Are socio-economically disadvantaged students condemned to perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of poor academic achievement, poor job prospects and poverty? Not if they attend schools that provide them with more regular classes. Resilient students in the 2006 and 2009 PISA surveys displayed high levels of academic achievement despite the fact that they came from disadvantaged backgrounds. They beat the odds stacked against them to outperform peers from the same socio-economic background and be ranked among the top quarter of students internationally. In the Programme for International Student Assessment 2009 (PISA 2009), nearly one-third of disadvantaged students across OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries were identified as "resilient". In fact, the majority of students from disadvantaged backgrounds in Korea and the partner economies Hong Kong-China, Macao-China and Shanghai-China were considered resilient. Over 35% of disadvantaged students in Canada, Finland, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the partner countries Liechtenstein and Singapore and the partner economy Chinese Taipei were also resilient. This issue of "PISA in Focus" suggests that schools may have an important role to play in fostering resilience. They could start by providing more opportunities for disadvantaged students to learn in class by developing activities, classroom practices and teaching methods that encourage learning and foster motivation and self-confidence among those students. High-quality mentoring programmes, for example, have been shown to be particularly beneficial. Focusing these activities on disadvantaged students is crucial, as they are the students who are least likely to receive this support elsewhere.