1. Summary and recommendations
This chapter presents the main findings and recommendations of the OECD Skills Strategy Implementation Guidance project in Latvia. This project, and the first phase of the Skills Strategy Assessment and Recommendations project, were designed to support Latvia in the development of its Education Development Guidelines 2021-2027 (EDG). This chapter summarises the OECD’s guidance in two areas, each of which are the subject of a separate chapter in this report: 1) guidance on developing Latvia’s EDG and selecting EDG policy actions; and 2) guidance on improving Latvia’s indicator system and selecting EDG indicators.
The main goal of the Education Development Guidelines (hereafter referred to as the “EDG”) is to guide Latvia’s efforts in providing a high-quality and inclusive education and training system for all its citizens, and to support sustainable national growth. The EDG covers all levels of education and all types of learning. It is a medium-term policy planning document developed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia that defines the policy objectives, policy actions, timelines, responsible actors, related finances and policy targets for the next seven years for education and skills policies. The EDG is being developed in collaboration with relevant ministries and a wide range of stakeholders, such as the Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia, the Employers’ Confederation of Latvia, the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and various other institutions and associations (see Annex A for the full list). Once completed, the EDG will be submitted to the national parliament (Saeima) for approval.
The EDG will be designed to help Latvia achieve its national and international commitments. As Latvia is a member of international communities, such as the European Union (EU), the OECD and the United Nations, it has agreed to and is held accountable for making progress towards achieving collective goals, including in the area of education and skills. As Latvia is expected to regularly report progress towards implementing required actions and achieving shared goals, the EDG has to be aligned with these international commitments. This means, for example, integrating the skills relevant to international commitments into the EDG and using consistent terminology and indicators to measure national progress in these areas. The EDG must also support the achievement of the goals of Latvia’s other major strategies and plans for national development, many of which have education and skills related goals and commitments. These include the Sustainable Development Strategy to 2030, the National Development Plan (2021-2027), and sectoral strategies in the areas of, for example, science, technology and innovation. By aligning and co-ordinating these strategies, Latvia can create synergies and ensure complementary policy actions.
The OECD has supported Latvia in developing its Education Development Guidelines 2021-2027 through the OECD Skills Strategy Latvia project, which has been conducted in two phases: the Assessment and Recommendations Phase (2018-2019) and the OECD Implementation Guidance Phase (2019-2020).
The Assessment and Recommendations Phase identified priority areas for action for Latvia and made concrete recommendations for improving Latvia’s performance in developing relevant skills and using skills effectively. This phase analysed the performance of Latvia’s education and skills system and provided tailored recommendations for its improvement. Based on this analysis, as well as input from stakeholder engagement activities in Latvia, the OECD developed a number of concrete recommendations, which are featured in the OECD report “OECD Skills Strategy Latvia: Assessment and Recommendations”, published in December 2019 (OECD, 2019[1]).
The findings of the Implementation Guidance Phase, which are summarised in this publication “OECD Skills Strategy Latvia Implementation Guidance: Developing Latvia’s Education Development Guidelines 2021-2027”, are a major input to the development of Latvia’s EDG. The OECD was asked to provide guidance and input to Latvia’s EDG in two key areas:
1. Guidance on developing Latvia’s EDG and selecting EDG policy actions (see Chapter 2).
2. Guidance on improving Latvia’s indicator system and selecting EDG indicators (see Chapter 3).
Each chapter describes the elements of an effective selection process, presents an assessment of relevant contexts, discusses the proposed policy actions or indicators, and provides practical suggestions of what Latvia could consider for next steps.
The remaining part of this chapter introduces Latvia’s EDG (Section 2), discusses how it relates to other international and national commitments (Section 3), and describes how Phase I (Section 4) and Phase II (Section 5) of the OECD Skills Strategy Latvia project have contributed to the development of Latvia’s EDG, it also presents the recommendations of Phase II.
Skills are vital for enabling individuals and countries to thrive in an increasingly complex, interconnected and rapidly changing world. Countries in which people develop strong skills, learn throughout their lives, and use their skills fully and effectively at work and in society are more productive and innovative and enjoy higher levels of trust, better health outcomes, and a higher quality of life. Skills policies play a central role in paving countries’ development path by, for example, easing the adoption of new technologies and helping firms move up the value-added chain; they also make countries more attractive to foreign direct investment and tend to help foster more tolerant and cohesive societies.
