Lessons for the UK

by Ken Manson 
Co-ordinator (Communications), UK Commission for Employment and Skills

Simon Field is an expert on the comparative analysis of vocational education and training (VET) systems. He leads the OECD’s policy review of VET systems, and is lead author on the OECD’s VET policy publications. I spoke with him about the upcoming launch of the Skills Beyond School review of post-secondary VET systems based on studies in 20 OECD countries.

Skills Beyond School Synthesis Report will be published on the 13th November, and will hold its publication launch at the VET Conference at the Skills Show at the NEC in Birmingham. For information on how to attend, see the Vocational Education and Training Conference website.

Ken Manson: Could you talk a little bit about the background to the report and some of the individual country studies you've done that have fed into this synthesis? 

Simon Field: We have done a lot of work on vocational education and training (VET) at the upper secondary school level, where a number of European countries have substantial apprenticeship systems. We published a report called Learning for Jobs back in 2010 which drew that together. One of the things that came out of that was the importance in many countries of post-secondary vocational systems.

First of all, if you go to some of the countries with very strong classical dual apprenticeship systems, like the Germany and Austria and Switzerland, what you find is that at post-secondary level they support that system with a whole tier of further vocational qualifications. That's very important, because it provides a career ladder for apprentice graduates to aspire to and go on to.

Conversely, if you go to the United States, what you find is that very often people are going through general high school education, and later on, at post-secondary level they will be pursuing some form of technical or professional training that will lead them into work. So that would be their first vocational qualification. That’s a different model, but it is still one where post-secondary vocational programmes are very important.

In the UK, there isn't a huge amount of post-secondary vocational education and training in the sense of shorter, after-school vocational qualifications. Where it exists, it has very often occupied quite niche areas where there is a particular legally required qualification in a regulated profession like childcare.

KM: One thing that UKCES is particularly interested in is trying to encourage employers and training providers to work together. In your research, have you seen any good examples of that, and what lessons do you think the UK could draw from those systems?

SF: We think that encouraging partnership between training providers and employers is absolutely fundamental. Unless you have that, you don't have very much, in truth.

Sweden is a particularly interesting example, and this example will be presented at the event on the 13th November. Their higher vocational education system involves grant funding by central government of employer/training provider partnerships. They're not just funding training providers. Instead, they're funding training providers who are in partnership already with employers to provide a programme of study to students with a built-in element of work based learning. That has been very successful, the labour market outcomes look good, and there is very rapid growth in that programme.

The key thing about this model is that it changes the incentives, because instead of saying, well, we'll fund people to provide training places, and they're going to try very hard to work with employers who will then provide some element of work-based learning, but often they fail. Instead, it's very simple: unless you actually have the employer from the outset working in conjunction with the training provider, then the programme is not funded. That changes the incentives radically.

KM: Where have you seen examples of [education] providers making links with employers to make their qualifications more attractive? Almost a promotion exercise, where providers have been proactive and marketed themselves to that employer audience. Have you seen good examples of that?

SF: There is no better test of marketing to an employer audience than by building in work placements into your programme of study. If an employer is interested enough to provide work placements and support a programme of study, then that almost certainly means that the employer is going to be interested, potentially, in employing graduates of that programme. If there is a programme of study that can't find an employer willing to offer a work placement, then that raises some serious questions about whether the programme of study, if pursued, is likely to lead to employment.

That led us to recommend building in work-based learning as a mandatory element in programmes. It is often said, well, you can't make this mandatory, because you won't be able to find the employers to offer work placements.  But we find this fairly robustly contradicted in a lot of different country circumstances. We believe it is feasible to insist on work-based learning.   Whats more, work-based learning brings other good things in its train, linking teachers in vocational colleges with employers, getting employers interested in working with providers to build relevant vocational qualifications.  In many ways it is the key that unlocks the door to employer engagement.

KM: How will we know when it works? With the broad range of systems that you've studied, what kind of metrics would you be looking at to quantify the success of that system? 

SF: Well, you've put your finger on it. The data in many countries are very weak. The acid test of any vocational programme is whether it leads to a job in which the skill that has been learnt is exercised. There are different types of destination surveys which measure exactly that; you follow up students six months or one year after they've left the vocational programme to find out what they're doing. They have to be used with a little bit of discretion, of course. It's well established that, even in countries with dual-system apprenticeships, you often follow up apprentices and find that they're working in slightly different fields of study. That's not a bad thing; it shows that their careers are developing.

