Ensuring equal opportunities for students across socio-economic backgrounds

• Across most OECD countries, socio-economic status influences learning outcomes more than gender and immigrant status. In the Russian Federation, the proportion of children from the bottom quartile of the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) achieving at least PISA level 2 in reading in 2018 was 21% lower than that of children from the top ESCS quartile, a smaller share than the OECD average of 29%.

• International student mobility at the tertiary level has risen steadily reaching about 282 900 students in the Russian Federation and representing 4% of tertiary students in 2019. The largest share of international tertiary students studying in the Russian Federation comes from Kazakhstan. Students from low and lower-middle income countries are generally less likely to study abroad. In 2019, they represented 29% of international students in OECD countries, compared to 38% in the Russian Federation.

• Gender inequalities in education and outcomes

  • In the Russian Federation, 0.3% of students in lower secondary and 0.1% in upper secondary initial education repeated a grade in 2019, compared to 1.9% and 3% respectively on average across OECD countries. Boys are more likely to repeat a grade at lower secondary initial education than girls. In the Russian Federation, 54% of repeaters at lower secondary level were boys, lower than the OECD average of 61%. At upper secondary level, the share of boys repeating a grade in the Russian Federation increases to 63%, compared to 57% on average across OECD countries.

  • Men are more likely than women to pursue a vocational track at upper secondary level in most OECD countries. This is also the case in the Russian Federation, where 57% of upper secondary vocational graduates in 2019 were men (compared to the OECD average of 55%). Women are generally more likely to graduate from upper secondary general programmes. This is also the case in the Russian Federation, where women represent 53% of graduates from upper secondary general programmes, compared to 55% on average across OECD countries (Figure 1).

  • Tertiary education has been expanding in the last decades, and, in 2020, 25-34 year-old women were more likely than men to achieve tertiary education in all OECD countries. In the Russian Federation, 69% of 25-34 year-old women had a tertiary qualification in 2018 compared to 55% of their male peers, while on average across OECD countries the shares were 52% among young women and 39% among young men.

  • Young women are less likely to be employed than young men, particularly those with lower levels of education. Only 48% of 25-34 year-old women with below upper secondary attainment were employed in 2018 compared to 68% of men in the Russian Federation. This gender difference is smaller than the average across OECD countries, where 43% of women and 69% of men with below upper secondary attainment are employed.