandemic continues, it is natural to focus considerable attention on the mechanics and logistics of safe re-opening. But the long-term economic impacts also require serious attention, because the losses already suffered demand more than the best of currently considered re-opening approaches.

Are teachers and principals aligned in their perceptions of the core components of the theory of Leadership for Learning across countries, or are there subgroups of schools in which there is misalignment? The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which a congruency-typology model of leadership for learning is distributed across countries/economies using the TALIS 2018 dataset through examining the interaction of significantly different subgroups of teacher and principal responders through using multilevel latent class analysis (LCA) with a cross-level interaction. I analyse data from lower secondary schools of n=152 635 teachers in 9 079 schools and their principals across 47 countries/economies. Currently in the research literature on school leadership, leadership for learning has emerged as a framework to bring together managerial, transformational, distributed, and instructional leadership. Yet little is known about leadership for learning across national contexts. This study 1) maps the TALIS 2018 survey items to the current literature and surveys for leadership for learning, 2) then details the methods and analysis framework to examine if there are multiple significantly different types of teachers, principals, and schools from a leadership for learning theory framework. The final model 3) identifies a three-group teacher typology and a three-group principal typology, linking these types to school context, covariates, as well as teacher and principal training and experience. Results relate directly to the intersection of research, policy, and practice for training and capacity of school leaders across 47 countries/economies globally.

A randomized control trial was conducted to study whether providing 10th grade students with information about the returns to upper secondary and tertiary education, and a source of financial aid for tertiary education, can contribute to improve student performance. The study finds that the intervention had no effects on the probability of taking a 12th grade national standardized exam three years after, a proxy for on-time high school completion, but a positive and significant impact on learning outcomes and self-reported measures of effort. The effects are larger for girls and students from households with a relatively high income. These findings are consistent with a simple model where time discount determines the increase in effort and only students with adequate initial conditions are able to translate increased effort into better outcomes. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice Group.]

The recent refugee crisis has put many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries under considerable pressure to accommodate and integrate large numbers of refugees. Refugee students are a particularly vulnerable group due to their forced displacement, but their needs are not always met by education systems, which can hinder the integration potential of these students. This poses considerable challenges as the integration of refugee students in education systems is important for their academic outcomes as well as their social and emotional well-being. The success (or lack of) integration in schools can also affect the future labour market and social integration potential of these children and youth. While there is a growing body of research on the integration of immigrants, policy-relevant research on refugee children and youth from an educational perspective is rather limited, fragmented and case specific. Detailed surveys and research projects focusing on the current wave of refugees that allow for cross-country comparisons are not yet available. Drawing on research from previous refugee waves, the paper examines key needs of refugee students and factors that promote their integration. It proposes a holistic model of integration in education that responds to the learning, social and emotional needs of refugee students. Furthermore, the paper examines what type of policies and practices are in place in OECD countries that support the integration of refugee students. Nonetheless, evaluations of practices and policies are often missing, which makes it difficult to assess whether they are successful. The paper finishes with some policy pointers on how to promote the integration of refugee students.

Resilience refers to the capacity of individuals to prosper despite encountering adverse circumstances. This paper defines academic resilience as the ability of 15-year-old students from disadvantaged backgrounds to perform at a certain level in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in reading, mathematics and science that enables them to play an active role in their communities and prepares them to make the most of lifelong-learning opportunities. Using data from the most recent PISA cycles, this paper explores changes in the share of resilient students over time (2006-2015); highlights the importance of school environments and resources in mitigating the risk of low achievement for disadvantaged students; and identifies school-level factors that are associated with the likelihood of academic resilience among socio-economically disadvantaged students. Analyses reveal that several countries were able to increase the share of resilient students over time, reflecting improvements in the average performance of students, or a weaker relationship between socio-economic status and performance. In the vast majority of education systems examined, the likelihood of academic resilience among disadvantaged students is lower in schools where students report a negative classroom climate. The paper concludes by exploring school policies and practices that are associated with a positive classroom climate. [This work was supported by a contribution to the PISA programme of work from Vodafone Germany Foundation.]

