To Speak in ISCED Terms
On 10—13 March, 2014 a meeting of the Working Party of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) programme Indicators of Education Systems took place in Paris. Natalia Kovaleva, Director of the ISSEK’s Centre for Statistics and Monitoring of Education, comments on the main discussion topics.
Traditionally, the Working Party meeting comprising representatives of the OECD members and partner countries began with a presentation by France as the host country. It presented quite successful results of restructuring the national education system.
The main reason for holding the Working Party meeting was preparing the next OECD report “Education at a Glance”, adopting new indicators, and finalising the content of printed and electronic versions. The experts enthusiastically discussed the potential for harmonised assessment of R&D expenditures in the higher education sector, and education of people with special educational needs.
The Working Party also analysed the situation with adoption of the new International Standard Classification Of Education (ISCED) 2011, and the next round of data collection for calculation of indicators (UOE data collection) by international organisations in accordance with the ISCED 2011.
The draft chart of the Russian education system was prepared by the ISSEK staff specifically for the Working Party meeting. Natalia Kovaleva discussed with colleagues from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, OECD, and Eurostat various issues of classifying Russian educational programmes to match appropriate ISCED levels. We’ll give an example illustrating the importance of this topic: the flow of Russian education-related publications is growing; all of them normally have English-language abstracts; but only very few authors use the ISCED terminology to identify the subject of their research. Accordingly, their ideas may be misunderstood and rejected.
We’d like to remind the readers the basic groups of the ISCED 2011. The new system includes 5 main sections comprising 8 education levels:
- level 0: Early childhood education
- level 1: Primary education
- levels 2—3: Secondary education
- level 4: Post-secondary non-tertiary education
- Levels 5—8: Tertiary education
How do they correlate with Russian realities? Obviously pre-primary, primary general and basic general education on the whole correspond to ISCED levels 0, 1 and 2 (lower secondary education). At the same time we don’t have specific development programmes for small children (between 0 and 2 years old).
Russian general secondary education programmes are identical to the ISCED level 3 (upper secondary education). However, there’re certain specific features. In Russia people can enrol to secondary vocational education programmes either if they have general secondary education, or basic general education. In the ISCED terms, these programmes may be classified primarily as level 3, but also, partially, if we’re talking about training mid-level professionals, as level 5 (Short-cycle tertiary education) — or, in the case of skilled manual and office workers, as level 4.
The situation with Russian higher education programmes isn’t simple either. According to the new law “On education in the Russian Federation”, higher education covers bachelor programmes (ISCED level 6 — Bachelor’s or equivalent level), master and specialised training programmes (ISCED level 7 — Master’s or equivalent level). Our higher education system also includes programmes for training top-level professionals. Some of them (post-graduate studies for researchers and teachers) should be matched with ISCED level 8 (Doctoral or equivalent level), while clinical postgraduate studies and internship (assistance) programmes — with ISCED level 7. Doctoral studies which according to the new Russian law have been excluded from the education system, should be considered equal to ISCED level 8. Acquiring second higher education through participation in bachelor’s, master’s (including MBA) or specialised training programmes must be counted as ISCED level 6 or 7, accordingly.
The emerging picture is just the top of the iceberg. Our experts must prepare more detailed descriptions of each level of the Russian education system using the ISCED categories and terms, finding a place for additional education and vocational training programmes. New issues and questions are certain to emerge, which would need to be clarified through working contacts with colleagues from international organisations.
The Working Party secretariat suggested to organise a wider presentation of the results achieved by the Party. In particular, a special website will be created to optimise the work on education system indicators, to publish not just the indicators and their analysis but also methodological guidance on their calculation.
By Natalia Kovaleva