OECD report: Education at a Glance 2024

~ Bruce Levitan

Education at a Glance is the definitive guide to the state of education around the world. More than 100 charts and tables in the publication and country notes – as well as many more in the data explorer – describe the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools. The 2024 edition focuses on equity in education, providing indicators on gaps in educational outcomes and discussing the effect of educational attainment on labour market outcomes.

For the UK:

  • Educational attainment at the upper end of the attainment distribution increased strongly in the UK between 2016 and 2023.
  • However, there was no such improvement at the lower end of the educational attainment distribution. At 12%, the share of young adults in the UK without upper-secondary attainment stagnated between 2016 and 2023, while it improved from 17% to 14% on average across the OECD.
  • Reducing the share of young adults without upper secondary attainment is particularly important in the UK because labour market outcomes for this group are weaker than in most other OECD countries. This is the second largest gap among OECD countries (after Chile) and much larger than the average gap of 15%.
  • Educational attainment varies more between regions in the UK than in many other OECD countries. While 71% of 25-64 year olds in London have obtained a tertiary qualification, the corresponding proportion in North East England is only 42%.
  • An increasing proportion of students in the UK are enrolled in private institutions. The share of primary students in private institutions increased from 11% in 2013 to 37% in 2022, while the share of secondary students in private institutions increased from 52% to 72%. In contrast, the average share of primary and lower secondary students in private institutions remained broadly constant across the OECD at 15% and 18% respectively.
  • The distribution of expenditure across levels of education in the UK differs from most other OECD countries. In early childhood education, expenditure per child in the United Kingdom is well below the OECD.

You can read the full report on the OECD website here, and if you select “Country Notes” towards the bottom of the page, you can look at a report for the UK.