KM: If someone reading this interview wondered if they should come along to [the VET Conference at the Skills Show in] Birmingham, why should they come to the launch of this report?

SF: The main reason is that the Birmingham event and our report will provide a picture of what is going on in the UK and how it compares with other countries, and that's hugely valuable. The truth is, what is going on in the UK is really quite different from other countries.  One can have all sorts of opinions on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing and in what ways things are done better or worse in different countries, but there is no question that a lot can be learnt from those comparisons. It means that at the very least what goes on in the UK is less likely to be seen as something that is just taken for granted. It is a particular and special system that has grown up in a particular way. It could be managed in other ways. Seeing that in itself is enormously healthy and will open eyes to all sorts of possibilities.

Links:
The National Vocational Education and Training Conference, at The Skills Show, Birmingham, 13-14 November 
The Skills Show: Programme
Skills Beyond School Synthesis Report
A Skills beyond School Review of England
Learning for Jobs
OECD Vocational Education and Training (VET) webpage
UKCES blog: “What is going on in the UK is really quite different from other countries”
Photo credit: Teacher teaching students bricklaying in vocational school / @Shutterstock

Understanding Employer Engagement in Education

by Anthony Mann
Director of Policy and Research, Education and Employers Taskforce, London, UK

Across the world, governments are asking themselves how can they close the gap between the worlds of education and employment? How can they better engage employers in the work of schools?

While hardly a new phenomenon, the attention of policy makers and commentators has grown significantly over the last decade.  It is a policy which has won the recent attention and the strong endorsement from the OECD – in its key 2010 strategic review of vocational education, Learning for Jobs – from European Union agencies (CEDEFOP and InGenious) – and from an influential team at Harvard University (Pathways to Prosperity).  In England, the main political parties no longer argue whether a period of one or two weeks work experience should be a mandatory element of secondary education, but at what age placements should best be undertaken.

Employer engagement has become rapidly established within global priorities for schooling.  It is a development which has happened largely in the absence, as set out in a new collection of essays published by Routledge, of significant research.  The collection, Understanding Employer Engagement in Education, marks the very first gathering together of serious research essays into the character, delivery and consequences of employer involvement in the learning and progression of young people.  It brings together insights from papers first offered at the international conferences and seminars arranged by the London-based education charity, the Education and Employers Taskforce.  Over seventeen essays, authors from around the world (if with a strong UK focus), analyse the phenomenon of employer engagement both within vocational education and training, through school or college based apprenticeships, and within mainstream academic schooling seen in such activities as careers talks, enterprise competitions, business mentoring and workplace visits as well as short work placements. Collectively, the contributors consider why governments have become so determined to bring workplace experiences into schooling, how such interventions can best be theorised and understood within labour markets undergoing radical change, what impacts school-mediated workplace exposure can be expected to have on recipients and how access to such experiences are distributed across society.

The collection is likely to gain most attention for three chapters which offer measurements of the impact of employer engagement in education on the educational and employment outcomes of young people.  Percy and Mann (Education and Employers Taskforce) apply quantitative analysis to recent UK survey data to show significant links between the extent of teenage employer contacts arranged through schools and later earnings, employment levels and self-declared career confidence. Massey (UKCES) explores the phenomenon from an employer perspective, analysing large scale polling to show how commonplace it is for British employers to take on permanent recruits after short periods of school-managed work placement.

From a Canadian and VET perspective, Taylor et al (University of Alberta) finds participants in school-based apprenticeships to achieve better in school and apprenticeship completion rates than peers.  The three studies add considerably to a relatively slim literature applying robust methodologies to provide the evidence that endorses the instincts of so many policy makers.

