1/ Just flipping through the Education at a Glance 2020 from OECD which dropped a couple of hours ago. I remain amazed as ever by the difference between @StatCan_eng can and the US Dept of Ed's practices in reporting to OECD. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/69096873-en.pdf?expires=1599568159&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=971CF8BACA393C155D94A217268A8072

2/ When people look at all the tables where Canada provides no data they scream asnd say "Canada is terrible, why don;t we have data, Ministry of Education now!" But often this is not true: we *do* have data; it's just that unlike US statscan gets hard-ass about definitions.

3 Take for instance tables B4.1 and B4.2, which is about "entering students" in post-secondary. Canada does not enter data in here because Statscan claims an in ability to distinguish among undergraduates who are genuinely first entry and those having a second go.

4. But you know what? Very few countries have this ability. The US, with its ban on national unit-record databases certainly doesn't. But unlike us, they know OECD does not want or need 100% accuracy, it just needs something close enough for comparative purposes.

5/ So the US - which in fact has considerably worse-quality data than we do on this score - just submits data on all students in first degree programs. Close enough. In it goes. Everyone's happy. @StatCan_eng can't seem to manage this.