Skills Strategy

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Skills StrategyA proposed new horizontal OECD project

Canberra, 13-14 May 2010

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yThe context

Growth and competitiveness increasingly depend on the capacity of countries to

anticipate the evolution of labour demand promote skill acquisition and equity of access to

learning deploy their talent pool effectively by ensuring that

the right mix of skills is being taught and learned and employers find workers with the skills they need

Develop efficient and sustainable approaches to the financing of learning that establish who should pay for what, when, where and how much.

Growth is not just affected positively by the available talent pool, but also negatively by the economic and social costs associated with inadequate skills .

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yAssist countries in improving economic and social outcomes

through better skills and their effective utilisation

Responsiveness Ensuring that education/training providers can adapt efficiently to

changing demand Quality and efficiency in learning provision

Ensuring that the right skills are acquired at the right time, right place and in the most effective mode

Flexibility in provision Allowing people to study/train what they want, when they want

and how they want Transferability of skills

Such that skills gained are documented in a commonly accepted and understandable form

Ease of access Reducing barriers to entry such as institutional rigidities, up-front

fees and age restrictions, existence of a variety of entry and re-entry pathways

Low costs of early exit Recognition for components of learning, modular provision, credit

accumulation and credit transfer systems exist .

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yA work programme with four pillars

How do we identify and assess essential skills for strong, sustainable and balanced growth and what are the factors driving the evolution of skill demand?

Is the right mix of skills being taught

and learned and can employers find

workers with the skills they need?

Are skills developed in effective, equitable, efficient and sustainable ways?

How can governments build

strong coalitions with the business sector and social

investors and find sustainable

approaches to who should pay for

what, when, where and how much?

Pillar 1 (EDU and ELS)

Pillar 2(ELS)

Pillar 3(EDU)

Pillar 4(EDU and

LEED)

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Pillar 2(ELS)

Pillar 3(EDU)

Pillar 4(EDU and

LEED)

Pillar 1: Drivers for skill demand Issues

Changing skill demands within jobs – often driven by technology

Increased demand for certain occupations affecting the composition of aggregate skills demand

New types of jobs, driven by innovation – in products and in services

Greater need for transferable skills, in part driven by greater labour mobility .

Work proposals Balancing occupation-specific and generic skills [ELS] Skill demands in technology-rich environments

[PIAAC] Skill demands of innovative firms [CERI] Skill demands in health and green jobs [ELS] Economic and social outcomes of skills [PIAAC, CERI] .

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Pillar 2(ELS)

Pillar 3(EDU)

Pillar 4(EDU and

LEED)

Pillar 2: Right mix of skills learned and taught?

Issues Increasingly complex and dynamic labour-markets

combined with depreciation of domain-specific knowledge require individuals to upgrade their skills more regularly leading to changing patterns of work and learning

Individual and aggregate skill mismatches can be associated with ineffective signalling of labour market demands to education providers and individuals but can also be the consequence of a lack of responsiveness on the part of education and training providers

Age training gaps, gender gaps Work proposals

Prevalence and consequences of skills mismatch [EDU/ELS] Improving the utilisation of human capital [ELS] Preventing skill obsolesence among displaced workers [ELS] Understanding the impact of age on skills [ELS] .

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Pillar 2(ELS)

Pillar 3(EDU)

Pillar 4(EDU and

LEED)

Pillar 3: Are skills developed in effective, equitable and sustainable ways

Issues Establishing efficient and fair ways of lifelong and lifewide

learning, and ensuring responsiveness, quality and flexibility in provision

Incentive systems and support structures to enhancing skills through the formal educational system, in the work-place or through incentives addressed at the general population and training

Establishing an appropriate mix of academic and vocational learning in ways that reflect student preferences and employers’ needs, with vocational training providing immediate employability, but also basic transferable skills to support occupational mobility

Work proposals New learning organisations [CERI] Vocational education and training [EDU] Equity in access and educational mobility [PIAAC, PISA] Utilising the skill potential of immigrants [ELS] Developing innovation oriented skills [CERI] .

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Pillar 2(ELS)

Pillar 3(EDU)

Pillar 4(EDU and

LEED)

Pillar 4: Who should pay for what, when, where and how much? Issues

Building new relationships, networks and coalitions between learners, providers, governments, businesses, social investors and innovators that bring together the legitimacy, innovation, and resources that are needed to make lifelong learning a reality for all

Finding ways to encourage both employers and students to participate in workplace training, and ensuring that such training is of good quality, with effective quality assurance and contractual frameworks for apprentices

Mobilising time and money Work proposals

Joining up local skill strategies .

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yOutcomes

A Skills Strategy for OECD countries An integrated work programme on skills across the

entire organisation A regularly published OECD Skills Outlook that,

with a combination of comparative analysis and country studies, will:

Trace the development of skills, through their utilisation in labour markets, how they feed into better jobs, higher productivity, and ultimately better economic and social outcomes

Customise policy insights from comparative analysis and peer learning so that they are useful in national policy contexts

Provide a catalyst for policy discourse on national skill strategies

Contribute to building strategic partnerships for successful policy implementation

All proposals contingent on CPF resources .

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PIAAC

How is PIAAC organised ?

How does PIAAC work ?

What will PIAAC tell us ?

State of play

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PIAAC




State of play

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y PIAAC will…

in each country interview 5000 adults aged 16-65 in their homes and test their skills

collect information on the antecedents, outcomes and contexts of skill development and use

… in order to… provide a comprehensive assessment

of the human capital stock– For high performers, show to what extent they are able to apply their skills

to solve challenging problems requiring mastery of technology – For those with low literacy, show to what extent their problem is with

performing basic reading functions or with understanding and application

show to what extent skills held by individuals are actually used at work and identify the role skills play in improving labour market prospects of at-risk populations

improve understanding of the labour market and social returns to education and training

help governments better understand how education and training systems can nurture these skills .

