Education Policy Outlook: Vocational Pathways in Denmark, France, Germany and Spain

by Andreas Schleicher
Acting Director and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General

As Helen Keller said “alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”. In classrooms around the world, teachers encourage peer-to-peer learning in order to enhance student learning outcomes.  In the same way, fellow peers learn from each other on how to improve their educational systems.

Since early 2012, the OECD Education Policy Outlook series has produced profiles for Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and Turkey. Today, four new country profiles are being added to the roundtable discussion: Denmark, Germany, Spain and France. While each of these countries face specific educational challenges, they each have successes that can serve as a lesson for others.

Every country assessed is concerned with similar reform domains. Vocational education and training programmes (VET) is a common area to all four countries that could stand to see improvements. According to the Education Policy Outlook on Denmark, for example, VET programmes see high enrolment rates, but also high dropout rates. In 2012, only 52% of VET students completed their programmes. Denmark responded with recent reforms that improved flexibility and attractiveness so that students can tailor the programmes to fit their needs. Further educational reforms will enter into force in 2015, which aim to improve the quality and attractiveness of current programmes through increased apprenticeships and professional development.

Germany also faces challenges to their long-established VET programmes. The dual functioning system consists of 3-4 days a week spent in hands-on training in a firm and 1-2 days a week spent in the classroom. Contrary to Denmark, where the challenge lies in students’ completion of programmes, the challenge in Germany lies in the transition from compulsory education to VET programmes. Germany has already implemented a few initiatives to address this challenge. A vocational orientation programme has been implemented early on in a students’ education path as preventative support. The goal is to facilitate job creation prospects, avoid early dropout and ensure a smooth transition into VET programmes.

Education in Spain has also been faced with some challenges regarding enrolment. Spain, similar to Denmark, is seeing high student dropout rates. In order to tackle this challenge, policy makers in Spain are proposing to introduce a new reform that will allow for greater flexibility in students’ educational path. At age 15 and 16, students could be able to choose to continue with general academic courses or pursue more vocationally oriented courses. At the end of the school year, the student, again, could have the choice to take an exam to earn a traditional diploma or choose to take an exam that would allow transitions into a VET programme.

France has also implemented educational reforms geared towards VET programmes. Social inequalities are a reality that France has been faced with and in order to level the playing field somewhat, these reforms aim for increased individualism in education. Accompanying the learning experience better prepares students for higher education, ensures academic success and allows for a better understanding of the appropriate career choice after school. France, similar to Denmark, Germany and Spain, also struggles with students’ transition from education to the labour market.

Denmark, Germany, Spain and France all face challenges to transitions in different ways. Among other hurdles discussed in the reports, each country is faced with challenges to their vocational education and training programmes, such as transitions to and from VET programmes, high dropout rates, or inflexible paths.  Each country has implemented note-worthy reforms, but would be well-served to make additional improvements. The Education Policy Outlook series are valuable because they  enable countries to learn from each other. But, more importantly, recognition from peers is a positive way in which we can congratulate others on their achievements, and encourage future progress.

Links:
Education Policy Outlook
Country profiles
OECD Work on Vocational Education and Training (VET)
Image credit: © Copyright Sasha Chebotarev

Time for the U.S. to Reskill?

by Viktoria Kis
Analyst, Skills Beyond School Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

A few decades ago young people in the United States were among the most educated in the world, but other countries have caught up. Today, despite still being relatively highly educated, the skills of adults lag behind those of adults in many other countries. This has been revealed by the new international Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), which measured the skills of adults in 24 countries.

A newly published report, Time for the U.S. to Reskill?, looks at the U.S. and draws some challenging policy conclusions. One in six adults in the U.S., about 36 million people, has weak literacy skills – they can, at best, read short texts and understand basic vocabulary. In Japan the comparable figure is one in 20. In the U.S. nearly one in three have weak numeracy skills against a cross country average of one in five.

These results are not impressive, but what is really worrying is that there are few signs of improvement. In fact the average basic skills of young adults are not very different from older persons, but if you look around the world you see a very different picture – while the overall results of the U.S. are similar to that of Poland, young Poles have better skills than their U.S. counterparts. That means that if nothing else changes, the basic skills of the Polish workforce will progressively leave the U.S. workforce behind.

