The global talent pool has taken on a dramatically different look

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

The world is living through one of its most extraordinary revolutions, with game-changing implications, many of them still unknown. The growth rate of adults with tertiary education qualifications, and the knowledge and skills associated with them, has never been higher. In 2013, on average across OECD countries, 25% of 55-64 year-olds had a tertiary qualification, but 40% of 25-34 year-olds had an increase of 15 percentage points over 30 years. But among OECD countries, differences are huge. Some countries had expanded their education systems a century ago, while others started to offer opportunities for tertiary education only recently.

The location of human capital matters: in the 20th century, the United States and several other countries were able to benefit from the pool of skilled people in their populations to progress economically and socially at a much higher rate than their competitors.

In the first decades of the 21st century, things look much different. The most recent data shown in the latest Education Indicators in Focus brief on the geographical distribution of 25-34 year-old tertiary graduates in OECD and G20 countries show that in 2013 China had already surpassed the United States. Some 17% of all tertiary graduates are found in China, compared to 14% in both the United States and India. The brief also provides a projection to 2030 based on current trends (see the chart above). In 2030, China would be home to 27% of the global pool of highly educated people, and India to another 23%. The United States would follow with only 8%. And of the emerging economies, Brazil and Indonesia would follow with 5% each. Together China and India would be home to half of the world’s highly educated youth.

These data are truly startling; it is difficult to imagine all the possible consequences. One thinks immediately of the impact on the global distribution of skilled labour and the resulting changes in trade, economic growth and global value chains. Policies to preserve the creative research-and-design parts of production cycles in the industrial nations of the 20th century seem rather antiquated. Think, too, of the enormous consequences for the countries that accomplished this modernisation in a much shorter time than the “old” industrialised nations did.

Of course, many will immediately question the quality of these tertiary qualifications. The expansion and mass accessibility of higher education have put pressure on traditional notions of academic excellence in many industrialised countries. The countries that have undergone this transformation even more rapidly will feel the same pressure. But such dramatic changes also transform the notion of academic quality itself. There are no indications that China and India will be more content with second-class academic quality than the United States or European countries are. But a better and more honest answer is: actually, we don’t know. We don’t yet have a reliable yardstick of the quality of learning and the quality of skills among tertiary graduates. It is difficult to imagine a world in which qualifications and skills matter so much without anyone knowing the real value of them. We know from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) that even in the “old world” the skills equivalence of tertiary qualifications can differ enormously.

Still, the map of the global distribution of the tertiary graduates looks very different from the map of academic excellence, at least as measured by the established global rankings of universities. Despite their flaws, these rankings nurture the notion that academic excellence is still concentrated in the university systems in the United States, the United Kingdom and a few other European countries. Universities in the East are only very gradually making their way into these league tables. The discrepancy between the location of academic excellence and the location of demand for tertiary qualifications may create tensions, which are only partially resolved through international student flows and e-learning. The global demand for high-quality tertiary education cannot be met by many more international students or MOOCs. As emerging countries like China or India make huge investments in creating world-class universities, it will only be a matter of time before they will catch up in quality as much as in numbers.

In the end, these data are good news. The world is rapidly increasing – and levelling – its pool of knowledge and skills. Given the state of the planet and the many challenges facing us, we will need all the brain-power we can develop. Raising human capital will be the only sustainable strategy, not only to enhance individual nations’ productivity and growth, but also to address the many global challenges before us through research, innovation and collaboration.

Links
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 31, by Corinne Heckmann and Soumaya Maghnouj
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 31, French version
Survey of Adult Skills
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm

Related blog post
French version: Talents : un vivier mondial en pleine mutation
Chart source: OECD database, UNESCO and national statistics websites for Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa (http://stats.oecd.org/)

Literacy for life

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Literacy proficiency among 16-65 year-olds:
Percentage of adults at each proficiency level in literacy

As jobs increasingly involve analysing and communicating information, individuals with poor literacy skills are more likely to find themselves at risk. Poor proficiency in these skills limits adults’ access to many basic services, to better-paying and more-rewarding jobs, and to the possibility of participating in further education and training, which is crucial for developing and maintaining skills over the working life and beyond.

On this Leaders for Literacy Day, I want to share some findings from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills. The survey finds, for example, that the median hourly wage of workers scoring at the highest levels in literacy (Level 4 or 5 in the survey) – those who can make complex inferences and evaluate subtle truth claims or arguments in written texts – is more than 60% higher than for workers scoring at Level 1 or below – those who can, at best, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to the information given in the question or directive or to understand basic vocabulary. In addition, people with poor literacy skills are more than twice as likely to be unemployed.