This paper explores the impact of policies and institutions on employment and unemployment of OECD countries in the past decades. Reduced-form unemployment equations, consistent with standard wage setting/price-setting models, are estimated using cross-country/time-series data from 21 OECD countries over the period 1982-2003. In the "average" OECD country, high and long-lasting unemployment benefits, high tax wedges and stringent anticompetitive product market regulation are found to increase aggregate unemployment. By contrast, highly centralised and/or coordinated wage bargaining systems are estimated to reduce unemployment. These findings are robust across specifications, datasets and econometric methods. As policies and institutions affect employment not only via their impact on aggregate unemployment but also through their effects on labour market participation -- particularly for those groups "at the margin" of the labour market, group-specific employment rate equations are also estimated. In the "average" OECD country, high unemployment benefits and high tax wedges are found to be associated with lower employment prospects for all groups studied, namely prime-age males, females, older workers and youths. There is also evidence that group-specific policy determinants matter, such as targeted fiscal incentives. The paper also finds significant evidence of interactions across policies and institutions, as well as between institutions and macroeconomic conditions. Consistent with theory, structural reforms appear to have mutually reinforcing effects: the impact of a given policy reform is greater the more employment-friendly the overall policy and institutional framework. Certain more specific interactions across policies and institutions are found to be particularly robust, notably between unemployment benefits and public spending on active labour market programmes as well as between statutory minimum wages and the tax wedge. Finally, it is shown that macroeconomic conditions also matter for unemployment patterns, with their impact being shaped by policies. (A bibliography is included. Contains 144 footnotes, 9 figures, 3 boxes and 27 tables.)

In rural Mexico, the Progresa program provided educational grants to poor mothers of children enrolled in grades 3-9 and attending 85 percent of the school days. Payments were increased at the higher grades, a premium was paid for girls enrolled in grades 7-9, and every 6 months the grants were adjusted upward to compensate for inflation. The grants were substantial; a family with a ninth-grade daughter received an amount equal to 44 percent of a typical day-laborer's wage. This paper evaluates the program's effect on enrollment in 1998-2000, during which the program was implemented randomly in 314 of the 495 poorest rural villages in central and southern Mexico. Analysis focused on a panel sample of 19,716 children who could be followed and matched in five household surveys conducted between October 1997 and November 1999. Before the program started, Progresa villages and control villages did not differ significantly in enrollment rates of poor children. In the 3 survey rounds collected after September 1998, Progresa had a significant impact on the enrollment of each group of children who had completed grades 1-6 the previous year, with differences often greater for girls than boys. The cumulative cohort effect on schooling attainment was estimated to be 0.66 years. Progresa also significantly reduced the poor-nonpoor inequality in enrollment rates for grades 4-6. An appendix analyzes Progresa's effects on child labor and fertility rates. (Contains 29 references, 24 footnotes, 24 tables, and 4 figures.) (SV)

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced increasing pressures to provide accountability data and consumer information on the quality of teaching and learning. Existing ratings and rankings of HEIs tend to neglect information on student learning outcomes. Instead, they focus on inputs, activities and research outputs, such as resources used, classes taught, and articles published. Such indicators provide no indication of the degree to which HEIs actually develop the knowledge and skills of their students. In most countries, hardly any comparable information is available on the educational quality of different programmes and institutions. In some countries, approaches to assess higher education learning outcomes have been developed, but little cross-country information is available on the characteristics of the instruments used. This paper provides an overview of experience gained in this domain across OECD and partner countries. Based on illustrative evidence collected for 18 assessment instruments, it examines conceptual, organizational and methodological aspects of existing assessments. It proposes a typology of higher education learning outcomes and reviews the ways in which these have been assessed across countries. Examples are drawn from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. (Contains 2 footnotes and 7 tables.)