To ensure that countries are able to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world, all people need access to opportunities to develop and maintain strong proficiency in a broad set of skills. These skills include cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, job and occupation-specific skills, and digital skills. The process of skills development is lifelong, starting in childhood and youth and continuing throughout adulthood (Box 1.1). Skills development occurs not only formally in schools and higher education, but also non-formally and informally in the home, community and workplaces.
Definition of skills
Cognitive skills involve the understanding, interpretation, analysis and communication of complex information and the ability to apply this information in situations of everyday life. These skills are general in nature and relevant for all kinds of occupations. They are considered necessary to provide a foundation for effective and successful participation in the social and economic life of advanced economies.
Social and emotional skills, also known as non-cognitive skills, soft skills or character skills, these are the skills involved in working with others (friendliness, respect, caring), in achieving goals (perseverance, self-control, passion for goals) and in managing emotions (calmness, optimism, confidence). They are based on recognised taxonomies in personality psychology, particularly the “big five” factors (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness).
Job and occupation-specific skills refer to technical skills that are demanded in the context of workplaces. Unlike cognitive and social and emotional skills, they are not relevant for or portable between all occupations, but are specific to one occupation. They are typically reflected in the qualification a person holds and are valued by employers.
Digital skills are considered technical skills, although they entail cognitive ability to enable the understanding, interpretation, analysis and communication of digital content. They are applied in a variety of different occupations and are increasingly pervading the social aspects of everyone’s life.
Source: OECD (2019[2]), OECD Skills Strategy 2019: Skills to Shape a Better Future, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264313835-en; OECD (2020[3]), Strengthening the Governance of Skills Systems: Lessons from Six OECD Countries, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/3a4bb6ea-en.
The EDG is developed under Latvia’s Education Law (Paragraph 18 of Section 141), which gives the Cabinet of Ministers the authority to design an education strategy. The EDG is designed to support Latvia’s relevant national and international commitments (see Section 3). Some of the actions in the EDG continue on from the previous EDG 2014-2020, while others are new. The EDG is developed by the Ministry of Education and Science in collaboration with other skills-relevant ministries, such as the Ministry of Welfare and the Ministry of Economics, among others, and a wide range of stakeholders, such as trade unions, the Employers’ Confederation of Latvia, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and various other institutions and associations (see Annex A for a full list of stakeholders). The EDG will be submitted to the national parliament (Saeima) for approval towards the end of 2020.
The EDG is designed to help Latvia achieve its international commitments, which include those at the European level and beyond (Table 1.1). As Latvia is a member of international communities, such as the European Union, the OECD and the United Nations, it has agreed and is held accountable to making progress towards achieving collective goals and participating in shared actions in the area of education and skills. These include the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), in particular SDG4 on education; the actions of the New Skills Agenda for Europe and the European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience (2020); the principles and rights of the European Pillar of Social Rights; and the targets of the EU Semester. As Latvia is expected to regularly report progress on these actions and goals, the EDG must be aligned with these international commitments. This means, for example, integrating the skills relevant to international commitments into the EDG and using consistent terminology and indicators to measure national progress in these areas. This will also put Latvia in a position to benchmark itself against other peer countries, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and participate more proactively in peer learning. This would provide valuable insights that could inform and guide Latvia’s implementation of the EDG.
The EDG must also support the achievement of Latvia’s other major goals for national development, which are described in various strategic documents, such as the Growth Model for Latvia: People First, the Sustainable Development Strategy to 2030, and the National Development Plan 2021-2027 (Table 1.1). It is important that the EDG is coherent and consistent with these strategies, and that any skills-related targets that have been set in those documents are also included in the EDG. The EDG must also be consistent with education and skills relevant projects such as Latvia’s Smart Specialisation Strategy 2021-2027, which is part of Latvia’s National Industrial Policy Guidelines and also has skills relevant components. By co-ordinating the development of the EDG with relevant strategies and policies it will be possible to identify areas for synergy and to ensure that the policy actions in various strategies are complementary. There are also relevant projects on specific components of the education and skills system, for example the education monitoring project within the Ministry of Education and Science that seeks to develop a monitoring system with specific indicators for measuring education quality by 2023. As indicators on education quality are also relevant for the EDG, it is important to co-ordinate the development of such indicators and reflect upon how they can be incorporated into the EDG.