The ambition of the collection though is not just to measure gains related to employer engagement, but to critically understand how and why such benefits might be expected and to who can be expected to gain most from them.  The work begins by offering a long overdue attempt to conceptualise the experience of employer engagement within wider social and economic theory concerning the progression of young people through their educational experiences and into the labour market.  Louise Archer (King’s College, London) provides a critical review of the concept of aspiration and Julian Stanley (University of Warwick) and Anthony Mann (Education and Employers Taskforce) draw on human, social and cultural capital theory to offer a conceptual framework to help understand how young people encounter such employer contacts and how they might turn such experiences into resources of ultimate labour market value.  From a US perspective, James Stone III (University of Louisville) locates employer engagement firmly within pedagogic debates concerning the nature of practical and academic learning, while the OECD’s Kathrin Hoeckel describes the character of contemporary youth unemployment.  The collection locates employer engagement in education, consequently, squarely within fundamental debates over the relationship of education and skills provision to individual and national economic success and the changing character of school to work transitions.

Essays by Li and Devine (University of Manchester) and Holmes and Mayhew (University of Oxford) provide new quantitative analysis of longitudinal data tracking the winners and losers in the changing British labour market.  Casting new light on the nature of the problem, studies of British teenagers in urban areas by St Clair et al (University of Glasgow) and Norris (RSA) and Francis (King’s College, London) show teenage career aspirations to be almost uniformly high, but formed without “the active knowledge of what the labour market offered or close knowledge of the educational requirements of particular occupations.”

In the British context, through a series of essays it becomes clear that it is young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds who are placed at structural disadvantage in attempting to access workplace experiences to inform developing career aspirations and to provide access to resources of value to their progression out of secondary schooling.  Teenagers educated in English fee-paying schools are seen, in essays by Mann and Kashefpakdel (University of Bath), Huddleston et al (University of Warwick) and Jones (University of Manchester), to be routinely accessing work placements and careers related engagements closely linked to occupational ambitions and highly relevant to immediate designs on university admission.  In contrast, Le Gallais and Hatcher (Birmingham City University) show how social circumstances dictate access to work experience placements, unless schools actively intervene to secure and manage placements. Through these chapters, the influence of social and cultural capital theory is writ large. Bourdieu and Granovetter have much to say of relevance to contemporary policy.

In their foreword to the collection, Nancy Hoffman (Boston’s Jobs for the Future) and  Robert Schwartz (Harvard University) reflect on the significance of the issues raised in the book following their own participation in the OECD’s Learning for Jobs review.  “The urgency to engage employers in the transition from school to work in not only about the labour market”, they write. “It’s about the welfare of young people.  Youth unemployment has risen to historic proportions in many countries as a result of the global fiscal crisis, and youth across the world have articulated their frustrations about the lack of opportunities for their futures.”  In this context, the collection serves to introduce employer engagement in education as a new field of critical enquiry relevant to policy makers, practitioners and young people themselves as they seek to gain footholds in the shifting sands of the twenty-first century labour market.  In so doing, the book raises many important questions for ongoing research, marking the beginning of what is hoped will be an international exchange of evidence enabling fuller understanding of what can happen when a young person interacts with the economic community and how positive impacts can be most fully, and most equitably, distributed.

Links:
Understanding Employer Engagement in Education: Theories and Evidence, Edited by Anthony Mann, Julian Stanley and Louise Archer (London: Routledge, 2014)
OECD work on Vocational Education and Training (VET)
OECD work on Skills
Photo credit: Young employees / @Shutterstock

Learning for jobs: Quality pays off

by Dirk Van Damme and Rodrigo Castaneda Valle
Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

In 2010 the OECD published Learning for Jobs, a major review of vocational education and training (VET). The economic crisis has since continued to worsen the job prospects for young people in many OECD countries.  To counterbalance governments have increasingly been looking to strengthen vocational tracks in secondary education as a way to better prepare youth for the job market. The evidence base on VET remains weak, however Education at a Glance is providing improved data on VET systems and the latest issue of Education Indicators in Focus draws attention to some interesting findings.

The very basic policy question that governments ask is: Do more and better VET programmes help to improve employment prospects for young people? International evidence shows us that VET programmes are a costly investment. VET programmes are expected to be up-to-date with the latest technologies in the different industry sectors, and once you factor in the costs of instructors and facilities, it becomes a costly endeavour. On average, the annual expenditure per student in an upper secondary VET programme is 12% higher than in a general programme. In some countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the Czech and Slovak Republics – countries which have extensive VET provision, enrolling more than 60% of students – the difference in annual expenditure per student can exceed 20%.