But the impact of literacy proficiency goes far beyond earnings and employment. In all countries that participated in the 2012 survey, individuals with lower proficiency in literacy are more likely than those with better literacy skills to report poor health, to believe that they have little impact on political processes, and not to participate in associative or volunteer activities. In most countries, they are also less likely to trust others. For example, on average across countries, individuals who perform at Level 1 in literacy are twice as likely to report low levels of trust as individuals who score at Level 4 or 5, even after accounting for their education and social background. Without trust in governments, public institutions and well-regulated markets, public support for ambitious and innovative policies is difficult to mobilise, particularly where short-term sacrifices are involved and where long-term benefits are not immediately evident.

While the evidence on the benefits of high proficiency in literacy is clear, the path towards ensuring that every individual attains at least a basic level of literacy is less so. The latest OECD PISA results show that, across OECD countries, a worrying large proportion of 15-year-old students – 18% -- have not yet attained the baseline level of proficiency as measured by PISA, meaning that they have not yet acquired the reading skills that will enable them to participate fully and productively in society.

What can we do to promote better literacy skills for all

•    Provide high-quality initial education and lifelong learning opportunities.

The impressive progress that some countries, such as Korea, have made in improving the skills of their population over successive generations shows what can be achieved. These countries have established systems that combine high-quality initial education with opportunities and incentives for the entire population to continue to develop proficiency in reading and numeracy skills, whether outside work or at the workplace, after initial education and training are completed

•    Make sure all children have a strong start in education.

PISA results show that investing in high-quality early childhood education and initial schooling, particularly for children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, can help to ensure that all children start strong and become effective learners.

•    Allow workers to adapt their learning to their lives

Programmes to enhance adult literacy need to be relevant to users and flexible enough, both in content and in how they are delivered (part-time, flexible hours, convenient location), to adapt to adults’ needs. Distance learning and open educational resources also allow users to adapt their learning to their lives

•    Identify those most at risk of poor literacy proficiency.

The most disadvantaged adults need to be not only offered, but also encouraged, to improve their proficiency. This means identifying low-skilled adults who require support, particularly foreign-language immigrants, older adults and those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and providing them with learning opportunities tailored to their needs. This is likely to require innovative approaches and significant community engagement.

•    Show how adults can benefit from better skills.

More adults will be tempted to invest in education and training if the benefits of improving their skills are made apparent to them. For example, governments can provide better information about the economic benefits, including wages net of taxes, employment and productivity, and non-economic benefits, including self-esteem and increased social interaction, of adult learning.

•    Provide easy-to-find information about adult education activities.

Less-educated individuals tend to be less aware of education and training opportunities, and may find the available information confusing. A combination of easily searchable, up-to-date online information and personal guidance and counselling services to help individuals define their own training needs and identify the appropriate programmes has often made a real difference.

Results from the Survey of Adult Skills underscore the need to move from a reliance on initial education towards fostering lifelong learning. Seeing literacy as a tool to be honed over an individual’s lifetime will also help countries to better balance the allocation of resources to maximise both economic and social outcomes.

Follow the digital dialogue: How can WE better advance literacy for all and make this the #AgeOfLiteracy?

Links:
Leaders for Literacy Day
Survey of Adult Skills
PISA 2012 Key Findings
PISA in Focus No. 1: Does participation in pre-primary education translate into better learning outcomes at school?
PISA in Focus No. 40: Does pre-primary education reach those who need it most?
Chart Source: © OECD Skilled for Life: Key Findings from the Survey of Adult Skills

Does lifelong learning perpetuate inequalities in educational opportunities?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Participation rates of 25-64-year-olds in formal and/or non-formal education

More than 40 years ago, the former French Prime Minister Edgar Faure and his team published one of the most influential educational works of the 20th century: “Learning to Be”, better known as the “Rapport Faure”, in which he mainstreamed the idea of lifelong learning. In Faure’s view, lifelong education was to become the leading educational policy principle for the future. Indeed, it became a powerful, evocative notion, nurturing dreams about “learning societies” in which people’s entire lives would be filled with opportunities to learn.

In the lifelong learning discourse, especially in its more optimistic variants in the late 20th century, there was a strong social equity argument. By creating more and better learning opportunities later in life, this argument went, the inequities in education that marked the first 25 years of a person’s life could be corrected or compensated for. A child’s schooling might be determined by his or her family background or economic and social capital; but missing out on educational opportunities early in life should not necessarily condemn individuals to be excluded from the benefits of learning later on. Second-chance or special education programmes that target low-schooled adults should ensure that providing access to education over a lifetime also results in a better redistribution of learning opportunities across society.

There is nothing wrong with beautiful ideas and dreaming of a better future. But the idea of lifelong learning encountered a fate similar to that of many dreams: the reality was much more sobering. When, in the 1990s, the first large-scale data on participation in adult education became available through the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the verdict was that adult education did not compensate for, but rather reinforced the gap between the educational haves and have-nots. Adults who were already highly literate participated in larger numbers than those who had low levels of literacy.  

