CMEC3

Better skills,

better jobs,

better lives

Skills for the future, Quebec

10 September 2014, Andreas Schleicher

Getting the best returns on investment in skills requires the capacity to assess the quality and quantity of the skills available in the population, determine and anticipate the skills required in the labour market, and develop and deploy available skills in the most effective and equitable ways over the lifecycle of people. It also requires strong governance arrangements and sustainable approaches to who should pay for what, when and how, particularly for learning beyond school.

(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr

We know that...

...Skills change lives...

...and drive economies

• because skills have an increasing impact on labour market outcomes and social participation

• because failure to ensure a good skills match has both short- term consequences (skills shortages) and longer-term effects on economic growth and equality of opportunities

but degrees don't automatically translate into better outcomes

Success with converting skills into jobs and growth depends on whether...

Understanding what knowledge and skills drive economic and social outcomes

The knowledge economy does not pay you for what you know but for what you can do with what you know

Learning the right mix of skills in effective, equitable and efficient ways

Economies and labour-markets fully utilize their skill potential

Skills are

everybody's business

Effective skills systems build on effective partnerships with key stakeholders to find sustainable approaches to who should do and pay for what, when and where

Better skills,

better jobs,

better lives

Long-term

Medium-term

Short-term

Information literacy, technology

Tools for working

Life and careers

Living in the world

Ways of thinking

Creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning

Personal and social responsibility

Communication and collaboration

Ways of working

Citizenship

Understanding changing

demand for skills

Information literacy, technology

Tools for working

Citizenship

Life and careers

Ways of thinking

Living in the world

Creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning

Personal and social responsibility

Communication and collaboration

Ways of working

Improving quality and equity

of education and training

Spending time in education is one thing; learning is another. Education and training institutions need to be governed by a clear quality-assurance framework that serves both accountability and improvement purposes. Workplace training should also be subject to quality control, in the form of contractual arrangements, inspections and self-evaluations

Facilitating entry for skilled migrants

Performance in PISA 2009 (average reading, mathematics and science scores)

Investing in skills abroad and encourage cross-border higher education

Fostering lifelong skills-oriented learning instead of qualifications-focused education upfront in life course

While skills policies are typically designed nationally, an increasing number of employers operate internationally and must derive their skills from both local sources and a global talent pool. Some countries have therefore started to consider skills policies beyond their national borders and have begun to invest in the skills of people in other countries.

Improve the stock of skills

Greater transparency of returns

Recognising learning outcomes

Tertiary

Upper secondary

Lower secondary

Information and guidance for potential learners

Flexible delivery that allows learners to decide what to learn when and how

Making it easier for international students to remain in the country

Identifying inactive individuals

and why they are inactive

Fostering demand-sensitive and relevant learning involving employers

Targeting activation policies efficiently requires identifying inactive individuals and their reasons for inactivity

Sharing costs fairly among

governments, individuals and employers

Creating incentives

that make it pay to work

Employers can have to create a climate that supports learning, and invest in learning, and individuals must be willing to develop their skills throughout their working life. Governments can design financial incentives and favourable tax policies that encourage individuals and employers to invest in post-compulsory education and training

Costly childcare services, tax systems that make work economically unattractive, or benefit systems that offer better compensation compared with expected salaries can make it uneconomical to work

Engage employers to provide right mix of skills

PROVIDE EFFECTIVE CAREER GUIDANCE

Engage employers, unions and other stakeholders to strengthen links between educational programmes and labour market needs.

• Recognise that rapidly evolving jobs and careers have expanded career opportunities, but choices are becoming harder, and career guidance is therefore becoming both more important and more demanding.
• Provide reliable and impartial sources of guidance so that young people do not have to rely on informal sources of guidance.
• Develop effective guidance services that can yield large returns by developing the career-related skills, self-awareness and self-esteem which lead to rewarding choices.

