Top Class: The OECD Education Policy Podcast | Teachers, PISA, Students
Episodes
How an alternative pathway into teaching comes to life
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Can alternative pathways into teaching help tackle teacher shortages and strengthen the profession? With traditional teacher preparation programmes st...
Is generative AI a gamechanger for education?
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Generative Artificial Intelligence is rapidly emerging as one of the most debated forces in education today. Tools such as ChatGPT and Claude are wide...
The state of teaching around the world, TALIS results are out
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nine in ten teachers are satisfied with their jobs, yet one in five report a lot of stress. Just two of the findings from the new OECD TALIS report, t...
Why student career preparation is going wrong
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A new OECD report reveals that nearly 40% of 15-year-olds are uncertain about their future careers. Alarmingly, only one in three students has attende...
The state of global education, with OECD’s Andreas Schleicher
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More people are getting degrees than ever before, but family background has a big influence on whether people pursue university or another form of ter...
Reinventing education in Ukraine with former education minister Liliia Hrynevych
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite Russia’s war of aggression, Ukraine is rewriting the future of its education system. The New Ukrainian School reform programme is a bold ini...
The battle for education in Ukraine
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How to improve Ukraine’s education system during a time of war was the main topic of discussion at an education festival in the western Ukrainian ci...
Can apprenticeships solve the job skills gap?
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Employers are struggling to find skilled workers. How can we fix the job skills gap? Apprenticeships are touted as one possible solution. They combine...
How to ensure quality early childhood education and care for all
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The early years of a child's life are crucial for their development. Falling behind early can mean never catching up. How can countries ensure lasting...
How to help disengaged teenagers learn
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How can you help disengaged teenagers rediscover their passion for learning? In this episode of Top Class, Rebecca Winthrop, a Senior Fellow and Direc...
LA wildfires: What educators can do when disaster strikes
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wildfires raging in Los Angeles have destroyed thousands of homes and forced the closure of hundreds of schools. As communities try to rebuild followi...
What skills are needed for the AI and green jobs era?
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As technologies transform businesses, what critical skills are needed to succeed in the workforce of the future? With artificial intelligence, the gre...
Why are adult literacy skills dropping? Insights from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past decade, literacy and numeracy skills among adults have largely declined or stagnated in most OECD countries. This is the main finding fr...
Tired, stressed & burnt out: strategies to support teacher well-being & healthy working environments
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, countless teachers face stress-related illnesses and burnout. While some manage to keep going, often at a reduced capacity, others leave t...
How to close the STEM gender gap
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why is there a persistent gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects? Despite their growing importance for many fu...
How the WorldSkills ‘Olympics’ is breaking the vocational taboo
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many countries are experiencing a growing skills gap – what can be done to address the issue? WorldSkills, the largest international skills competit...
How to improve science teaching with Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On average, science scores have been falling globally for over a decade. What can be done to improve the quality of science teaching? In this episode ...
The economics of education with Eric Hanushek
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Education budgets are huge. Public spending on schools, universities and other public and private educational institutions is around 5% of GDP across ...
Why a skills-first approach can help fill job gaps
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With some three-quarters of employers reporting difficulty in filling jobs, do traditional hiring methods need to change? As companies shift their foc...
Rethinking teacher education to foster student creativity
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do you create a classroom where students are actively creating, innovating and problem-solving? A part of the answer involves empowering teachers ...
Should smartphones be banned in schools?
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do smartphones help support learning in classrooms or are they a distraction that harms education? A growing number of governments have implemented re...
How to make teachers take bullying seriously
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bullying is an urgent issue in many schools and crucial steps need to be taken to address it. In this episode of Top Class, Professor James O’Higgin...
Is AI a superpower for the classroom?
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As artificial intelligence integrates into the world of education, how can we ensure it supports effective learning in the classroom? AI learning bots...
How to navigate ADHD in the classroom
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly known as ADHD, is a growing concern for many policymakers around the world. It affects approximatel...
The Taliban, school and me: how an Afghan girl risked everything for an education
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sola Mahfouz was pulled out of school in Afghanistan at the age of 11 after a group of men threatened her safety if she continued studying. After year...
Why are maths and reading scores dropping globally? New PISA results are out
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
While some countries have maintained or improved performance in maths and reading, many countries across the globe have seen large drops in educationa...
How AI tutors and teaching assistants will transform education
01 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sal Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a non-profit which aims to provide free, world-class education for everyone. His organisation has dev...
How to empower students to help stop climate change
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On a daily basis, academic studies, reports and news tell us that the Earth’s ecosystem is in danger. But are schools doing enough to help raise awa...
What should the teaching profession look like in the future?
13 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rapid developments in technology and society mean education is constantly on the move. These developments are having a profound effect on both student...
