• Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection

Totally wired. That’s our image of most 15-year-olds and the world they inhabit. But a new, ground-breaking report on students’ digital skills and the learning environments designed to develop those skills, paints a very different picture. Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection finds that, despite the pervasiveness of information and communication technologies (ICT) in our daily lives, these technologies have not yet been as widely adopted in formal education. And where they are used in the classroom, their impact on student performance is mixed, at best. 

• Is spending more hours in class better for learning?

There is no real consensus on how much class time is enough when it comes to learning mathematics, science and reading. But educators and policy makers generally agree that while it’s important for students to spend considerable time in school lessons to acquire new skills, spending more hours and minutes in class is not enough to ensure that students succeed in school. Find out in August's edition of PISA in Focus 

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Also availble in French

• Can the performance gap between immigrant and non-immigrant students be closed?

Put yourself in their place: if you were new to a country and barely able to communicate in the local language, how do you think you’d do in school – particularly if you were living in a poor neighbourhood and attending a school with inadequate resources? It might come as a surprise to learn that, in some countries, immigrant students perform better in mathematics than their non-immigrant peers. Does that say more about the individual students or about the education systems in their host countries? Find out in July's edition of PISA in Focus.

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Also available in French