Unsurprisingly, the school system appears to be one of the roots of the problem. PISA assessments show U.S. teenagers have mediocre basic skills and these are now reflected in the skills of young adults. Dramatic improvements in initial schooling are needed to turn this around. But the millions of adults have already slipped through the net also need help through effective learning opportunities for young adults, policy measures linked to employability and adult learning programs adapted to diverse needs. Not least, it is crucial to build awareness of the implications of weak basic skills, the costs of inaction and the need to tackle the challenge in the interests of all.

More encouragingly, some of the results point to pathways of opportunity. Participation in adult education is relatively high in the U.S. and many of the low-skilled who for one reason or another did not participate in learning activities express an interest in learning. The results of the survey provide much food for thought and show that this moment is also an opportunity for the U.S. – an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of adult skills, take action and change course for the better.

Links:
Time for the U.S. to Reskill? What the Survey of Adult Skills Says
OECD Press release: Concerted Action Necessary to Address U.S. Adult Skills Challenge, says OECD
Presentation: Time for the U.S. to Reskill? What the Survey of Adult Skills Says
OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills (2013)
Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)
For more on skills and skills policies around the world, visit:
http://skills.oecd.org
Photo credit: American construction © Shuttersctock

Learning from other countries’ experiences in education

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

The data that the OECD collects can help countries map their strengths and weaknesses in education. But what’s the best way to address those weaknesses? Rather than prescribe actions, the OECD often prefers to show policy makers what everyone else is doing and how successful those initiatives have been. A new OECD series of individual Education Policy Outlook Country Profiles does just that: each profile describes how an individual country is responding to key challenges to improve the effectiveness of its education system. The idea behind the series is to offer policy makers easily accessible profiles of countries’ education systems, and the policies adopted to improve those systems, that could inspire reforms at home.

For example, the profile on Australia reports that, while the country is a top PISA performer and has high completion rates in upper secondary and tertiary education, its PISA scores have not improved since 2000. In addition to targeting teacher and school leadership quality and evaluation and assessment, the country has been focusing on defining a more transparent and fairer funding model for schools presented recently in a national plan for school improvement.

New Zealand, also a top PISA performer, has some of the most autonomous schools and universities of all OECD countries. A key challenge for the country has been better integrating the growing indigenous population in its schools. In response, the government has adopted targeted education strategies for Maori and Pasifika Islanders, and defined national standards and a national curriculum for English and Maori schools.

In a different hemisphere, Ireland, which is an average PISA performer and has a growing immigrant population, adopted a policy in 2005 to support low-performing schools, Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, which has helped to increase the number of students who complete secondary education in participating schools. A wider national literacy and numeracy strategy was introduced more recently to increase instruction time in reading and mathematics and offer professional-development activities for teachers and school leaders. Perhaps the country’s greatest challenge now is ensuring that these programmes do not suffer as public spending shrinks as a result of the financial crisis.

In the Czech Republic, where PISA performance in reading, mathematics and science has been deteriorating, the government has introduced evaluation and assessment initiatives that include national standardised tests. To improve the quality of teachers and school leaders, it has raised the salaries of young teachers, introduced a new teacher-career system, and changed the process for appointing and dismissing school leaders.

These four examples alone show how governments around the world are trying to improve their education systems to better prepare their young citizens for full participation in the global, knowledge-based economy. Every six months, the OECD will publish a new set of education policy country profiles as part of its Education Policy Outlook series. The series can be a valuable source of information – and inspiration – for policy makers everywhere.

Links:
Education Policy Outlook
Country profiles
Image credit: © Copyright Sasha Chebotarev

How much do teachers cost?

by Eric Charbonnier and Etienne Albiser
Analysts, Directorate for Education and Skills

Can increasing the salaries of teachers lead to better learning outcomes? Does reducing class size have a positive effect on learning outcomes? Given the current background of tight public budgets, governments seeking to ensure value for money must ask themselves these questions before increasing the salary cost of teacher per student, as teachers account for a major part of education expenditure.