It is tempting to relate the size and cost of VET programmes to employment prospects for young people. Indeed, countries like Germany and Switzerland have relatively healthy youth employment rates. Young people with a secondary VET qualification are doing much better in the labour market than their counterparts with only a general secondary qualification as their highest level of educational attainment.

But, as the graph demonstrates, a high proportion of secondary school students in VET programmes is no guarantee for high employment outcomes. It is interesting that it is the relative cost of VET programmes which differentiates countries on employment. Countries which invest more than the average succeed in offering better job prospects. Assuming that more monetary investment in VET programmes also means higher quality programmes, it becomes clear that it is not the size of VET provision that counts, but the quality. Of course, many other factors also impact youth employment, but the graph suggests that it doesn’t really help to have a large proportion of students in VET tracks – as is the case in the Czech and Slovak Republics. Rather, it is much better to have about 35% of students in vocational tracks and to fund them well, as can be seen in the case of Switzerland.

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 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
For more information on OECD work on Vocational Education and Training: www.oecd.org/education/vet
Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2013: Indicators A1, A5 and B1 (http://oecd.org/edu/eag.htm)

Does it matter which school a student attends?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Successful education systems guarantee that all students succeed at high levels. As this month’s PISA in Focus notes, some school systems not only do well on international assessments, like PISA, they also manage to minimise the difference between the best- and poorest-performing students.

In some education systems, most students have similar levels of proficiency; in others, student performance varies far more widely. Analyses of PISA results show that countries and economies can achieve high average performance without having wide disparities in student performance. In 10 out of the 17 countries and economies that have above-average performance in reading, variations in student performance are smaller than the average variation observed across OECD countries.

PISA finds that 40% of the variation in student performance is found between schools within an education system. What accounts for that variation?  A variety of factors. In Germany, large differences in the expected performance of students who attend different schools are related to the education systems’ policies of selecting students for different pathways through education, usually vocational or academic, based on students’ marks. In Italy, these variations are often related to differences in the profiles of the communities the schools serve, such as the socio-economic differences between students who attend urban schools and those who attend rural schools, and/or differences between the policies of federal and regional education systems. Variations can also be linked to characteristics of school systems that are more difficult to quantify, such as differences in the quality or the effectiveness of the instruction provided. Among high-performing countries, considerable between-school variation is found in only three countries: Belgium, Japan and the Netherlands. Between-school differences account for as little as 8% of the variation in student performance in Finland, 10% in Norway, and less than 20% in Estonia, Iceland and Poland.

PISA also tracks how variations in student performance have evolved over time. Across OECD countries, the average variation in student reading performance narrowed by 3% between 2000 and 2009, because most of the countries that improved their performance during that period did so by improving the performance of low-achieving students. Of the countries that saw improvements in performance during that period, only Poland recorded a marked decrease in between-school variation, while Sweden recorded a large increase.

We all know that students have different abilities, talents, interests and potentials (and vive la difference!). But the most successful and highest-performing school systems know how to elicit the best from every one of their students.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 27: Does it matter which school a student attends?
Photo credit: School coat rack / Shutterstock

Skills on Show

by Joanne Caddy
Senior Analyst, Skills Beyond Schools Division, Directorate for Education

Upon entering the vast hall, I was first struck by the quiet concentration etched on the contestants’ faces amidst the hustle and bustle. Here gathered Britain’s best young professionals – each one determined to prove their skill as tile-layers, electricians, plumbers, make-up artists, web designers, IT technicians, mobile robotics designers and landscape gardeners. Each one going for gold at the UK Skills Show, held annually as part of WorldSkills International  to celebrate skilled young people and recognise the ‘skills stars’ of today and tomorrow.

Earlier that day, in a far smaller room, another group of people had been equally intent in exploring the other side of the skills equation.

In his opening address to the UKCES-OECD international workshop on “Employer Ownership: Strengthening Partnerships to Enhance Skills Investment”, the UK Minister for Skills, Matthew Hancock MP underscored the urgent need to upgrade Britain’s skills against the backdrop of the global race to develop and deploy the talent needed in an innovation-driven economy. In launching the second round of the Employer Ownership of Skills Pilot, he called upon businesses to form partnerships and put forward ambitious and transformative proposals which use public funds to leverage private investment and deliver training more attuned to the needs of both businesses and people. For Minister Hancock this investment of £250 million is worth every penny, because “skills bring a better job for the individual and a job done better for the employer – but also for society.” Having kicked off the workshop, he then headed off to tour the Skills Show himself and try his hand at one of the many “Have a Go” sessions.

