Statistics contained in the Year Book are the most recent available at the time of preparation. In many cases, the ABS website and the websites of other organisations provide access to more recent data. Each Year Book table or graph and the bibliography at the end of each chapter provides hyperlinks to the most up to date data release where available.
INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS
One of the outcomes under the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) National Education Agreement is to ensure that Australian students excel by international standards. In this section, data are sourced from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has undertaken a major international program to examine the role of education in economic and social development. The OECD membership consists of most of the developed nations with which Australia may be compared.
This section compares Australia with other countries in secondary school completion rates, higher education qualifications and schooling achievement. The first two measures show the success of countries in providing education to their populations, while the last measure shows the quality of the competencies that students gain through education, such as literacy and numeracy.
SENIOR SECONDARY COMPLETION
The proportion of the population who have completed at least senior secondary school (equivalent to Year 12 completion in Australia) is generally much higher in younger than older adults for OECD countries (table 12.34). This indicates a significant increase in school completion rates over the past 30 years. There are a small number of exceptions, such as the United States of America, where high completion levels have been in place for a number of years.
In Australia, people aged 25-34 years had a much higher school completion rate (82%) than did those aged 55-64 years (55%), consistent with the OECD average. The most dramatic differences between the age groups were in Korea, Republic of (South), Italy and Ireland.
points
HIGHER EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS
Younger adults are also more likely to have higher education qualifications than older adults in most OECD countries (table 12.35). This indicates that there has been a substantial increase in higher education in the last three decades. Indeed, given that many older adults have subsequently acquired higher education qualifications, the difference between the age groups may understate change. Care has to be taken in making comparisons between countries because of differences in education systems.
In Australia, the proportion of people with higher education qualifications was above the OECD average in all age groups. The differences between younger and older age groups in levels of higher education qualifications was particularly large in Korea, Poland and Ireland.
25-64
years
points
SCHOOLING ACHIEVEMENT
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a series of tests conducted by the OECD every three years, with the aim of providing a credible, comparable measure of the achievement of 15-year old students in a range of core capabilities. The PISA tests assess reading, mathematics and science. The tests have been conducted in a range of participating OECD countries and non-OECD partner countries/economies.
Table 12.36, shows the ten highest ranked participant countries/economies from the 2009 PISA testing process, as well as the main English-language countries. Australia was one of 10 participants to achieve results above the OECD average for every category of the PISA tests in 2009. Shanghai (China) was the highest ranked participant on all three scales. Korea, Republic of (South), Finland and Hong Kong (SAR of China) were also highly ranked on multiple scales.
score
OTHER ENGLISH LANGUAGE COUNTRIES