The latest edition of Education Indicators in Focus highlights that the salary cost of teacher per student is a combination of four factors: teachers’ salary, class size, the number of teaching hours in front of a classroom and the number of hours of instruction received by students.

Countries that have similar levels of expenditure on education do not necessarily have similar educational policies and practices. A given level of expenditure may result from a different combination of these factors. One country may pay higher salaries to teachers while another may have smaller class sizes and thus more teachers to pay.

Between 2000 and 2010, increases in the salary cost of teacher per student were mainly influenced by changes in teachers’ salaries and class size
 With the exception of France and Italy, the salary cost of teacher per student at the primary and lower secondary levels increased between 2000 and 2010, and on average it increased by one-third and one-quarter, respectively (for countries for which data is available). In the majority of cases, this increase was due to an increase in the level of teacher compensation (16% at the primary level and 14% at the lower secondary level). The largest salary increases (more than 50%, in constant prices) were seen in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Turkey.

During the same period, class size decreased, by 14% (primary) and 7% (lower secondary), but this was often the result of changing demographics and not of a change in education policies.

Little change in instruction time and teaching time
With the exception of a few countries, there was little or no change with respect to the two other variables (instruction time and teaching time) during the same period. This may be due to the political sensitivity of reforms in these areas. At the primary level, teaching time increased most significantly in the Czech Republic (200 hours) and instruction time increased the most in Iceland (by nearly 200 hours).

The higher the level of education, the higher the salary cost of teacher per student, with great disparities between countries
Spending on education rises sharply with the level of education. The OECD average salary cost of teachers is USD 2 307 per primary student, USD 2 856 per lower secondary student and USD 3 301 per upper secondary student. In some countries, the differences between the different levels of education is quite small (in Chile and Hungary it is less than USD 50) while in others it is quite important (exceeding USD 2 000 in the Flemish Community in Belgium).

In general, teachers of higher levels of education earn more money than teachers at lower levels. In addition, teaching time generally decrease as the level of education increases (meaning that more teachers are necessary to teach the same number of students).

Wrapping up
Reforms relating to these four factors have an impact on education expenditure and may also affect learning outcomes. However, the link between expenditure and outcomes is not straightforward. PISA results show that between 2000-2009, the performance of 15-years olds did not vary significantly in the majority of countries, regardless of the changes we have seen in instruction time, teaching time, class size and teacher compensation. What is more, changes relating to pedagogy may have an impact on outcomes without necessarily having an impact on expenditure.

The bottom line is that in the past ten years, increasing teachers’ salaries and reducing class size have not led to better learning outcomes in the majority of countries. This raises the question: has all of the additional money been well spent?

For more information
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2012: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012
Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2012:  Indicator B7 (www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012)

Implementing educational reform in China

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

On the invitation of China's National Institute for Educational Sciences (NIES), I spent some days in Beijing to learn more about education policy and practice in China. As always, this was a very rewarding experience. I met with various teams of educational policy-analysts, researchers and educators in Beijing to provide advice on their work and discuss global trends in education policy and practice. They do not seem to get tired of learning from other countries and cultures as systematically as possible, with strong and consistent efforts not only to do discipline-based international benchmarking but also to incorporate the results of that benchmarking into policy and practice. The Institute is just finalising an impressive study on reform trends in the G20 members, and that work is no longer about emulating what other G20 nations are doing but about learning from them and putting together a design for China that can be superior to anything their researchers have seen anywhere.

While they look carefully at the World’s leading economies and education systems, they are all too aware of the widening income gaps and the uphill struggle they face in providing children in rural areas with a foundation for success, not to speak about the massive skill gaps in the adult population. A significant part of their policy and research agenda is geared towards education in rural transformation, quality, social inclusion and the social welfare of children. Efforts since 2001 to consolidate schools in sparsely populated areas, with the aim to create learning environments that are sustainable and of higher quality have run into real difficulties in the implementation process and the handling of the political economy, to the extent that the Ministry just announced suspending further mergers. This, however, is an area where time is working against them; the rapid demographic changes will make it harder and harder to provide an adequate schooling experience for the most disadvantaged children, not to speak of depriving students of opportunities to see a bigger part of the world - and their teachers of much-needed opportunities to improve pedagogical practice through learning from a more diverse range of colleagues and facilities that come with larger school units.