This paper discusses an innovative paradigm for looking at computer mediated/networked teaching, learning, and research known as BESTNET (Binational English and Spanish Telecommunications Network). BESTNET is functionally defined as an international community of universities and institutions linked by common educational goals and processes, computers, and telecommunications. BESTNET is conceptually designed as a virtual integrated educational system for learning and teaching across geographic spaces, i.e., from one campus to another, nationally/globally. Currently, the project involves over 7,000 culturally and linguistically diverse groups of students from over a dozen institutions in the United States, Mexico, and other globally specific regions. Following an overview and description of the BESTNET design, the paper discusses the growing need for multimedia computer global network communications, related developments with translation technologies, and the adaptive infrastructure of BESTNET. (AEF)

This paper examines the impact of migration on educational attainment in rural Mexico. Using historical migration rates by state to instrument for current migration, we find evidence of a significant negative effect of migration on schooling attendance and attainment of 12 to 18 year-old boys and 16 to 18 year-old girls. IV-Censored Ordered Probit results show that living in a migrant household lowers the chances of boys completing junior high school and of boys and girls completing high school. The negative effect of migration on schooling is somewhat mitigated for younger girls with low educated mothers, which is consistent with remittances relaxing credit constraints on education investment for the very poor. However, for the majority of rural Mexican children, family migration depresses educational attainment. Comparison of the marginal effects of migration on school attendance and on participation in other activities shows that the observed decrease in schooling of 16 to 18 year-olds is accounted for by the current migration of boys and increased housework for girls. (Contains 6 figures, 11 tables, and 16 footnotes.)

This study examined overall job satisfaction among college faculty in Mexico. The study used data from a 1992-93 Carnegie International Faculty Survey. Secondary multiple regression analysis identified predictor variables for several faculty subgroups. Results were interpreted by differentiating between work-related and intrinsic factors, as well as by relating particular predictors to conditions affecting the Mexican academic profession. The strongest predictor variables were work-related (management, job security, academic salary); academic climate (academic collaboration, intellectual atmosphere); and other intrinsic variables (teaching and governance issues) played a secondary role. The study found that while Mexican faculty were generally dissatisfied with the job situations in which they work on a day-to-day basis, on a long-term basis they hold the careers they have chosen in high regard. The results were strongest for full-time faculty and faculty holding doctorates; they were weaker for part-time faculty and full-time faculty with no graduate degrees. Eight tables summarize the data. (Contains 27 references.) (CH)

In this HEPI Occasional Paper, Sir Anthony Seldon and Dr Alan Martin explore the concept of a 'positive university' by looking at the approaches used by positive psychology and mindfulness. With increasing concern about the health of students and staff, this report considers the importance of a proactive approach to mental wellbeing. Exploring best practice from the United States, Australia and Mexico, as well as celebrating the work already being done in UK higher education institutions, the pamphlet makes practical recommendations for students and staff as well as highlighting ways to improve students' transition between school and university.

Educational attainment levels increased dramatically for Mexico's labor force in the 1980s and early 1990s. In parallel, the country experienced a pronounced increase in earnings inequality from 1984 to 1994, reflected in a higher dispersion of wages and an absolute decline in the real incomes of less educated, poorer Mexicans. This situation presents policymakers with a tradeoff between efficiency considerations (favoring increased spending on higher education) and equity considerations (favoring a more equal distribution of per student spending) in the allocation of fiscal resources to education. This analysis concludes that the accumulation of human capital, as proxied by educational attainment, does not appear to be among the factors responsible for Mexico's disappointing growth performance since the early 1980s. The most persuasive hypothesis explaining this increased earnings inequality is that it is caused by an increased rate of skill-biased technological change, the transmission of which to developing countries may have been facilitated by the increased openness of those economies. The increased earning inequality is associated with a higher dispersion of the average wages received by workers with different schooling attainment. This raised the private rates of return to higher levels of education, in effect reversing the traditional pattern of rates of return, where the highest rates are reported for the primary level. The social rates of return also show this reversal in the relative magnitude of rates of return. The solution the paper recommends is for the government progressively to pass on a greater share of the costs of higher education to its direct beneficiaries, while facilitating the private absorption of those costs through student loan programs designed to correct market failures in the financial sector. An annex contains technical notes on calculating the rate of return. (Contains 3 figures, 12 tables and 24 references.) (SLD)

