In Education, the main random variable is, in general, the knowledge-level of the student on a certain subject. This is generally considered to be the result of a process that involves one or more educational agent (e.g. teachers) and the reflection and training of the student. There are many covariates including: innate capacities, resiliency, perseverance, family and health conditions, and quality of education.

While being a subject that all of us has some a priori knowledge (essential in statistical modelling), it has an initial difficulty that may lead to significant bias and wrong interpretations: the measurement of the main random variable. From Educational psychometrics, measurement tools are the tests or examinations and the main variable is a latent variable.

In this talk we shall review some recent advances in statistics applied to education, namely to international evaluation of students and to the assessment of the impact of educational political policies. We also review the main data basis from DGEEC (Direção Geral de Estatísticas da Educação e Ciência) and its use for research purposes.