We’ve been very chatty in recent years; various platforms have enabled many different opinions and points of view to be shared. The same goes for education. After observing the aftermath of the pandemic and the changing educational landscape, it was clear that we needed to do things differently. But we quickly returned to our familiar practices and from there, we were catapulted again; the infamous ChatGPT tool was introduced. And everything changed. Again.

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures young people’s competences in basic skills: mathematics, reading and science. The 2022 study involved 690 000 students, representing 29 million 15-year-olds across 81 education systems; all EU countries except Luxembourg participated, and its results were published in December 2023.

Teachers play a vital role in shaping our societies. Despite this, the profession is seemingly becoming less attractive since more than half of European Union Member States have raised concerns about teacher shortages.

Engaging young minds in meaningful citizenship activities poses a formidable challenge – one that cannot be adequately addressed by rhetoric or the occasional ‘Go vote’ poster.

On entering any school, you can observe its physical environment, written norms, relationship culture, school atmosphere, values and even its unwritten rules. This is the school climate that determines how we perceive and experience a school.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a number of key lessons related to education: the importance of access to reliable internet connectivity and devices, the need to support teachers to cope with disruptions, exploding workloads and learners experiencing emotional distress or dropping out, and the need to support learners’ well-being. While these issues are true for education everywhere, they are even more relevant in rural and remote areas.

Equity in education recognises that students have different needs and starting points. It therefore relates to the extent to which learners can fully enjoy the right to education and training, in terms of opportunities, access, treatment and outcomes.

In recent years, even recent months, a lot has happened in the educational field. In the last decade, the development of the flipped classroom, task-based approaches and a greater focus on differentiation have already transformed the process of learning languages.

Gifted, precocious, high intellectual potential… All these terms refer to the same clinical situation: children and adults with an intelligence quotient—or IQ—of 130 or above on a standardised and validated intelligence scale. They make up 2.3% of the total population, but is it really true that they are all more intelligent? The reality is not that simple.

In recent years, economists have gained significant experience (and fame) in practical market design in matching children to schools. Much of this success is based on the seminal papers by Gale and Shapley (GS), which were initially used for entry-level job markets.