The contribution of higher education institutions to regional development is a theme that has attracted growing attention in recent years. Knowledge institutions are increasingly expected not only to conduct education and research, but also to play an active role in the economic, social and cultural development of their regions. The extent to which higher education institutions are able to play this role depends on a number of circumstances: the characteristics of the institutions, the regions in which they are located and the policy frameworks are all significant. At the same time, there are signs of more fundamental conceptual and strategic confusion. The discussions in this domain are frequently characterised by slogans and popular metaphors. This literature review was prepared to support the OECD project entitled 'Supporting the Contribution of Higher Education Institutions to Regional Development', which was conducted by the OECD Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) in collaboration with the Directorate of Public Governance and Territorial Development. Drawing mainly from a selection of European and North American publications, the report takes an overall view on the development of higher education institutions in the regional context. It focuses on the evolution and discourses of higher education and research, the regional aspects of higher education policies, the various functions and roles that the institutions play, measures taken to link the universities with their regional partners, and the conditions which favour or hamper stronger regional engagement. (A bibliography is included. Contains 9 figures.)

Immigration and domestic industrial policies have been powerful instruments in the creation of immigrant "niches" in labor markets. While Indians have clustered in the information technology industry, Mexicans have formed niches in low-skilled industries such as agriculture. A review of the relationship between immigration policy and the requirements of the information technology industry reveals two important conclusions. First, immigration policy changes of the mid-1960s facilitated the immigration of Indians with high levels of education. Asians and Africans could not use family reunification to enter the United States, so the only path open to them was the use of occupational skills. This explains why these immigrants are so highly educated and why they concentrate in high-tech industries. On the other hand, Mexican immigrants constitute the largest group of unskilled workers because economic and social costs of immigration are lessened by geographical propinquity. In addition, specific U.S. immigration policies, direct recruitment, and the development of social networks have encouraged the immigration of unskilled workers. The departure of IBM from India in 1978, and the failure of the country to develop a domestic viable computer industry forced most Indian users to rely on imports. Thus, during the 1970s and 1980s Indian programmers learned how to work on a variety of platforms. In contrast, Mexico has solidified its role as the preferred location for the electronics manufacturing industry. (Contains 33 references.) (TD)

Parental involvement programs aim to increase school-and-parent communication and support children's overall learning environment. This paper examines the effects of low-cost, group-based parental involvement interventions in Mexico using data from two randomized controlled trials. The first experiment provided financial resources to parent associations. The second experiment provided information to parents about how to support their children's learning. Overall, the interventions induced different types of parental engagement in schools. The information intervention changed parenting behavior at home -- with large effects among indigenous parents who have historically been discriminated and socially excluded -- and improved student behavior in school. The grants did not impact parent or student behaviors. Notably, we do not find impacts of either intervention on educational achievement. To understand these null effects, we explore how social ties between parents and teachers evolved over the course of the two interventions. Parental involvement interventions led to significant changes in perceived trustworthiness between teachers and parents. The results suggest that parental involvement interventions can backfire if institutional rules are unclear about the expectations of parents and teachers as parents increase their involvement in schools. [Funding for this research was provided by the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund and the Bank-Netherlands Partnership Program.]

This report highlights some of the programs that have been begun by and for Hispanic Americans, particularly in the field of higher education. Of particular interest are the cooperative efforts between the United States and Mexico in developing programs for the Latino population. Some of the programs include: the Julian Samora Research Institute; the Mexico-United States Consortium for Academic Cooperation; programs started by the University of Arizona; the University of Texas, El Paso; the California State University System; the North American Regional Academic Mobility Program; the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education; the Mexican Association for International Education; the North American Forum; and the Mexican American Partnership. (JM)

This paper uses an RCT to estimate the impact of PROBEMS, a scholarship program in Mexico aimed at improving graduation rates and test scores among upper secondary school students from poor backgrounds. We find that, on average, the program has no impact either on graduation rates or on Math and Spanish test scores. We identify two possible reasons for this failure: a. the program was badly targeted, with many of the recipients being from less disadvantaged families than intended; b) many eligible students did not have a sufficiently strong academic achievement that would allow them to productively attend and complete successfully the academic requirements of upper secondary school. This points to accumulated achievement deficits that could be addressed by interventions targeting learning at an earlier stage. [The Program and Evaluation were funded by the Ministry of Education in Mexico. Additional financial support was provided by ISPS and the Cowles Foundation at Yale.]