How to support education for Ukraine’s war children
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has led to the destruction of much of the country’s education system. Thousands of schools and universi...
Triumphs and struggles: Insights from the US Teacher of the Year
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
US National Teacher of the Year Rebecka Peterson on teaching struggles, “flip” lessons, & what it was like to meet US President Joe Biden & US Fir...
How exposed should young children be to digital technologies?
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a world of tablets, smartphones and AI – how exposed should young children be to digital technologies? This episode of Top Class explores the lat...
Everything you need to know about micro-credentials
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
🎧 Top Class Micro-credentials are bite-sized qualifications designed to help people demonstrate they have certain skills or experience. Dr Moniq...
Why skills like empathy are so important in education
06 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
‘A focus on social & emotional skills is fundamentally about high quality teaching’ Professor Stephanie Jones from Harvard Graduate School of Edu...
Master teachers, AI tutors & 24 hour schools – just some ideas for the future of education
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this OECD Education and Skills podcast Professor Patrick Newell from Shizenkan University joins Duncan Crawford, Senior Content Manager of the OECD...
How to ensure all children get an equal chance to succeed
19 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On the latest Top Class podcast 🎧, OECD's Education Senior Editor Duncan Crawford is joined by John McLaughlin, President & CEO of Atlantic Educati...
How To Tackle Cyberbullying - At School, At Home And Online
27 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cyberbullying is a growing problem worldwide and has serious consequences for students. It can take place on social media, gaming platforms and mobile...
Why Gen Z is Our Planet's Best Hope
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the autumn of 2019 till the pandemic shutdowns, schoolchildren in the millions marched to save Earth from irreparable climate crisis. Calling on ...
How I learned to stop worrying and love math
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The uproar over the 2021 Revision of the California Mathematics Framework shows us how passionate people are about mathematics – and how we learn it...
Money matters for global education
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a gaping hole in the global education budget and it’s 200 billion US dollars deep. Yearly. Part of the problem has to do with taxes: Many ...
The shortest way to a good report card? Hip hop
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes the road to doing well at school goes through surprising places, like hip hop. In 2015, the Lycée Turgot in Paris pioneered a programme for...
Is digital media literacy the answer to our disinformation woes?
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Never before has critical thinking been so…critical. With so much compromised information online, how do we know what’s opinion? What’s fact? An...
The hard reality of school for LGBTQI+ students
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For many LGBTQI+ students, school can be a hostile place. Bullying and the social and emotional strain of not feeling part of the sexual and gender ma...
Disinformation and its discontents
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When factual information comes under attack, societies head into Orwellian waters. OECD’s Andreas Schleicher and Molly Lesher discuss disinformation...
Career Ready, Set, Go
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Kardashian has been apprenticing with two lawyers for the past few years to become a lawyer herself in California. Apprenticeships like Kardashian...
For Ukraine’s refugee students, school is urgent
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After the immediate needs of food, medical and psychosocial care, and housing, comes education. According to the UNHCR and UNICEF, “education for re...
How Estonia put the “e“ in e-education
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Estonia was the top performing European country in PISA 2018 in reading, math and science. And it’s done this with an education budget that is 30 % ...
Unlearning gender bias with Iceland’s Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Iceland has topped global charts on gender equality for nearly a decade. One of the country’s more radical approaches to breaking gender stereotypes...
Switching on the curiosity lightbulb with MIT’s Mitch Resnick and OECD’s Rowena Phair
21 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Why is the sky blue?” “Why do people get sick?” “Why aren’t there any more dinosaurs?” Sometimes it feels like children never stop aski...
Are student loans a financial house of cards? Lorraine Dearden discusses
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
People who graduate from university have on average better health, better life expectancy, and better earnings than those who don’t. But many studen...
How climate education can get us to net-zero: a talk with Lorenzo Fioramonti and Nita Seng
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the OECD’s PISA survey of 66 countries in 2018, 88% of high-school principals reported that climate change was covered in their school’s curric...
From Nepal to the UK: Gen Z fights for climate education
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Are schools teaching students enough about climate change? And are they empowering them to do something about it? In PISA 2018, an average of 88% of h...
Talking to one of the best teachers in the world
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alperton Community School is in one of London’s lowest-income areas, Brent. Almost half of the children there live below the poverty line. And yet t...
Children’s e-safety with Elizabeth Milovidov and Tracey Burns
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Children have probably spent more time online this year than they ever have before. Which is why the OECD’s newly adopted Recommendation on Children...
Michael Ungar on why post-pandemic resilience “takes a village”
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve heard a great deal about what boosts our immune system during this pandemic. But what boosts our “commune” system? Michael Ungar, director...
