The ever growing generation gap in the classroom

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

It is perfectly normal that teachers and students are not of the same age. In contrast to other public services, it is a distinctive feature of education that the professionals, i.e. the teachers, are older than their clients, i.e. the students. One could think of education as an institutionalised dialogue between generations, as a social space in which they interact. Through education, societies transmit the knowledge, skills, culture and values of a society from one generation to another. Nevertheless, students are not just passive recipients of former generations’ knowledge and values, but also transform and build upon them, thus influencing the development of societies. Especially in a period of rapid social change, the dialogue between generations is critical to ensure that no generation gets left behind. Across OECD countries, some schools take this role very seriously and even try to organise opportunities for individuals of all ages to meet and exchange, for example by inviting grandparents to school or by welcoming senior members of the community to interact with younger students.

From an educational point of view, the age of teachers is an important variable in the quality of teaching and learning environments. Ideally, students should be able to interact with a variety of generations of teachers. Each age group adds a specific dimension to the learning process. Older teachers bring quality associated with their experience, both with regard to professional experience and wider life experience. And younger teachers bring innovation associated with recent training and the enthusiasm of youth itself. Adolescents generally connect and identify better with younger teachers and expect that they will have a greater understanding of their lifeworld and the challenges related to growing up in modern societies. Education systems benefit from a balanced age distribution among teachers.

The new issue of the Education Indicators in Focus series presents the most recent statistical evidence on the age of teachers. The data show a worrisome trend. The average age of teachers in secondary schools across OECD countries continues to increase. A male secondary school teacher’s age was 44 on average in 2000; and 45 in 2011. For a female secondary school teacher, the average age in 2000 was 42, while it was 43 in 2011. Correspondingly, the share of older teachers (>50 years old) in the teaching work force also increased. Among secondary school teachers, the share of older teachers increased from 35% to 39% for males, and from 28% to 34% for females. These changes may not seem very dramatic, but they imply that every year a typical secondary school teacher is one month older than the year before. Differences between countries are large: in 2011, 55% of the male secondary school teachers in Germany were over age 50, 52% in Iceland, 55% in The Netherlands and even 67% in Italy.

An ageing teaching force leads to various policy challenges, such as upward pressures on the salary mass, peaks in teacher replacement and recruitment, or increased needs to invest in training and professional development. From an economic point of view, countries would be better off with a more balanced age distribution of teachers. But maybe more important are the implications for the quality of the teaching and learning process. Older teachers have the experiential knowledge and skills which potentially make them excellent teachers. But if the professional development is lacking to enrich their experiential knowledge and skills with the best recent research and evidence from innovative practice, older teachers risk sticking to what has worked well in the past and may have the tendency to sidestep innovation.

No one would accept being treated in hospital by a medical doctor who would not have updated his knowledge and skills since he or she left college 20 years ago. The teaching profession also would benefit from balancing experiential knowledge embodied by older teachers and innovation-oriented, research-informed knowledge which comes with younger teachers. In order to connect and identify with schooling, adolescent students need teachers who can read and understand their behaviour, their issues, their culture and values, teachers whose world view is not too remote from their own. It is difficult to imagine that, with more than half of their teachers 35 years older than they are, adolescent students can identify with school and engage in high-quality teaching and interactive learning.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 20, Dirk Van Damme
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2013, Indicator D5 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932851991)

Our Ageing Societies

by Tracey Burns
Analyst and Project Leader, Directorate for Education and Skills

The G8 leaders met in London in mid-December with a special goal: developing a cure for dementia by 2025. Finding a cure for dementia has become a social and economic imperative. Dementia currently affects 44 million people worldwide, a number forecasted to reach 135 million by 2050. According to the World Health Organisation, the disease cost the world 439 billion euros in 2010. In addition to these stark figures, there is a psychological toll: dementia has replaced cancer as the disease people fear the most.

Education has a role to play: Higher levels of education can impede the onset of dementia. And although cognitive abilities generally tend to decline with age, it is possible to slow or even reverse the downtrend. A just released Trends Shaping Education Spotlight looks at the role of education in our ageing societies.

Average life expectancy across OECD countries has risen from 69 years in 1970 to an average of 79.7 years in 2010. By 2100, the median age across all OECD and BRIC (Brazil, the Russian Federation, India and China) countries is forecasted to reach 45 years, up from 38 years in 2010. As the average age increases, so too does the proportion of the elderly (i.e. those over 80 years). In fact, there will be more than twice as many people over the age of 80 in 2050 as there are now.

Although this may seem like an issue for the distant future, some of these concerns are immediate. One example is the rising age of teachers across most of the OECD. In 2011, 40% or more of secondary school teachers were at least 50 years old in Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Over 50% of all secondary teachers in Germany and Italy were over 50 years of age (in Italy the figure is 60%). Given these figures, attracting and retaining new teachers is an immediate policy priority for most OECD countries.

In the medium term, this demographic transformation will have important implications for our education systems. Overall, people who have completed more years of education tend to have better health and well-being. Education has a direct positive impact on healthier behaviours and preferences, as well as indirect effects on income, opportunities and self-confidence.

