Diving into equity in education in OECD countries: OECD is out with its 2024 education at a glance and its finding on equity in education and the labor market (pdf), which looks at the statistics on education systems in OECD countries and provides data on equity in the education sector and assessing the impact of dimensions that include — but are not limited to — “gender, socio‑economic status, country of birth and regional location.”

Why it matters: “An education system cannot be deemed successful if it does not offer all students the same opportunities or lacks inclusivity,” one of the report’s opening lines read.

Equity in education — or lack thereof — starts very early on: The first few years of a given child’s life are hugely formative for their educational outcomes, especially for those who come from underprivileged backgrounds. While the enrollment rates for children under the age of 3 has increased to 32% in 2022 from 28% in 2013 in OECD countries, the children most in need of care are least likely to get access to it, with just 32% of 0-2 year olds from lower-income households attending childcare, compared to 50% from higher income households.

Most notably: “The gap is particularly pronounced in countries such as Ireland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, where the cost of childcare poses a significant financial challenge for families, exacerbating disparities in access based on socio-economic status,” the report read.

No surprises here — socioeconomic background has a big role to play: Even in the most equitable countries surveyed, disadvantaged students do not achieve the same level of performance as their more advantaged peers, according to the outcome of OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, which measures 15-year-olds' abilities in reading, science, and mathematics.

Studies have found a similar story in Egypt: While 61.6% of 15-18 year-olds classed as poor completed preparatory education, for those not classed as poor, 81.0% had a preparatory education — a gap of 19 percentage points — according to a working paper (pdf) from the Egyptian Center of Economic Studies (ECES). For young adults aged 18-21, there’s a 17 percentage point difference between those classed as poor and not poor for secondary school graduation rates.

While higher levels of education in OECD countries still receive more funding, a new trend is emerging: The period between 2015 and 2021 saw spending per full-time equivalent student increase by 2.4% annually in primary education and by 2% in secondary education, but an increased financial focus on primary education can be seen in a number of OECD countries. Data from 33 countries "show investment in primary and lower secondary education is rising faster than in upper secondary education in most countries.” However, spending per student continues to be higher at higher levels of education in almost all OECD countries, the report read.

The attainment of higher levels of education is also largely passed down: Some “30% of adults whose parents did not attain upper secondary education also failed to do so themselves, but only 4% of adults whose parents achieved tertiary education do not attain at least upper secondary education,” the report read.

The education of household heads also plays an important role here in Egypt: It was found that 34.7% of Egyptian secondary school students whose parents are illiterate drop out of school in the report by the ECES. This figure sharply drops to just 3.8% for children with parents that have a secondary education and only 1.0% for children whose parents went to university.

But there’s also a strong regional dimension affecting Egyptian schooling: There's a 12.5 percentage point difference for secondary school graduation levels between rural and urban areas in favor of urban areas, according to ECES. The contrast is less pronounced for preparatory education, with only a 6 percentage point difference.

Women outperformed men in terms of educational attainment, but the job market hasn’t caught up: Women between the ages of 25 and 34 — migrants in particular — are still largely underrepresented in the labor market, despite having greater attainment of higher levels of education than men. Some 54% of young women held a tertiary degree, compared to just 41% of young men — however, young women are less likely to be employed than young men.

It was more or less the same story in Egypt: Women made up 51.3% of graduates from private universities and 57.4% of graduates from state universities in 2022, yet they made up a mere 17.9% of the total labor force in 2023, according to data from Capmas.

The gender gap in employment is narrowing: The employment gender gap among 25-34 year olds with at least a bachelor’s degree fell from 8 percentage points in 2016 to 5 percentage points in 2023 across OECD countries.

But not for immigrants: While the gender gap for tertiary-educated adults rests at an average of 5 percentage points in favor of men, it more than doubles to 13 percentage points among those that are foreign born.

The Egypt angle: Investing more into primary education and making KG available to everyone would put Egypt on the path to a successful overhaul of our education system, according to a report previously published by the World Bank. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have more trouble enrolling in pre-primary education programs and are more likely to drop out of school during secondary school, making the KG years especially crucial, the report said. Universal access to KG education — through public and private programs — would significantly improve graduation rates.

Your top education stories for the week:

  • Education investment platform Lighthouse Education is shutting down before it could properly start to deploy any funds, just three years after the close of its first fundraising round.
  • Educatly wants a financing license: Edtech startup Educatly is in talks with the central bank to obtain a license to provide education financing for students.
  • NextEra Education aims tolaunch four branches of foreign universities in Egypt in the coming years in partnership with the Higher Education Ministry.
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