Meanwhile, back at the workshop a great line-up of speakers shared their tips on how to build solid skills partnernships in practice. Jaguar Land Rover took about two years to build a network of universities to deliver targeted courses for their staff as part of their Technical Accreditation Scheme – an effort which was described as: “even harder than building great cars”. Credit Suisse now offers 750 apprentices in banking and IT systems, adopting a “just-in-time” learning concept where: “you learn what you need in practice, and then you practice what you learned at your workplace.” In The Netherlands, the newly established Foundation for Cooperation between Vocational Education, Training and the Labour Market (SBB) brings together employers, government and vocational education and training (VET) institutions to jointly develop VET qualifications, work placements and career guidance.

The OECD Skills Strategy provided a useful framework for the lively small group discussions which followed. They delivered concrete priorities for action, such as: changing the funding system to drive behaviour; strong leadership among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to ensure their skill needs are met; and building a sustainable skills system through strong partnerships between business, government and other stakeholders. As our team leading the OECD Skills Beyond Schools country reviews could confirm, few, if any, of the issues raised during the workshop are unique to the UK, but are to be found in many other OECD countries.

Strengthening national skills systems may take sustained efforts, but much is at stake. Judging by the young contestants at work in that huge hall last week, our future is in very skilled hands indeed.

Links:
OECD Skills Strategy
skills.oecd.org
OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)
OECD Skills Beyond Schools
Slideshare presentations on skills
Photo credit: Make-up artist/Shutterstock

What the D in OECD stands for

by Barbara Ischinger
Director for Education

Did you know that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development helped to lay the groundwork for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals? Even though Development is part of our name, there are many people who don’t realise just how much of our resources are devoted to developing economies and not only to the development of the OECD’s 34 member countries.

The focus of this year’s International Economic Forum on Africa, held at the OECD’s Paris headquarters in early October, was youth employment, but this issue cannot be separated from another one just as important:  education. The African Economic Outlook 2012 notes that in Egypt, for example, about 1.5 million young people are unemployed at the same time that private-sector firms cannot fill 600 000 vacancies. And in South Africa, there are 3 million young people who are neither in education nor employed and 600 000 unemployed university graduates, yet 800 000 jobs are vacant. At the Forum itself, I heard many participants ask themselves whether they were equipping their students with the skills their economies needed.

This is exactly where the OECD’s expertise in collecting and analysing data can help. Already, many of the countries and economies that participate in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are in the developing world; but we think all countries would benefit from even greater participation by developing countries. By participating in PISA, countries can see whether the skills they are teaching their 15-year-olds are relevant to “real life”. They can also learn from other countries’ experiences how to improve their own education systems, and can benchmark their progress over time. The assessment, itself, benefits by gaining a deeper understanding of student performance in a broader range of countries and cultural contexts.

We have completed a review of Egypt’s system of higher education and have also reviewed the education systems of South Africa, Gabon and Mauritius. These in-depth analyses – conducted in close collaboration with local actors, regional organisations and other international partners – can guide countries in reforming their education policies so that students leave school with the skills needed to participate productively in the economy. We also stand ready to work with our partners – in Africa and elsewhere – to build stronger links between labour markets and education systems. That would help to avoid the situation, seen in so many countries, where universities train students to become civil servants when what the country or region really needs are engineers and health workers – and also people with the mid-level trade, technical and professional skills that can be acquired through well-designed vocational programmes. At the moment, vocational education accounts for only 5% of training among African youth.

As the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals approaches, the international community has begun to consider a framework for goals beyond 2015. For the first set of goals, progress in education is measured by access; I hope that future goals will complement such measures by looking at learning outcomes. Again, this is one of the OECD’s specialties, and we’re keen to offer our work and expertise to an even larger number of countries. I thought you’d want to know.

Links:
OECD Development home page
The OECD and the Millennium Development Goals
OECD Strategy on Development
The OECD Strategy on Development: Giving fresh impetus to a core mission
2012 International Economic Forum on Africa
OECD Skills Strategy
Photo credit: Orphan students in Swaziland / Shutterstock