Draw on employers’ perspectives and capacity to:

• assess whether content of curricula and qualifications meet current labour market needs
• guide their adaptation to emerging requirements
• develop qualifications and workplace training arrangements

• Provide a mix of training places that reflects both student preferences and employer needs.
• Engage employers and unions in curriculum development and ensure that the skills taught correspond to those needed in the modern workplace.
• Provide young people with generic, transferable skills to support occupational mobility and lifelong learning, and with occupationally-specific skills that meet employers’ immediate needs.
• Ensure all students have adequate numeracy and literacy skills to support lifelong learning and career development.

ESTABLISH A COHERENT, INDEPENDENT AND COMPREHENSIVE GUIDANCE PROFESSION

Career guidance to deliver effective advice for all

• Develop a separate profession of career advisors.
• Ensure that career advisors have: a good knowledge of labour markets, careers and learning opportunities; the ability to find young peoples' interests, aptitudes and objectives so as to help them make choices which are both realistic and fulfilling; the competencies to help individuals to manage their own careers
• Develop a qualification system for career advisors
• Preserve their independence of guidance professionals from the institutions (such as schools) in which they are based

SUPPORT GUIDANCE WITH RESOURCES, INFORMATION AND EVALUATION

• Deliver key elements of guidance pro-actively to all students, so that students can be supported by one-to-one guidance by professionals when they make key career decisions.
• Regularly update information sources to identify emerging occupations and areas of skills shortage, as well as current and potential areas of skills oversupply and redundancy.
• Properly evaluate career guidance initiatives to establish the case for effective resourcing and identify how best to employ those resources.

Prepare teachers well with industry experience

Involving employers in designing curricula and delivering education programmes

Establish appropriate bodies for engaging employers and unions at national level, regionally, according to industrial sectors, or at the level of the individual institution.

• Encourage trainers in educational institutions to spend some of their time working in industry.
• Promote flexible pathways of recruitment and make it easier for those with industry skills to become part of the workforce of educational institutions through effective preparation.
• Provide appropriate pedagogical and other preparation for trainers of interns, trainees and apprentices in workplaces.
• Encourage interchange and partnership between educational institutions and industry, so that teachers and trainers spend time in industry to update their knowledge, and trainers in firms spend some time in educational institutions to enhance their pedagogical skills.

Maximise use of workplace training

Ensure that institutions and mechanisms to engage employers represent the diverse perspectives and opinions found within employers’ groups.

• Make substantial use of workplace training
• Ensure that the framework for workplace training encourages both employers and students to participate.
• Ensure workplace training is of good quality, through an effective quality assurance system and a clear contractual framework for apprenticeships.
• Balance workplace training by other provision

Find the appropriate role for government that supports the interests of students and balances the perspectives of employers and unions.

HIGH QUALITY LEARNING FOR ALL

Recognise different incentives:

• Employers as a whole have very strong interest in general transferable skills, while individual employers and sectoral groupings often have narrower interests.
• Trade unions have incentives to ensure that existing workers have access to good-quality training and have transferable skills but also have incentives to limit access to occupations

Use effective tools to engage stakeholders and promote transparency

Many educationnal programmes currently:

• fail to meet labour market needs
• do not adequately prepare young people for jobs
• are separated from the fast-changing world of modern economies

• Engage employers and unions in policy and provision through effective mechanisms.
• Systematically engage with employers, trade unions and other key stakeholders to develop and implement qualification frameworks, supported by strengthened quality assurance.
• Adopt standardised national assessment frameworks to underpin quality and consistency in training provision.
• Strengthen data on labour market outcomes, and provide the institutional capacity to analyse and disseminate that data.

Integrating education and work

Education and Employers

The right balance

What students want to study

What employers need

What can be provided

Use mechanisms to help in balancing student preferences and employer needs, such as:

• linking programmes and places to employers’ willingness to provide workplace training
• assessing future skill needs through consultations with employers and unions and/or through systematic forecasts or assessments
• using financial incentives to encourage students to train in specific areas, to boost the amount of workplace training offered, or to expand off-the job training opportunities to address demand

Compared to purely government-designed curricula taught in exclusively school-based systems, learning in the workplace offers important advantages

Involving trade unions in providing on-the-job training

Helping people work longer

Putting Skills to Work

Limiting 'brain drain'

Advanced data systems (Australia)

Career Services (CS) (New Zealand)

My Skills, My Future (US)

Dismantling non-financial barriers

to participation in the labour force

Provide better information about the skills needed and available

O*NET (US)

Inflexible working conditions can make it difficult for people with care obligations and individuals with disabilities to participate in the labour force. Less rigid working-time arrangements and improved working conditions, particularly for workers with health problems, can also make employment more attractive to these traditionally inactive groups.

