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Early years are a critical period for skill development. In this sense, the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) programmes have an important role in promoting children's learning during this period. This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of ECEC programmes by analysing the relationship between students' ECEC attendance and their later academic proficiency using PISA 2015 data. PISA results show that across the OECD countries, students who had attended ECEC tend to have higher scores in academic proficiencies at the age of 15. However, these differences in academic proficiencies between those who attended ECEC versus those who did not attend are almost nil when students' socio-economic status (SES) is considered. This relationship reflects differential access to learning opportunities for children from deprived contexts. Furthermore, results show that entering ECEC programmes earlier than the typical time is associated with lower proficiencies at the age of 15. Therefore, earlier entry to ECEC is not necessarily beneficial. Learning benefits of ECEC provision vary considerably across PISA countries illustrating the importance of a country-specific policy context and the quality of their ECEC provision. The analyses of several quality indicators point out that the improved quality of ECEC programmes is associated with higher academic skills at later stages. These results highlight that mere attendance to ECEC programmes is not enough to ensure better academic performance. The quality of the educational provision, especially concerning those students from disadvantaged backgrounds, should be ensured.

Triangulation -- a combined use of different assessment methods or sources to evaluate psychological constructs -- is still a rarely used assessment approach in spite of its potential in overcoming inherent constraints of individual assessment methods. This paper uses field test data from a new OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills to examine the triangulated assessment of 19 social and emotional skills of 10- and 15-year-old students across 11 cities and countries. This study assesses students' social and emotional skills combining three sources of information: students' self-reports and reports by parents and teachers. We examine convergent and divergent validities of the assessment scales and the analytical value of combining information from multiple informants. Findings show that students', parents' and teachers' reports on students' skills overlap to a substantial degree. In addition, a strong 'common rater' effect is identified for all three informants and seems to be reduced when we use the triangulation approach. Finally, triangulation provides skill estimates with stronger relations to various life outcomes compared with individual student, parent or teacher reports.

The OECD's new Study on Social and Emotional Skills aims to provide policy makers, educators, families and communities with a comprehensive set of tools to foster students' social and emotional learning. The Study's assessment framework -- presented in this paper -- is a result of an extensive literature review of previous research, existing frameworks and assessment approaches in the area of social and emotional skills. The framework, developed by a team of experts in various domains, incorporates evidence from psychology, education, organisational sciences, sociology, economy, and public policy. This framework describes the objectives, characteristics and expected outcomes of the Study. It presents the conceptual model of social and emotional skills assessed in the Study, their development, malleability and predictive value. The framework also discusses how factors in students' family, school and peer environment influence their social and emotional skills' development along with the contextual questionnaires designed to gather this information. The framework also presents the Study's design, assessment approach, instrument development process, sampling procedures and data collection methods.

Early learning matters and can be strengthened and supported through contexts where children spend much of their time. Strong early learning experiences provide young children with opportunities to enjoy exploring their own interests and growing capabilities. Strong early learning also positively predicts well-being across a range of indicators in adulthood, including general well-being, physical and mental health, educational attainment and employment. Areas of early learning that are of particular importance include: language and literacy; numeracy and other non-verbal cognitive skills; self-regulation; emotional health, social well-being and social and emotional skills. These domains are interrelated, meaning that holistic assessment of a range of skills is necessary to understand well-being in early childhood and its implications for the future. Assessment of early learning provides an essential opportunity to reflect on whether governments, communities, schools and families are supporting the power and promise of early learning as intended.

In an increasingly fast-changing, complex and diverse world, social and emotional skills are becoming ever more important. In this paper we present an overview of literature on social and emotional skills, describing the nature and structure of these skills, their development, malleability and factors that influence them, their cross-cultural comparability and their relevance for a wide range of educational, economic and life outcomes. The paper also represents a conceptual framework for the OECD's new Study on Social and Emotional Skills, an international survey that assesses 10- and 15-year-old students in a number of cities and countries around the world. We focus on the underlying skills within and outside of the widely researched Big Five model that are found to be more predictive and policy relevant. We examine the relationships of these skills with a variety of indicators of individual and societal wellbeing such as education, employment and income, health, and personal well-being. The paper discusses the structure of child's social and emotional skills and the developmental trajectories of these skills across a lifetime. It presents the evidence of malleability of these skills as well as their relevance across a wide range of cultural contexts.

Personality characteristics shape human behaviour and influence a wide range of life events and outcomes. They do so not only through their direct effects on life outcomes, but also through their indirect effects on other important personal factors and intermediate life events, such as the development of cognitive capacities, the attainment of educational qualifications and the formation of a family. As such, personality characteristics have a demonstrable relevance for a wide range of policy issues and represent an important, although often neglected, subject of policy interest. This paper reviews the scientific literature covering a wide range of personality characteristics, discussing their conceptualisations and main features, their relevance for important outcomes in life and work, and the chief ways they are measured. It aims to provide a comprehensive overview of various attributes of personality from the perspective of their potential importance for the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), taking into account their analytical potential and policy relevance. The paper also outlines and evaluates the most important measurement instruments for each personality characteristic, with a focus on short self-report scales as the most appropriate form for inclusion in large-scale international surveys. Finally, it presents some considerations related to the evaluation and promotion of personality characteristics and introduces the substantive and measurement criteria that could be used to select the personality attributes, and related measurement scales, to include in large-scale surveys. Selected Personality Scales are appended.