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

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

Understanding youth, unemployment and skills in Africa

by Denielle Sachs
McKinsey Social Sector Office

For those working on employment issues, one thing is clear: the tense imbalance between the demands of the labor market and the supply of appropriately skilled workers is reaching its breaking point. Last week, the McKinsey Global Institute launched, The world at work: jobs and skills for 3.5 billion people. The report found that by 2020 there could be as many as 40 million too few high-skill workers and up to 95 million too many low-skill workers out in the job market.
Avoiding such massive imbalances will require a radical approach to accelerate education and skills building, and to boost job creation for less-skilled workers. Anything less and we will see a growing shortage of high-skill workers, persistent joblessness for many low- and middle-skill workers, rising income inequality, and distressingly high rates of youth unemployment. The numbers are clear: by 2030, the world will have as many as 1 billion workers without even secondary education, and most of them will be living in India, South Asia and Africa.

A lot of institutions are looking at these issues , including OECD and their recently launched Skills Strategy. As part of our ongoing research on youth unemployment and the skills-jobs mismatch, we asked a few experts what a solution might look like for young people in Africa where the under 25 represent three-fifths of sub-Saharan Africa’s unemployed population, and 72 percent of the youth population lives on less than $2 a day.

First, we have to understand who we mean when we talk about the young and out-of-work in Africa. Fred Swaniker, Founder and CEO of the African Leadership Academy, tells us that, on average, she is an 18-year-old girl, living in a rural area, literate but not attending school. To his mind, entrepreneurship – both the technical skills and the mindset — is the answer. It should be an integral part of every child’s education whether that schooling be formal or informal.

 For the Chief Economist for the World Bank’s Africa Region Shantayanan Devarajan, the answer lies in productivity. “The challenge of youth employment in Africa is not just to create more wage and salary jobs but to increase the productivity, and hence earnings, of the majority of young people.” This can only happen by “first, increasing their basic skills, which they can take with them when they move to new enterprises; and second, creating jobs in the formal sector by improving the economy’s competitiveness, so that this sector can absorb more qualified workers into a productive workforce.”

In South Africa, a very specific socio-political context post-apartheid, Thero Setiloane, CEO of the Business Leadership South Africa, explains that access to education and the quality of that education (“Only 35 percent of the children in third grade are able to pass the literacy and numeracy tests.”) are major stumbling blocks. His preference is for a joint government-business solution. “Business must work with government to adapt the school curriculum… so that young people leave school ready for work. Training programs must be tailored to demand…We also need to build in incentives for businesses to address the social-capital deficit in poor communities.”

Moataz Al Alfi, CEO of the Egypt Kuwait Holding Company could not agree more. Coming from the Middle East where the “paradox of the labour markets”, as he calls it, is perhaps at its worst, he calls for “a solution that requires a strong partnership between business, with its urgent need for skilled workers, and government, which is charged with educating young people.” The region currently has the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, at 25 percent. And, on the heels of the Arab Spring, and in the midst of the lingering economic crisis, it is only expected to rise.  He too returns to the issue of a failing education system that does not prepare young people for the jobs that the market desperately needs to fill.

Links:
Join the debate and register for our online panel event on June 26th at 8am EDT //2pm CEST , featuring experts from the OECD and IFC
See also: OECD Skills Strategy

Visit our interactive portal on skills: http://skills.oecd.org
OECD Development Centre

Photo credit: African youth / Shutterstock

The role of unions in developing a skilled workforce

by Randi Weingarten
President, American Federation of Teachers

As we slowly recover from the worst economic recession since the 1920s, labour markets around the world remain turbulent. We are facing more social and economic inequality with wages stagnating and many people dropping out of the workforce entirely.

How can the American Federation of Teachers and other trade unions around the world help?

First, unions should be viewed as part of the solution, not as something to overcome. Labour-management collaboration is essential to developing skilled workers and, in turn, to creating better jobs and higher salaries. Workers need to be represented at the bargaining table and—regardless of the trade or profession—unions can be an important partner. That is the key to developing a flexible, smart workforce ready and equipped to be full partners with management.

If our workforce is going to thrive in the 21st century, we need to begin by changing much about our approach to education—from inside the classroom and larger school environment, to how we care for children, to how labour and management work together across the world.

In every country, a flourishing economy requires a strong education foundation as well as the ability to innovate and to communicate. It also requires teachers who are prepared and supported on every level and who are invested in helping students succeed in school and in life.

In Singapore, for example, where I spent time with teachers and students earlier this year, schools are focused on growth and achievement. However, as I observed numerous diverse groups of children deeply engaged in learning, I saw nothing that could be construed as “teaching to the test”—something that educators in the United States continue to contend with. In Singapore and in other countries with high-performing education systems, schools have listened to their teachers and collaborated with them to ensure the best education practices are implemented.

Additionally, the OECD can work with education unions to collaborate on important skills-developing issues, including:

• Global teaching standards—These include guidelines to ensure high-functioning, well-prepared, continuously improving teachers in every classroom. However, teachers cannot do this alone. They should be given the continuous support and respect they deserve –which, in large part, means treating education as a shared responsibility.
• Educational  equality—We can address issues of educational inequality worldwide through expanding and enhancing the successful efforts of countries in which every child receives a good education regardless of economic status. We also need to level the playing field for poor children by ensuring the availability of early childhood education and wrap-around services. We can address these issues before they become significant obstacles to learning.
• Curriculum—Ensuring a well-rounded, robust curriculum that prepares students for the future is essential to advancing workforce preparation. A child’s studies should focus on accessing and sorting information to solve complex problems and develop higher-level thinking skills, as opposed to finding answers to simple questions learned by rote. Businesses can help prepare students through mentoring and internships, while at school we can offer more project-based learning to ensure the mastery of skills sets.
• Models of collaboration—The OECD and unions can disseminate examples of labour and management working together to solve problems. Sharing best practices and successful partnerships can help lead to greater and more effective co-operation.

Education by itself will not address the jobs crisis, nor can education by itself address inequality. But without education, the fight for jobs and fair societies cannot be won. We’re excited to take part in the process.

Links:
Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC)
American Federation of Teachers
See also: OECD Skills Strategy

Visit our interactive portal on skills: http://skills.oecd.org

More blogs with Randi Weingarten:
‘An obligation to systematise success’
‘Internationalist, not isolationist’
Photo credit: Child hands on top of each other / Shutterstock