Have things changed over the past 20 years? The latest Education Indicator in Focus brief reports on adult participation in post-initial education and training as revealed in the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). On average across the 24 national and sub-national entities that participated in the survey, about half of the 25-64 year-old respondents had participated in formal or non-formal adult education or training. But the average hides wide variations, which are strongly associated with such factors as the respondent’s educational attainment, skills level or employment status (see the chart above). Highly educated, high-skilled adults who are employed participate much more than low-educated, low-skilled and unemployed or inactive adults. In other words, the data gathered in 2012 show similar results to the data gathered 20 years earlier. Accumulating educational opportunities, not compensating for missed opportunities early on, seems to be the dominant dynamic in lifelong learning.

But a closer look reveals three important nuances. The first is the higher level of participation in all categories since the 1990s. Although the metrics that measured participation were not quite the same, in all countries that participated in both surveys, the participation rate increased across the board. This means that low-skilled, low-educated adults have better access to learning opportunities. In 2012, 30% of low-skilled adults reported that they had participated in some form of formal or non-formal adult education or training – double the proportion of 20 years earlier.

The second is related to the enormous differences between countries, both in the average participation rate and in who participates. The average participation rate in Nordic countries is double that of Italy and the Slovak Republic, for example. And, in general, the countries with lower average participation rates are also those with wide disparities in participation, suggesting that country differences in average participation can be explained more by differences in participation rates of low-educated and low-skilled adults than by those of better educated, high-skilled adults.

The third observation directly challenges the “accumulation” view of adult education. When looking at who participates in adult education by the parents’ level of education, the gap between individuals whose parents attained below upper secondary education versus those whose parents have a tertiary degree is small, and much smaller than the gap in the educational attainment level of the respondents themselves. The impact of one’s family background on participation in adult education seems to be significantly lower than it is during compulsory education.

Lifelong learning provides educational opportunities to those who already had a lot of them. From a pedagogical point of view, this is hardly surprising, because one of the great things about learning is that it opens the mind for more. Learning begets learning as it instils the thirst for more. Sure, the educationally better-off enjoy more of lifelong learning’s promises and benefits, but not mainly because family background or previous academic success perpetuates inequalities in educational opportunities, but because learning has created its own dynamic of desire for more. Instilling a desire for learning in initial education, as part of a broader culture of learning, is the best way to ensure that as many adults as possible take advantage of educational opportunities later in life.

Links:

Education Indicators in Focus, Issue No. 26, by Simon Normandeau and Gara Rojas González
Education Indicators in Focus, Issue No. 26, French version
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators 
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Chart Source: OECD Education at a Glance 2014: Indicator C6 (www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm).

What’s at the root of women’s absence in STEM occupations?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

If you sift through all the education data the OECD has produced over the past year, you’ll come up with decidedly mixed results when it comes to women’s (and girls’) progress. Education at a Glance 2013 told us that gender gaps in educational attainment are not only narrowing, but are, in some cases, reversing, and that women are now more likely than men to enter and complete a university-level programme. Results from the first Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), found that gender differences in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) have narrowed considerably among 16-24 year-olds, and that, among younger adults, there is, on average, no gender difference in proficiency in numeracy or literacy. In fact, in those countries where there is a difference between young men’s and young women’s levels of literacy, it is young women who score higher.

So, given these data, we have reason to be optimistic.

Unfortunately, this is only part of the story; there are also some other data to consider: Education at a Glance revealed that, among tertiary-educated adults, women still earn less than men (only in Austria, Belgium, Finland, New Zealand, Slovenia and Spain do the earnings of tertiary-educated women amount to 75% or more of men’s earnings; in Brazil, Chile and Estonia, university-educated women earn 65% or less of what similarly educated men earn). What might explain these gender-related disparities in pay?

As the publication also reported, women are still less likely than men to work full time; and 15-29 year-old women are twice as likely as men the same age to be neither in the labour force nor looking for a job. Meanwhile, the Survey of Adult Skills found that in all countries that participated in the survey, similar proportions of men (36%) as women (32%) are proficient in using ICTs. But the survey also found that in 15 of 23 participating countries, men use ICT at work significantly more often than women do – and that the extent to which problem-solving skills are used at work accounts for nearly half the gender gap in wages.

One of the most troubling of findings comes from the PISA 2012 survey of 15-year-old students. Based on information gathered from students through questionnaires, PISA found that, even among the highest-achieving girls (many of whom perform just as well as boys in mathematics), girls have self-sabotaging attitudes towards mathematics: they are more likely to feel anxious towards mathematics, and have less confidence in their own mathematical skills and in their ability to solve mathematics problems than boys.

