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).

Hiroshima – from symbol of human destruction to leader in educational reform

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

I spent two days in Hiroshima, discussing education reform and global policy trends with prefectural leaders and the academic community. This city, target of a simply unimaginable attack on human mankind 59 years ago, is now the birthplace of some of the World’s most innovative education policies and practices.

No building, no tree and no other remainder of human activity in this city is older than 59 years. As school principal Kadoshima drives by an office tower on our way to his school, he explains this had been the place where his grandmother and two uncles had been burned alive like most other residents of the area, leaving nothing but a shadow on the floor. But I am also told how many of the survivors left wandering between life and death for the ensuing months and years have envied their fate. His father and his uncle were the only ones who remained from the family, as they had happened to spend the 6th of August in 1945 with classmates in the country side.

As we arrive at Hiroshima Nagisa High School, we meet a group of cheerful children on the school’s playing field. But what looks like casual play is actually part of a carefully planned and sequenced curriculum designed to help students develop their five senses; to find themselves and join others in life, work and citizenship; and to develop autonomy and identity that is social and cognisant of pluralism.

Classroom after classroom I observe deep and intense learning with a curriculum characterised by rigor, focus and coherence, and with lots of lively interaction both among students and with their teachers. Mathematics and the arts are not seen here as competing for scarce student learning time, but as reinforcing each other. Much of the school’s effort is devoted to making learning central and encouraging student engagement, to foster lifelong skills-oriented learning instead of exams-focused drill, to ensure that learning is social and collaborative, and to promote connections across subjects and activities in the school. I find Rudyard Brettargh from Australia and Olen Peterson from the United States co-teaching an English class, and that again is not by accident, but the idea is to show students that there is not just a single, but multiple ways to speak a language.

Many of the school’s pedagogical approaches are designed to construct experiences in learning, over exclusively intellectual engagement. In one classroom I meet a group of students cooking Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima’s most popular local dish, but they are not all doing the same, each student is creating and preparing their own variant of the dish. Students experience that they won’t know exactly how things will unfold, that they will be surprised, and that they will make mistakes and learn from them along the way.

During these days, a group of students from the United States is visiting Nagisa High School and they have immediately immersed into all aspects of the school life. Likewise, Nagisa High School students frequently venture outside. Principal Kadoshima shows us pictures from the many field trips his student have taken to other countries and cultures, or simply to the world of work and other social contexts in Japan. The meaning of all this to prepare global citizens for a world in which most people will need to collaborate with people with diverse views, experiences and cultural origins; and a world in which people’s lives will be affected by events that transcend national boundaries, and the authority of national jurisdictions to address them. During these trips, students learn to engage with dilemmas and controversy that result from globalization which have no singular solution, but where awareness of different perspectives on these dilemmas is essential to finding the common ground necessary to solve them. They learn to understand the global economic, social and political environmental forces that shape our lives; and to develop the skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to bring about change and to take control of their own lives.

Not least, the school is stretching students not just intellectually but also physically. One picture shows an exhausted group of students lying on a bridge at dawn, after walking 44 kilometres through the night. The aim is to strengthen resilience, the capacity to cope in an imbalanced world, recognising that the world exists in constant disequilibrium - trying, failing, adapting, learning and evolving in endless cycles. And Nagisa High School shows that learning is at the centre of resilience. This is all about helping vulnerable people, organizations and systems persist, perhaps even thrive, amid unforeseeable disruptions. At the individual level, this can shape the reach of social networks, the quality of close relationships, access to resources, but also beliefs and habits of mind, including the disposition to assess, take and manage risks. At the aggregate level, it can support Japanese communities and institutions with greater flexibility, intelligence and responsiveness to the rapid economic and social changes which Japan is facing.

Links:
Hiroshima Nagisa High School
Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education Video
Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education - Lessons from PISA for Japan
PISA 2012 Country-Specific overview on Japan
Photo Credit: Hiroshima Nagisa High School

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

Grade expectations

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

They’re a source of both anxiety and pride, but school marks can also have long-term consequences for students. Most teachers reward student achievement, but also the skills, attitudes, habits and behaviours that are necessary for lifelong learning. However, as this month’s PISA in Focus  points out, the tendency of teachers to award higher marks to girls and socio-economically advantaged students than to boys and disadvantaged students – even if they perform equally well in school and have similar positive attitudes towards learning – is cause for some concern.

