Skills will drive inclusive economic growth in Portugal

by Andreas Schleicher

Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Skills and human capital are the bedrock upon which Portugal is building a new bridge to growth.

Portugal is recovering from the most serious economic and financial crisis the country has experienced in recent history. The reform agenda over the past few years has been ambitious, comprehensive and challenging.

Awareness is now growing among policy makers, employers and households that Portugal’s future economic and social well-being will depend upon securing equitable and high-quality education and jobs while promoting innovation and entrepreneurship.

Portugal is on the road to recovery

Signs of Portugal’s recovery can be seen across the board. Youth unemployment and long-term joblessness rates are falling, even if levels remain too high. Job creation is picking up, and the majority of new jobs created in 2014 were on permanent contracts, which is a good indication that Portugal’s longstanding labour market dualism has been reduced by recent reforms. Educational attainment levels and learning outcomes are rising steadily, as reflected in Portugal’s PISA scores which now approach the OECD average. Measures have been introduced to stimulate entrepreneurship, and in 2014 Lisbon was selected as one of the European Entrepreneurial Regions (EER), in recognition of its strategies to promote entrepreneurship and spread innovation among small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Building a shared diagnosis of Portugal’s skills challenges 

We know that in countries where a significant proportion of adults have poor skills, it is difficult to introduce productivity-enhancing technologies and new ways of working. This, in turn, stalls innovation and improvements in living standards.

Yet skills affect more than just earnings and employment. Data from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) show that in all countries, adults with lower literacy proficiency are far more likely than those with better literacy skills to report poor health, to perceive themselves as objects rather than actors in political processes, and to have less trust in others.

Put simply, a lack of proficiency in foundation skills prevents people from fully participating in society and democracy.

In the course of 2014, we have worked closely with Portugal on a collaborative project to build a more effective skills strategy. Throughout this initial diagnostic phase, we have witnessed strong commitment to improving Portugal’s skills outcomes across central and local governments, employers and trade unions, as well as education and training providers.

Today, the results of this work are published as the OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Portugal. The Prime Minister of Portugal, Mr Pedro Passos Coelho, will be officially launching the report in Lisbon together with the OECD Secretary-General, Mr Ángel Gurría. This is a strong signal of the importance afforded to skills policies in Portugal.

Portugal’s 12 skills challenges

The diagnostic report applies the framework of the OECD Skills Strategy to identify 12 skills challenges for Portugal as it seeks to maximise its future skills potential. These skills challenges were distilled from a series of four interactive workshops held in Lisbon and Porto in 2014, which engaged a wide range of stakeholders. The report includes a rich set of evidence from OECD and other sources, and offers concrete examples of how other countries are tackling similar skills challenges.

So what are the main skills challenges facing Portugal today?

With regard to developing relevant skills, the report concludes that Portugal should focus its efforts on:
- Improving equity and quality in education
- Strengthening the responsiveness of VET to labour market demands
- Targeting adult education and lifelong learning towards the low-skilled

When it comes to activating its skills supply, Portugal will need to tackle the challenges of:
- Reducing youth unemployment and NEETs
- Increasing labour market re-entry for the long-term unemployed
- Reducing barriers to employment

Furthermore, Portugal could make more effective use of the skills it has by: 
- Promoting entrepreneurship
- Stimulating innovation and creating high-skilled jobs
- Providing employers with incentives to engage in skills development, especially SMEs

Finally, Portugal could improve the overall governance of the skills system by: 
- Financing a more equitable and efficient skills system
- Adjusting decision-making power to meet local needs
- Building capacity and partnerships for evidence-based skills policy

Moving from diagnosis to action 

Taken individually, these challenges may not be new or surprising to the people of Portugal. Yet by laying them out side by side, the need for a more systemic approach to skills policies emerges clearly.

As the diagnostic report demonstrates, skills policies are not just a matter for one ministry. Tackling skills challenges requires a whole of government approach. Moreover, skills are everybody’s business. Stakeholders and civil society need to play an active role in developing and implementing skills policies that are sustainable over the long term. 

By bringing together stakeholders, ministries and agencies to map out Portugal’s skills challenges, this project has built shared insights and deeper mutual understanding. The next step for Portugal will be to decide which challenges should be tackled as a priority and to develop concrete plans for action. This will mean building on the many reforms already underway and the continued engagement of all skills stakeholders.

Skills and human capital are the bridge to a more inclusive and prosperous future for the people of Portugal. The OECD stands ready to support Portugal as it designs and implements better skills policies for better jobs and better lives.

Links:
OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Portugal 
OECDSkills Strategy
Survey of Adult Skills
For more on skills and skills policies around the world, visit: skills.oecd.org
See also the country page on skills for Portugal

Photo credit: The 25 de Abril bridge over Tagus river and big Christ monument in Lisbon at sunset, Portugal/ @Shutterstock 

Related blog posts on skills:

Boosting growth through better foundation skills

Supporting social and emotional skills to balance our lives

Skill up or lose out

Let's talk about 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).