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By Michael Ward Senior Policy Analyst, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate Photo credit: Duangphorn Wiriya/ Unsplash In 2014, we set out to make PISA more relevant and accessible to middle-and-low-income countries. Since launching in 2000, PISA has expanded to include more than 80 participating countries, and is today seen as the global yardstick for educational success. But as more countries joined PISA, it became apparent that the nature and methods of assessment needed to cater to a larger and more diverse set of countries.   That’s why we launched PISA for Development (PISA-D): an initiative that allows middle-and-low-income countries to use PISA assessments to monitor progress toward national and international targets. Launched with nine participating countries and several partners, PISA-D also supports institutional capacity-building, and allows countries to analyse the results to design evidence-based policies that can improve teaching and learning, and help scho...

By Michael Ward Senior Policy Analyst, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate and Raphaelle Martinez Lattanzio Team Lead - Education Policy and Learning, Global Partnership for Education Photo credit: Nikhita S/ Unsplash Yesterday, representatives from multilateral organisations, civil society, philanthropic foundations and the private sector gathered in Brussels for the Global Education Meeting (GEM) – a conference, convened by UNESCO, that focuses on the most pressing issues facing education today.  For the first time since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG 4) in 2015, policy makers and education experts came together to take stock of the progress made towards achieving this goal, and the challenges that remain. Their discussions couldn’t come at a more critical time. The world today is facing a learning crisis, with more than 260 million children, adolescents and youth not in school, and 617 million (six out of ten) not being able to r...