The Assessment and Recommendations Phase has provided a solid evidence base for the development of the EDG. The project has promoted greater interaction and exchange among all relevant actors from ministries, levels of government and stakeholders by enabling extensive engagement (Box 1.2). This process has fostered a shared understanding of the skills challenges and opportunities as a basis for taking co-ordinated actions. The OECD has used international, national and other data sources, information gathered from government and stakeholder representatives, as well as talent and expertise from across the OECD, including experts from the OECD Centre for Skills, the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills and the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. The project has drawn upon concrete examples of education and skills policies from other countries, which have provided important lessons, and made specific recommendations in identified priority areas. Representatives from Latvia were also invited to participate in peer-learning opportunities at the OECD to share Latvia’s experiences and learn from other countries’ experiences. This has helped widen and deepen understanding of policies that have worked. The findings, international practice examples and recommendations from this phase of the project have informed the development of Latvia’s EDG. Most importantly, the findings of Phase I have supported the development and prioritisation of the policy actions.
The OECD’s Skills Strategy project in Latvia was launched at the Skills Strategy Seminar in Riga in September 2018 by the Latvian Minister and State Secretary of Education and Science. The event included representatives from the Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Welfare, Ministry of Economics, the Cross-Sectoral Co-ordination Centre, employer associations, trade unions and the European Commission. The project involved ongoing oversight and input from an inter-ministerial team co-ordinated by the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science, which was comprised of experts from various other ministries and organisations. Two workshops were held in February and May 2019 that convened a wide range of stakeholders, including trade unions, employers, sectoral training providers, education institutions, academics and government representatives. Eight focus groups and bilateral meetings with stakeholders and experts also took place. In total, the OECD met around 500 stakeholders. The European Commission provided financial support for the project and participated in the skills strategy seminar and in both stakeholder workshops. This process generated inputs that helped to shape the recommendations featured in the “OECD Skills Strategy Latvia: Assessment and Recommendations” report, launched on 19 December 2019.
Source: OECD (2019[1]), OECD Skills Strategy Latvia: Assessment and Recommendations, https://doi.org/10.1787/74fe3bf8-en.
The OECD and the Latvian Government identified four priority areas for improving Latvia’s skills performance. The key findings and opportunities for improvement in each of these areas are summarised briefly below, and are elaborated with analysis and tailored recommendations in the chapters of the “OECD Skills Strategy Latvia: Assessment and Recommendations” report (OECD, 2019[1]).
Priority 1: Strengthening the skills outcomes of students
Ensuring that young people get a good start in schools is a key investment in the future economic prosperity and well-being of countries. In Latvia, the government dedicates a significant share of its expenditure to education, which denotes a commitment to providing access to quality education and translates into high enrolment rates. Latvia has opportunities to further strengthen the skills outcomes of students by: 1) building capacity to improve the teaching workforce; 2) fostering continuous quality improvement from early childhood education and care (ECEC) to secondary education; 3) improving equity between urban and rural areas; and 4) strengthening vocational education and training (VET).
Priority 2: Fostering a culture of lifelong learning
A strong adult learning culture is imperative if Latvia wishes to ensure that all individuals are ready to upgrade their existing skills or acquire new skills to adapt to new challenges and opportunities and thrive in an increasingly complex world. Fostering adult learning is a priority for Latvia as it seeks to reach the European Union benchmark of a 15% participation rate by 2020. Latvia has opportunities to foster a lifelong learning culture by: 1) raising awareness about adult learning; 2) reducing barriers to adult learning; 3) expanding the provision of adult learning; and 4) raising the quality of adult learning.
Priority 3: Reducing skills imbalances in the labour market
As the skills needed in the labour market continue to evolve due to globalisation, digitalisation and demographic change, reducing skills imbalances remains a pressing policy priority. Most employers report that skills shortages are a major obstacle to long-term investment decisions. Shortages appear particularly acute in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and health fields. The emigration of highly educated workers from Latvia is a significant challenge that has contributed to these shortages. Latvia has opportunities to reduce skills imbalances in the labour market by: 1) strengthening the responsiveness of the tertiary education system to changing skills demand; 2) retaining talent in Latvia by stimulating sustainable wage growth and improving working conditions; and 3) facilitating internal mobility and attracting skilled workers from abroad.