Help young people gain a foothold in the labour market

Make skills

more transparent

Quality career guidance becomes a critical part of any skills strategy. Coherent and easy-to-interpret qualifications can help employers to understand which skills are held by potential employees, making it easier to match a prospective employee to a job. Continuous certification that incorporates non-formal and informal learning over the working life is also essential, as is recognition of foreign diplomas.

Facilitate internal mobility

Reducing costs and other barriers associated with internal mobility helps employees to find suitable jobs and helps employers to find suitable workers

European Credit System for VET (ECVET)

European Qualifications Framework (EQF)

Europass

Using skills where they can

make most of a difference

Helping employers to make

better use of their employees’ skills

In the case of under-skilling, public policies can help to identify workers with low levels of foundation skills and offer an incentive to both employees and employers to invest in skills development to meet the requirements of the job. When the skills available aren’t adequately used, better management practices are needed. As workers assume more responsibility for identifying and tackling problems, they are also more likely to ‘learn by doing’, which in turn can spark innovation.

Create more high value-added jobs

Training programmes for highly qualified refugees (Netherlands)

Government programmes can influence both employer competitiveness strategies (how a company organises its work to gain competitive advantage in the markets in which it is operating) and product-market strategies, which determine in what markets the company competes.

Regional knowledge centres for immigrants (Denmark)

'Better, not cheaper' (Germany)

Silicon Valley (US)

Riviera del Brenta (Italy)

Help local economies to move up the value chain

Government programmes can influence both employer competitiveness strategies (how a company organises its work to gain competitive advantage in the markets in which it is operating) and product-market strategies, which determine in what markets the company competes.

Employer Ownership of Skills (UK)

Investors in People (UK)

Growth and Innovation Fund (UK)

Foster entrepreneurship

Ethnic Minority Business Service (UK)

Centre for entrepreneurs (Germany)

The Skills Strategy helps countries figure out how differnt

policies interact and helps countries optimise and align them

Thank you!

Find out more about our work at:

www.oecd.org/education

www.oecd.org/site/piaac

Prioritising investments

Andreas.Schleicher@OECD.org

SchleicherEDU

...and remember: Without data, you are just another person with an opinion

Combining short-term and long-term considerations

It is costly to develop a population’s skills, so skills policies need to be designed so that these investments reap the greatest economic and social benefits

Effective skills policies are needed to respond to structural and cyclical challenges, such as rising unemployment when economies contract or acute skills shortages when sectors boom, and to ensure longer-term strategic planning for the skills that are needed to foster a competitive edge and support required structural changes.

A lifecycle perspective

A whole-of-government approach

By seeing skills as a tool to be honed over an individual’s lifetime, a strategic approach allows countries to assess the impact of different kinds of learning – from early childhood education through formal schooling to formal and informal learning throughout a lifetime – with the aim of balancing the allocation of resources to maximise economic and social outcomes.

Skills policies straddle a broad range of policy fields, including education, science and technology, employment and social policies. In addition, there are links to many other policy fields such as economic development, migration and integration, or public finance. Aligning policies among these diverse fields helps to avoid duplication of efforts and ensure efficiency. It also helps policy makers to identify policy trade-offs that may be required.

Aligning perspectives of different levels of government and multiple stakeholders

With major geographical variations in the supply of and the demand for skills within countries, there is a strong rationale for considering skills policies at the local level. This would help countries to align national aspirations with local needs.

A strategic approach

No one-size-fits all solutions

Governance between government-led and market-oriented skills systems

Redistribution of investments in skills over the lifecycle

Ageing socieities vs. developing econmies with large youth populations

Market-oriented, social-partner-led, state-led partnerships, developmental skills system

Sectoral composition of economies