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y A collaboration among countries and sectors

building on the PISA model A Board of Participating Countries brings together

education and labour ministries and oversees the development and implementation of PIAAC

An international consortium of leading institutions develops the instruments and survey procedures

National project teams mount the surveys and collect the data

A lean management model OECD Secretariat co-ordinates the work

and guides analysis and reporting– Share of spending at OECD Secretariat less than a quarter of the

international costs

A sustainable approach to financing 46% of internat. costs shared equally among countries,

rest distributed in accordance with OECD scale– in order to balance countries’ ‘capacity to pay’ with the fact that

much of the international development costs for PIAAC is driven by factors unrelated to either the number of countries participating or to the size of their economies .

Country participation Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Hungary Ireland Italy Japan Korea Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Russian Federation Slovak Republic Spain Sweden United Kingdom United States

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PIAAC




State of play

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y Measures of adult competencies

Test-based measures in areas where methodologies exist

Indirect measures in other areas that support PIAAC‘s policy objectives

Measures of key social and economic outcomes Labour-market experience

, status and transitions, earnings, adult learning, social outcomes

Measures of the utilisation of competencies at the workplace

Through a job-requirement survey

A background questionnaire

To contextualise and analyse determinants of competencies, their development, and their use

Surveyed: individuals

Assessment: direct and

indirect


Assessment: indirect


Assessment: indirect, e.g. JRA


Assessment: indirect

Key elements of PIAAC:A multi-cycle international survey of adult

skills

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PIAAC




State of play

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Reasonable potential for policy

High potential policy impact

…

Low feasibility/costly High feasibility

Money pits

Must haves

Low-hanging fruits

Quick wins

Adult competencies and their as well as

economic and social outcomes

Equity and intergenerational mobility

What levels of skills do individuals and countries demonstrate, and how

do these relate to educational attainment?

How well do education and training systems deliver in generating the required

competenciesImproving the labour-market prospects of those at

risk

aggregate individual

x

Capitalising on technology-rich environments

Ageing and skills

The competitive advantages of OECD countries in the global competition for jobs

• Where does initial education leave us in terms of skill supply with their different forms of organisation of the education and training system?

• Has the rapid growth in educational attainment translated into better foundation skills?

• How do the results compare to those observed in earlier schooling (PISA)? How do people gain and lose skills as they grow older?

• How will changes in the age structure of populations and aspects such as educational attainment feed through to the future talent pool?

• How well can adults solve problems in technology-rich environments? How does this relate to the incidence and intensity of using information technology in and outside work

• What can we learn about the impact of age on skills and skill utilisation, how has this changed over recent decades and the policy levers associated with this (separating biological effects of aging from differences in the experiences of cohorts over time)?

• To what extent can and do skills play a role in levelling the playing field, both in terms of providing high quality education to all and giving access to higher education to those who are able and motivated to continue their schooling, irrespective of their social background?

• Further analysis on intergenerational mobility will also be possible with the JRA measurement of what people do in their jobs

• Description of the population with low skills, or special population groups such as immigrants, and interrelationships with labour-market outcomes.

• What is the role of skills in explaining differences in labour-market outcomes between immigrant and native-born workers? Do skill differences depend on where human capital was acquired? Do immigrants receive different returns to these skills than observationally similar native-born workers?

• Is education or skills mismatch mostly confined to youth early on in their professional careers and subsequently diminishes? Is mismatch important and does it translate into large earnings penalties? Have education and training systems in OECD countries shown sufficient adaptability in the face of changing skill demands or are skills mismatches endemic? How do task-based learning (JRA) and job-related training relate to the length of the working life? (but keep in mind that labour-market outcomes and training are snapshots in time whereas the measured skills are accumulated over the lifespan)

• Labour force skills and the price of these skills are crucial to understand in the perspective of increasing global competition for jobs higher up in the skill hierarchy. PIAAC can tell us more about which cognitive and non-cognitive skills are important in particular.

• PIAAC can provide systematic insights into the risks and rewards for skills in the labour market, for individuals and economies, as well as for specific subgroups such as immigrants

(Skip examples)

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Source: International Adult Literacy and Life Skills Study (ALLS)

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1 2 3 4 1 2 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Norway Switzerland Canada Bermuda I taly

1 – less than upper secondary

2 – upper secondary

3 – post-secondary/non-tertiary

4 – tertiary education

The qualifications we acquired don’t tell us everything about the skills we have

Mean problem solving1,2 scores on a scale with range 0-500 points, by level of educational attainment, populations aged 16-65, 2003

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Weeks

Probability

Skill make a difference for labour market outcomesThe probabilities of unemployed adults aged 16 to 65 to exit unemployment over a 52 week period, by

low (Levels 1 and 2) and medium to high (Levels 3 and 4/5) skills, document scale, 2003

Source: International Adult Literacy and Life Skills Study (ALLS)

High skills(Levels 3, 4 and 5)

Low skills(Levels 1 and 2)

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PIAAC




State of play

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yState of play

PIAAC is now at a critical juncture of moving from an international strategy towards national implementation

Where we are…– PIAAC strategy agreed among countries– International project consortium in place– Agreement on the scope of the initial report and a

discussion on further analytic work– Full pilot in all countries, majority of countries now in

the field (1400 respondents, 2010),

… and what remains ahead– Review of field trial results and development of

main data collection instruments– Main data collection (2011/2012)

– Public release of results (2013) .

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Thank you !

Education

Skills Strategy