What are the key contents related to democratic life in the curricula of civic and citizenship education in Latin American countries? What values and dimensions are most emphasized? This document summarizes the results of a comparative analysis of civic/citizenship curricula for primary and secondary education in six Latin American countries (Colombia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico and Paraguay) that participated in the International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS-2009) conducted by International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The document comprises four parts. The first section takes stock of the state of democratic belief in the region, drawing upon the most significant opinion studies of the past decade, so as to offer broader meaning bases for curriculum analysis and, more generally, for educational work in the field of citizenship. The second section describes the organizational (or structural) characteristics of the curricula of the six countries and presents a framework of categories for their comparative analysis. The subsequent section describes and analyses the contents of the six curricula examined and how they deal with the values, institutions and citizenship relations in their civic (political) and civil (coexistence) dimensions. On the basis of the most significant findings, the closing section includes some reflections regarding curriculum development with regard to citizenship. A list of the official curriculum documents of the six countries included in the analysis is provided in an annex. A bibliography is included.

Innovation is essential for the education sector. The ways in which curriculum decision making is organised reflects different implicit approaches on how educational systems pertain to promote innovation in education. Curriculum holds an outstanding place when seeking to promote innovation in education, as it reflects the vision for education by indicating knowledge, skills and values to be taught to students. It may express not only "what" should be taught to students, but also "how" the students should be taught. Curriculum innovations can include new subjects, combinations of old subjects or cross-cutting learning objectives. They may also take a form of new content, concepts, sequencing, time allocation or pedagogy. This paper characterises two contrasted approaches to curriculum decision making and bringing about innovations in education. At one extreme, a prescriptive central curriculum implicitly places the initiative for educational innovations at the level of the central administration. This approach provides strong incentives for schools and teachers to adapt innovations that would not otherwise take place. Innovations, supported by policy measures and informed by research, are brought within the reach of all schools and teachers in an equitable manner. The challenge is then to accommodate local needs and ensure the commitment to and implementation of innovations by schools and teachers. At the other extreme, decentralised curriculum decision making provides schools--and perhaps even teachers--with room to create their own educational innovations. This approach allows for experimentation relevant to individual students and local communities. Innovations are meant to spread through horizontal networks of schools and teachers. The challenge is then to provide incentives for individual schools and teachers to innovate or adapt innovations and ensure that they have equal capacity to do so. The paper provides an overview of various possible approaches linking curriculum policy to educational innovation, it shows that OECD countries can mix these approaches and it discusses elements that can affect those innovations in reality. Focusing on public lower-secondary education, it draws on various OECD and UNESCO data. First, the paper suggests that OECD education systems differ clearly when looking at formal curriculum decision making, although no system relies on a purely central or school-based approach to curriculum innovations. Second, several elements can reduce the "innovation power" of the central curriculum and the "innovation flexibility" of the decentralised curriculum. Third, stakeholders--such as experts, teachers and parents--are able to influence curriculum innovations differently at central and school levels. Innovations in central-level curriculum appear to have widespread possibilities to rely on expert knowledge with consultation with practitioners, parents and the wider public. School level curriculum innovations appear to build mainly on principals and teachers' knowledge with an indirect influence from experts and parents. Annexed are: (1) Emerging Curriculum Themes in OECD Countries; (2) Approaches to Bringing About Competence-Based Curriculum; (3) Central Level Curriculum in OECD Countries; (4) Details on the Implicit Approaches to Curriculum Innovations; and (5) Roles of Parents in Decision Making on Education Policy. (Contains 13 tables, 4 charts, 5 boxes and 20 notes.)