Marks help to promote student learning by informing students about their progress, alerting teachers about their students’ needs, and certifying the degree to which students have mastered the tasks and competencies valued by teachers and schools. Schools and teachers recognise this: more than 95% of students in the countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009 – except Korea – attend a school that measures student achievement through teacher-prepared tests, student portfolios or student projects. In most cases, students receive feedback on these assessments in the form of school marks.

As PISA results show, few countries and economies share the same marking schemes; in fact, even schools within a country may have different ways of marking. In addition, different education systems establish their own ways of informing students that they have failed a class or an assessment. In some countries, the marking scheme allows for only one possible value for failing. This means that students who fail do not know how far they are from meeting the passing criteria. This is the case in Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and the Slovak Republic. Other countries establish the passing mark somewhere in the middle of the marking scale, which gives students some idea of how far they are from passing. In Ireland, for example, the grading scale ranges from 0 to 100, but only scores below 40 are considered unsatisfactory or failing. In some countries, such as Austria, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic, the remaining values on the marking scale reflect the quality of the passing mark in clear and distinct labels, such as “sufficient”, “good”, “very good” and “excellent”; meanwhile Belgium (Flemish Community), Italy and Ireland use a wider array of numeric values (e.g. 50 to 100, 10 to 20 or 6 to 10).  Analyses suggest that countries and economies that have a grading system with a limited number of values and use labels that refer to clear categories of achievement (e.g. “sufficient”, “good”, “very good”, “excellent”) can better differentiate students’ performance.

Students often base their expectations of further education and careers on the marks they receive in school; and school systems use marks to guide their selection of students for academically oriented programmes and, later, for entry into university. So whenever teachers reward – or punish – certain student characteristics that are unrelated to learning they may inadvertently shape a student’s future according to factors that have nothing to do with the student’s abilities, talents and personal goals.

That’s why it’s a good idea for school systems to promote marking practices that reward the behaviours and attitudes that help students to learn – so that more students can make the grade.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 26: Grade Expectations
Grade Expectations: How Marks and Education Policies Shape Students' Ambitions 
Photo credit: Test score sheet / Shutterstock

Second chances in education

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

We all know how important the first years of formal education are; but what if the education provided during those years isn’t the best it can be? Are students forever penalised? A study in Canada that followed the 15-year-old students who had participated in PISA in 2000 and re-assessed their reading skills 9 years later shows that where education and training opportunities are readily available, deficits in initial education do not doom individuals to poor reading proficiency for the rest of their lives. In fact, on average, the young people surveyed gained 57 score points on the PISA reading scale between the ages of 15 and 24 – the equivalent of more than one year of school.

As this month’s PISA in Focus relates, those students who had performed poorly when they were 15 improved the most during the 9-year period; yet, for the most part, they were not able to fully catch up with their peers. For example, in 2000, when students who participated in PISA were 15, girls outscored boys in reading by an average of 32 points; by 2009, that gap had narrowed to 18 points. Similarly in PISA 2000, socio-economically advantaged students outscored their disadvantaged peers by more than 65 points; by 2009 that gap had narrowed to 50 points.

But one group of students did close the gap entirely: students born outside of Canada. At the age of 15, those born in Canada outperformed those born outside of the country by more than 20 score points – 545 to 524 score points, respectively. By the age of 24, young people with an immigrant background scored on a par with those who had been born in the country – around 600 score points, on average. This significant finding reflects the effectiveness of Canada’s education and integration policies.

The Canadian study identifies several ways that initial disadvantage in education can be overcome. Improvements in reading proficiency are strongly related to time spent in the education system, regardless of the educational pathways individuals follow. For instance, the improvement in reading skills among young adults who had spent 4 or more years in school after age 15 was about the same, whether they had actually completed a degree or not by age 24. Those who never completed a programme above high school, but who studied for 4 or more years after high school, improved their reading skills by 70 score points. Those who did complete a university degree improved their reading skills by 60 score points.

There is no doubt that greater proficiency at early ages is an advantage for further education and creates opportunities for additional studies that may not be as readily available to low-achievers. While taking the most common path – through secondary and then directly on to university-level education – appears to maximise improvements in reading proficiency, not everyone takes that route. The evidence in this unique study shows that learning does not end with compulsory education. Second-chance programmes and flexibility in education systems can help young people who have not had the advantages of supportive learning environments early in their lives to improve their reading proficiency later on.


Links:

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/

PISA in Focus No. 19: Is there really such a thing as a second chance in education? 

Photo credit:  Stack of books / 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.