The many futures of education with Keri Facer and Tracey Burns
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If we looked into a crystal ball, what kinds of school would we see? Would classes be happening exclusively within school walls with a teacher in fron...
MIT’s Sanjay Sarma on the human-digital classroom: it doesn’t have to be a Zoom lecture
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Remote schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to the difficulties of intersecting digital technologies and traditional schooling. ...
How did schools keep students engaged during the pandemic? Stories from the US and Japan
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of 2020, millions of students across the globe were unable to attend classes due to school closures, meaning that countries were force...
How can we help young people tackle misinformation during COVID?
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It could be said that there have been not one but two pandemics being propagated across the world over the past year. Alongside the spread of COVID-19...
Will the coronavirus crisis lead to a fundamental change in education?
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As schools closed across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic, education systems were forced to come face to face with the limitations of traditiona...
How has coronavirus affected school-leavers’ chances of entering the job market?
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The transition from school to the world of work is one of the most pivotal moments in a young person’s life – it’s a time of high pressure and h...
How have countries dealt with coronavirus school closures and what’s next for education?
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With schools closed around the world, students and teachers are having to find new ways of learning outside of the classroom. Meanwhile, governments a...
What life is like for high schoolers during the coronavirus crisis
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in school closures in countries across the globe, forcing many students to continue their learning from home. Th...
The view from the classroom: What do today’s learners say about the future of education?
11 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of talk goes on about the future of education – in ministry offices, school staff rooms, even household kitchens. But one voice is routinely l...
What role will artificial intelligence (AI) play in the classroom?
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Much talk about technology in the 21st century is focused around the advent of a new level of computing: artificial intelligence (AI). No sector will ...
What is PISA’s role in global education? A conversation
28 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You’re no doubt hearing a lot about education these days, with the release of the latest results from PISA. Over the two decades of its existence, t...
How can we turn students into innovators?
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The world that today’s students will enter after leaving school is volatile, complex and uncertain. Things have changed dramatically in just ten yea...
Innovation in teaching: What it looks like and why we need it
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Teaching, like any other profession, will need to adapt to the new challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. But unlike some other professions...
Why effective professional development matters for teachers
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Teachers’ own learning is an integral part of their practice – after all, it is said that to teach is to learn twice over. But understanding which...
What is the “digital gender gap” and how can it be bridged?
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve heard a lot about adolescent girls showing less interest than boys in technology studies and about the dearth of women in tech industries; but...
How will technology and artificial intelligence (AI) affect education?
14 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Technology has changed the way societies function, and schools will need to adapt in order to prepare students for the technology-rich environments th...
What can low- and middle-income countries learn from PISA?
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Since 2000, some 80 countries and economies – including 40 middle-income countries and 4 low-income countries – collaborate every three years to c...
What it means to be a disadvantaged student
22 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Education is not only a desired end in itself, it can also help people move up the social ladder. But results from international assessments of studen...
What is the true value of higher education?
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Some of the most striking findings from Education at a Glance , our annual report on the global state of education, focused on the value of higher ed...
Why social and emotional skills matter in 21st century education
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Purely knowledge-based models of education – those that prize rote learning over all else – are slowly becoming relics of the 20th century. Educat...
How physical and mental health affects student learning
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Increasingly sedentary lifestyles and poor attitudes towards diet and nutrition are having hugely damaging effects on the overall health of the younge...
What we can learn from classrooms in the world’s top-performing education systems
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Lucy Crehan, education author and former teacher, spent months visiting classrooms in countries and education systems that rank highest in the Program...
Why education systems must support students with an immigrant background
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With more people settling abroad than ever before, societies are becoming increasingly diverse. Nowhere is this shift more observable than in the clas...
Confronting gender imbalances in science, technology, engineering and mathematics
07 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is there an equal share of men and women working in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (or STEM)? Do girls and boys in sch...
Educating educators: Training teachers and school leaders for the 21st century
02 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How will new teachers and school leaders prepare themselves to face the complexity of the 21st-century classroom? And what do today’s teacher and sc...
What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? Educating for global competence
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In a society that is becoming more and more interdependent, the next generation will have to use a brand new set of skills and a new level of understa...
What collaborative problem solving can tell us about students' social skills
27 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Do today’s students really know how to work well together? For the first time ever, the Programme for International Student Assessment 2015 (otherwi...
Listen to the teacher! The Teaching and Learning International Survey
27 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Teaching and Learning International Survey (otherwise known as TALIS) is a survey conducted every five years that asks teachers and school leaders...
What is ‘neurodiversity’ in the classroom and how should we respond to it?
27 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Not every student’s brain works and learns in the same way. Classrooms are increasingly becoming more aware of what is known as "neurodiversity" amo...