Sophie Edwards, in her article, states that the OECD's head of education Andreas Schleicher has communicated that the global education ranking system of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is now exploring skills for children that need to be taught that will make them successful in the future. He said that PISA is aiming to test and develop 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, digital learning, problem-solving, and competence.

Andrea Netten, in the article, shares her view that past good performance by students boosts their confidence and encourages them to do better in the future. She backs this opinion by considering data from PIRLS 2016 study.

Hanushek, Piopiunik and Wiederhold, in their article, explore the association of teacher's cognitive ability with student's performance. They use PISA and PIAAC studies to study the causal relationship. Furthermore, they examine how a smarter teacher workforce can be obtained given a relationship between the two exists.

Jenny Anderson reports the vision of Mr. Andreas Schleicher, of testing soft skills of students as well as their hard skills. As the head of the education division at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), he envisions measuring these skills in the future cycles of the PISA study, and increasing the roles of these skills in the world's educational systems.

Nick Chambers, in this article, highlights that there exists a gap between children's career aspirations and the demand of human resource in jobs of the future. These aspirations are influenced by factors such as gender, children's role models, and their socioeconomic status.