These attitudes have repercussions later on, as can be seen in other data from Education at a Glance. That publication reports that, in 2011, an average of only 14% of women entering university-level education enrolled in science-related fields (which include science and engineering) or in manufacturing and construction, compared to 39% of men who entered this level of education in these fields. If so few women aim for the so-called STEM professions (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), there will continue to be few role models in these fields for young girls to emulate, and the cycle will simply perpetuate itself.

What all these data, combined, tell us is that we have no reason to be complacent. The gender gap in students’ self-beliefs about their abilities in mathematics has remained stable in most countries since 2003. In the short term, changing these mindsets may require making mathematics more interesting to girls, identifying and eliminating gender stereotypes in textbooks, promoting female role models, and using learning materials that appeal to girls. Over the longer term, shrinking the gender gap in mathematics performance will require the concerted effort of parents, teachers and society, as a whole, to change the clichéd notions of what boys and girls excel at, what they enjoy doing, and what they believe they can achieve.

Girls and women have made genuine and enormous gains in education and in the labour force over the past half century; but as long as girls continue to tell themselves that they’re no good at math – or science or engineering or any other subject where men have traditionally dominated – even in the face of hard evidence to the contrary, then we’re still losing half of our talent to the destructive power of stereotypes.

Links:
Wikigender
International Women's Day
OECD Gender Data Portal
OECD Insights Blog: Gender Quiz
Are boys and girls equally prepared for life?
Photo credit: Moscow, USSR - Circa 1920s students-biologists conduct a scientific experiment / @shutterstock

What teachers know and how that compares with college graduates around the world

by Andreas Schleicher
Deputy Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary General

Numeracy test scores of tertiary graduates and teachers 

The purple bar shows the middle-half of the numeracy skills of 16-64-year-old tertiary graduates (the end points are the 25th and 75th percentiles of the test scores) and the red segment shows the average numeracy scores of 16-64-year-old teachers (with a 95% confidence interval)

One of the most frequent claims I have heard from people trying to explain poor learning outcomes in their country is that their teachers come from the bottom third of their college graduates, while high-performing countries recruit their teachers from the top third. It sounds plausible, since the quality of a school system will never exceed the quality of teaching. And, surely, top school systems pay much attention to how they select their staff. They work hard to improve the performance of teachers who are struggling, they provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame good practice, and they establish intelligent pathways for teachers to grow in their careers.

But, again, does all that mean that in those countries the top third graduates chose to become teachers rather than lawyers, doctors or engineers? In the past, nobody really knew because it is very difficult to get comparative evidence on this. That has now changed. A few weeks ago, we published results from our first Survey of Adult Skills, which tested the skills of countries’ workforces – including teachers – in key areas such as numeracy, literacy and problem-solving. With a back-of-the-envelope calculation (teachers are only a small group of the 5000+ workers in each country who were tested) it is possible to compare the numeracy and literacy skills of teachers with those of other college and university graduates (see the chart above).

So what do the results show? In short, among the countries with comparable data, there is no single country where, based on their average numeracy skills, teachers are in the top third of workers with a college degree; and there is no country where they are among the bottom third of college graduates. In fact, teachers tend to come out remarkably similarly to the average worker with a college or university degree. There are just a few exceptions: In Japan and Finland, for example, the average teacher has better numeracy skills than the average college graduate while in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, the Slovak Republic and Sweden it is the other way round.

But you can look at this another way. While, in each country, teachers tend to score similarly to college graduates on our numeracy test, the numeracy skills of the workforce themselves differ substantially across countries, and so the numeracy skills of teachers vary too: Teachers in Japan and Finland come out on top, followed by their Flemish (Belgium), German, Norwegian and Dutch colleagues, while teachers in Italy, the Russian Federation, Spain, Poland, Estonia and the United States come out at the bottom.
So, how then do the numeracy skills of teachers square with student learning outcomes in mathematics? We will all find out on 3 December when results from the next PISA round, the global metric of student performance, will be published.

In the meantime, we can turn our attention to the things we already know. Unless countries have the luxury of hiring teachers from Finland or Japan, they need to think hard about making teaching a well-respected profession and a more attractive career choice  - both intellectually and financially - and invest more in teacher development and competitive employment conditions. They can also learn from high-performing education systems how to transform the work organisation in their schools by replacing administrative forms of management with professional norms that provide the status and the high-quality training, responsibility and collaborative work that go with professional work. They can develop effective systems of social dialogue, and appealing forms of employment that balance flexibility with job security, and that grant sufficient authority for schools to manage their talent. And, perhaps most crucially, many countries need to do better in attracting the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms to ensure that every student benefits from high-quality teaching. The alternative is clear: a downward spiral - from lowered standards for entry, leading to lowered confidence in the profession, resulting, in turn, in more prescriptive teaching and thus less personalisation in learning experiences –that will risk driving the most talented teachers out of the profession, that will then lower the skills of the teacher population.

Links:
PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
First result of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)
TALIS (OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey)
Chart source: © OECD