Education Indicators in Focus is a recurring series of briefs that highlight specific indicators in OECD’s Education at a Glance that are of particular interest to policy makers and practitioners. They provide a detailed look into current issues in pre-primary, primary and secondary education, higher education, and adult outcomes from a global perspective, and contain an engaging mix of text, tables and charts that describe the international context of the most pressing questions in education policy and practice.
Private schools cater for around 1 in 5 students from pre-primary to the end of secondary education, a share that has not changed materially since 2015. They enjoy greater autonomy, suffer fewer shortages of all kinds and handled the COVID-19 pandemic better than public schools. Although their students achieved better results in PISA 2022 in many countries, this is mainly because they enrol more students from advantaged socio-economic backgrounds than their public counterparts. The main challenge in many countries today is to increase the social mix in public and private schools, which is why many efforts have been made in this direction over the past decade.