Priority 4: Strengthening the governance of the skills system
Effective governance arrangements are the foundation of Latvia’s performance in developing and using people’s skills. The success of skills policies depends on the actions of a wide range of actors and sectors at national and local levels. Latvia’s Education Development Guidelines 2021-2027 will provide an opportunity to mobilise these actors and co-ordinate their efforts. Co-operation with and between municipalities on skills policy is not systematic, and could be strengthened in the context of Latvia’s administrative territorial reforms. Latvia has opportunities to strengthen the governance of the skills system by: 1) strengthening strategies and oversight for skills policy; 2) improving co-operation at different levels of government and with stakeholders; 3) building an integrated monitoring and information system on skills; and 4) raising, targeting and sharing investments in lifelong learning.
Building on the Assessment and Recommendations phase, the Implementation Guidance phase has continued to support Latvia in the development of its EDG. As before, a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach has been applied in Latvia involving all relevant ministries, levels of governments and stakeholders (Box 1.3). The purpose has been to encourage greater interaction and exchange among relevant actors to build a shared understanding of which policy actions and indicators should be included in the EDG. The OECD has used international, national and other data sources, information gathered from government and stakeholder representatives, as well as talent and expertise from across the OECD, including education indicator experts from the OECD’s Indicators of Education Systems team and from the OECD Foresight team. The project has drawn upon concrete examples of education strategy development from other countries, such as Estonia, which have provided important lessons, and made specific recommendations in identified priority areas. Representatives from Latvia were also invited to participate in peer-learning opportunities at the OECD to share Latvia’s experiences, learn from other country experiences, and widen and deepen their understanding of policies that have worked.
The Implementation Guidance phase was launched by the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science in October 2019 and has engaged representatives from across the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Welfare and the Ministry of Economics, as well as a wide range of stakeholders such as trade unions, employers, sectoral training providers, education institutions, and academics.
In October 2019, the OECD organised a foresight workshop that convened government and stakeholder representatives to identify emerging socio-economic trends that had skills implications and discuss the potential future impacts, associated opportunities and challenges of these trends for Latvia’s EDG.
In November 2019, the OECD facilitated a series of prioritisation workshops and focus groups with government and stakeholder representatives to discuss and identify relevant policy actions for the EDG. This resulted in 87 possible policy actions across the five levels of education (early childhood education and care, general education, vocational education and training, higher education and adult learning).
In February 2020, the OECD organised a series of strategy development workshops with government and stakeholder representatives to further work on these policy actions and prioritise potential policy indicators for Latvia’s EDG. The OECD provided participants with a list of 181 possible indicators drawn from international and national sources, encouraged participants to suggest new indicators, where relevant, and facilitated discussions to identify the indicators deemed most important. Through the prioritisation exercise, 10-12 indicators for each level of education were proposed for a total of 55 indicators for the EDG.
The output of these engagement exercises, alongside additional analysis and reflections from the OECD and concrete recommendations for Latvia’s next steps in finalising the EDG, are included in this report.
The findings of the Implementation Guidance Phase, which are summarised in this publication “OECD Skills Strategy Latvia Implementation Guidance: Developing Latvia’s Education Development Guidelines 2021-2027”, have been a major input to the development of Latvia’s EDG. The OECD was asked to provide input to Latvia’s EDG in the following key areas:
1. Guidance on developing Latvia’s EDG and selecting EDG policy actions (see Chapter 2).
2. Guidance on improving Latvia’s indicator system and selecting EDG indicators (see Chapter 3).
The OECD’s input – including key findings and recommendations – to each of these areas is described in greater detail in the subsequent chapters and is summarised in the section below. The summary section below covers the input that the OECD has provided to date in the development of the EDG, as well as suggestions for further steps that Latvia needs to take to finalise the EDG.
1. Guidance on developing Latvia’s EDG and selecting EDG policy actions
Latvia’s EDG is a strategic document that lays out what Latvia wants to achieve in the medium term in education and skills policies. The benefits of a well-defined EDG include describing the policy actions that Latvia plans to implement to achieve its policy objectives, and providing clarity about what needs to be done by whom and by when.