Quite in contrast to this stands the rather successful curriculum reform. This reform has not just been about updating and repackaging educational content, but aims at helping students find out who they are, where they want to go in life, and how they will get there, in a rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain world. Clearly, the new curriculum will not unfold its full impact on student learning and teacher behavior before China tackles its exam culture that remains narrowly focused on rote learning. But still, there seem signs that the reform is beginning to positively influence teacher development, institutional innovation, classroom culture, research culture and the management culture of Chinese education. It was interesting to learn about the trajectory from designing the reform at the end of the 1990s, through carefully piloting it and then progressively rolling it out (with much emphasis on training teachers and school principals), up to extending it to full implementation at the upper secondary level just this year. That’s a full 16 years to align policies and practices across the different aspects of the school system, ensure their coherence and build capacity for progressive implementation and refinement. Contrast that with most curriculum reforms in the West, where leaders feel they need to get this through in one electoral period, and where we often end up with wave after wave of curriculum reform passing above the heads of those who need to deliver them in classrooms at the frontline.

Read the second blog by Andreas Schleicher: China – what will remain when the dust around economic expansion has settled

Links:
OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
Video Series: Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education 
OECD Department for Education
Follow Andreas Schleicher on twitter: @SchleicherEDU
Photo credit: China blackboard /Shutterstock

China – what will remain when the dust around economic expansion has settled?

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

I recently met Vice Mayor Fu Yonglin of Chengdu, one of the key drivers behind the rapid educational transformation that his municipality has seen over the last years. I was struck by his take on how China’s power and role in the World would - when all the dust about economic expansion will have settled - not be primarily determined by what and how many goods China produces, but by what China will be able to contribute to the global knowledge pool and to global culture.

In a country where the average graduate takes home a salary of RMB 2900, roughly what a maid in the main metropolitan areas gets after three meals, money is clearly not the only motivator for the immense value which society places on education, and it seems China’s political and social leaders continue to be able to persuade their citizens to value education, their future, more than consumption today. Interesting were also the ways in which he consolidated the need to preserve and build on the past (‘nothing comes from nothing, everything has a history and evolves from there’) with the need to embrace change and prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve problems that we don’t yet know will arise. He was well aware of the learning curve the Chinese have in front of themselves here, the essential need for China to play an active role in globalization processes, and the importance of capitalizing on the potential of education as the key enabler to engage with different cultures, fields of knowledge and languages. He had seen the impact which PISA has had on educational reform and internationalization in Shanghai and was keen to get his province involved. His province is making big investments in other aspects of internationalization too (if you get yourself accepted as a foreign student in Chengdu and stay for more than 5 months, the municipality will take care of your expenses).

Read the related blog by Andreas Schleicher on Implementing educational reform in China

Links:
OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
Video Series: Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education 
OECD Department for Education
Follow Andreas Schleicher on twitter: @SchleicherEDU
Photo credit: Chinese schoolboy /Shutterstock

Got any good ideas about how to improve education?

by Pablo Zoido

Analyst, Early Childhood and Schools Division, Directorate for Education

Do you have an idea about how to improve quality and equity in education in your country or region, but need some time and support to research that idea? You might find what you’re looking for through the OECD’s new Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship Programme.

In effect, the OECD is holding a “competition for ideas” on education policy. As Andreas Schleicher, deputy director of the OECD’s education directorate, puts it, the Fellowship “provides an opportunity to identify and nourish the best available ideas”. The Fellowship, named after a dynamic and admired former head of the OECD’s education team and funded by the Open Society Foundations, offers a chance for qualified candidates to work with international experts on education policy, including during a stay at the OECD’s headquarters in Paris.

Prospective candidates can come from any field of study and from anywhere in the world; those from emerging economies are strongly encouraged to apply. Only online applications will be accepted and proposals will be judged based on their originality, promise and scientific rigour.

We look forward to hearing your ideas!

Links: 

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
Photo credit: Idea / Shutterstock