Governments across the OECD have been promoting a lifelong learning culture through policies aimed at improving work-based skills development, vocational training and adult education. This effort is needed: results from the Survey of Adult Skills demonstrate that proficiency reaches a peak at around 30 years of age and then declines steadily, with the oldest age groups displaying lower levels of proficiency than the youngest age groups.

A promising example of how lifelong learning can be promoted comes from Japan, a rapidly ageing society with the highest life expectancy at birth among the OECD countries. In 2006, the government amended its Basic Act on Education to integrate the concept of lifelong learning, ensuring support for its municipalities with funding and guidance. Lifelong learning councils were established at the prefecture level and by 2012, 18 metropolises and 996 municipalities had action plans in place to promote lifelong learning. Japan’s education ministry is maintaining the programme’s momentum by providing information on good practices, and at the local level, some municipality leaders have formed an alliance for information-exchange and policy research.

This is just one example of how governments and communities are coming together to increase participation in formal and informal education throughout a person’s lifetime. Lifelong learning will keep our populations healthier, more active and more connected to society. It will also allow the increasingly large proportion of the elderly to enjoy their later years to the fullest. As our governments and research institutes do their best to find a cure for dementia by 2025, we can challenge ourselves to help as we can: by reinforcing lifelong learning, and continuing work on education, ageing, and well-being.

Links:
Trends Shaping Education Spotlight #1 - Ageing Societies
Trends Shaping Education 2013 publication
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation CERI
Photo credit: Senior woodcrafter @ Shutterstock

Older, wiser, better: ageing workforce and fast-track societies

by Julie Harris,
Consultant, Directorate for Education

Simple fact: older workers are leaving the labour force earlier than they did in the 60s and 70s. The retirement age declined steadily across OECD countries from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Over the past decade this drop has levelled off, with some countries experiencing a slight upturn. Despite this, apart from Japan and Korea, it is still significantly lower than in the 1960s and 1970s.

At the same time retirement age has been declining, life expectancy has been increasing. In many OECD countries, workers who retire can expect to live another two decades.

If this situation does not change, there will be twice the number of retirees per worker in OECD countries by 2050. You don't need to be an economist to understand that such an eventuality would pose a serious threat to living standards and tear deeply into the fabric of the social safety net.

So, what to do? How can governments move to remedy this situation? And what can companies do to better take advantage of senior employees' skills?

The OECD Skills Strategy states that both governments and companies should work to discourage early retirement. To keep older workers in the labour market, many countries have eliminated early retirement schemes, increased the official pensionable age and corrected distorted financial incentives to retire early. To tackle demand-side barriers to employing older workers, some countries have tried to balance labour costs with productivity by reducing employers’ social security contributions or providing wage subsidies for older workers. Lifelong learning and targeted training, especially in mid-career, can improve employability in later life as well and discourage early withdrawal from the labour market. A rise in the pensionable age also lengthens the period of time over which employers could recover training costs; hence, an attractive incentive to motivate more employers and older employees to invest in training.

Anne-Sophie Parent, Secretary General of AGE Platform Europe, an NGO that promotes the interests of people over 50 across Europe, is convinced that scrapping the mandatory retirement age is key to increasing the employability of older workers. This fixed age, she explains, is like the expiry date on a pot of yoghurt: the closer it gets, the more you're inclined to think of it as no good.

According to the OECD, employees between 25 and 54 are twice as likely to take part in job training as those over 55, confirming employers’ unwillingness to invest in senior staff. Removing the mandatory age would help make employers see older employees as valuable, she argues, giving them an incentive to invest in their skills through training.

Participation in job-related training over the last month, by age group, 2009
(As a percentage of the employed in the age group)

If doing away with the mandatory age is crucial, governments must also address certain significant workplace problems to help older workers get a foothold in the job market. Rodolphe Delacroix, Senior Consultant at consulting firm Towers Watson, cites the case of Finland, which pushed back the average retirement age three years by tackling work-related stress, strenuousness of work and work-life balance.

Delacroix adds that governments can use social and fiscal incentives to entice companies to hire people over 50 and set up progressive retirement plans that allow older employees to reduce their working hours over a number of years. These could replace early retirement plans, which have been the norm in countries such as France.

Companies, for their part, must make career planning an integral part of their human resources policy early on, he maintains. They need to manage the end of employees' careers well to ensure that knowledge and skills are passed on to younger employees.

Older workers are perfectly positioned to help countries maximise the use of skills, as outlined in the OECD Skills Strategy. They can develop relevant skills of younger workers, supply their skills to the labour market and put them to effective use. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how they can't be a boon to our crisis-ridden economies.

Links:
OECD Employment Outlook
Ageing and Employment Policies
Ageing and Skills: A Review and Analysis of Skill Gain and Skill Loss Over the Lifespan and Over Time
Data visualisation: Labour force participation by gender and age, 2010
Live Longer, Work Longer: Statistics on average effective age of retirement
Learn more about ageing societies on: http://www.skills.oecd.org
Photo credit: Young and old businessman / Shutterstock
Chart source:  Calculations based on the EU-LFS.