An effective process for identifying policy actions for Latvia’s EDG requires the application of a framework for selecting policy actions and the engagement of all relevant stakeholders in the process. A framework facilitates the selection process by guiding involved actors to consider the feasibility of proposed actions and the extent to which they advance EDG policy objectives. Identification of EDG policy actions requires the engagement of relevant stakeholders as they possess important sectoral knowledge and valuable insights and play an important role in the implementation of the policy actions.
A number of trends shape the skills needs and opportunities of Latvia. Megatrends such as globalisation, technological progress, population ageing, and migration, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, are driving significant changes in skills needs in society and the economy. The OECD provides guidance in Chapter 2 on the implications of this policy context for the selection of policy actions that advance the objectives of the EDG.
In developing the EDG, Latvia has considered the proposed policy actions of the “OECD Skills Strategy Latvia Assessment and Recommendations” report, which are summarised in Chapter 2 of this report. These policy actions were developed based on input from a broad range of actors and an in-depth assessment of Latvia’s education and skills system. As the context has significantly changed since the launch of the report due to the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic, this report provides further complementary guidance on the policy actions that can respond to the pressures that the pandemic has generated.
Chapter 2 also makes suggestions for how Latvia could further develop and implement the EDG. Latvia should include system-level policy actions, allocate roles and responsibilities to actors for policy actions, set clear timelines for implementation, determine the amount and source of required funding, and strengthen strategic planning to better anticipate and plan for possible changes in the policy context. Further developing the EDG in this way would allow Latvia to implement the policy actions more effectively and ultimately achieve its policy objectives.
2. Guidance on improving Latvia’s indicator system and selecting indicators for the EDG
Latvia’s EDG needs to be accompanied by a robust indicator system to monitor implementation progress. A robust indicator system for education and skills policies provides reliable, accurate and timely information on the human and financial resources invested in skills, how education and skills systems operate and evolve, and the returns on investments in skills.
An effective process for selecting EDG indicators facilitates consideration of a comprehensive set of high-quality indicators and helps to prioritise them on the basis of their ability to assess progress towards the achievement of the objectives and policy actions of the EDG. It is important to find a reasonable number of indicators, as too many can be costly and administratively burdensome and too few may not allow for a comprehensive assessment of progress towards achieving the policy objectives.
An assessment of Latvia’s current indicator system (see Chapter 3) reveals gaps in Latvia’s ability to measure progress towards the achievement of its objectives. For example, indicators could be developed to track funding for lifelong learning, generate more nuanced information on drop-outs, monitor student progression through education, measure the quality of early childhood education and care quality and provide additional background information on students. Developing these indicators would allow Latvia to identify whether all students are sufficiently supported and have the opportunity to develop their skills.
Chapter 3 presents a list of potential indicators for the EDG and an overview of further considerations that have been taken into account during the development of Latvia’s EDG. The OECD, together with government and stakeholder representatives, reviewed a total of 181 possible indicators and prioritised and discussed in-depth between 10-12 potential indicators across each of the five levels of education,2 resulting in a total of 54 potential indicators for Latvia’s EDG. Where relevant, specific suggestions are made for improving certain indicators and developing alternative indicators.
Chapter 3 also makes suggestions for how Latvia could improve its indicator system for the EDG. These improvements include integrating the various databases, strengthening the data validation process, setting ambitious yet realistic benchmark targets, designating a research institution to fully use the indicators, and disseminating information generated by the indicators through a user-friendly platform. Improving the indicator system in these ways would allow Latvia to make more effective use of the indicators to guide the EDG implementation process.
References
[3] OECD (2020), Strengthening the Governance of Skills Systems: Lessons from Six OECD Countries, OECD Skills Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/3a4bb6ea-en.
[2] OECD (2019), OECD Skills Strategy 2019: Skills to Shape a Better Future, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264313835-en.
[1] OECD (2019), OECD Skills Strategy Latvia: Assessment and Recommendations, OECD Skills Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/74fe3bf8-en.
Notes
← 1. The Latvian Education Law is available in the Latvian language at: https://likumi.lv/doc.php?id=50759.
← 2. Five levels of education: 1) early childhood education and care; 2) general education; 3) vocational education and training; 4) higher education; and 5) adult learning.