Chapter 4. Preparing students for the future: Trends in evolution of policy priorities
This chapter analyses recent trends in policy priorities related to preparing students for the future, as defined by the Education Policy Outlook’s analytical framework, across a variety of OECD and non-OECD education systems and economies. The aim is to show how policy priorities can be shared by different education systems, how common principles of policy action proposed by the OECD can apply differently, depending on the different contexts and scope of the analysis carried out, and how policy principles recommended in one education system could serve as an inspiration for other systems. Persisting policy priorities to better prepare students for the future include: addressing skills mismatch; decreasing early school leaving rates; and improving the attractiveness and relevance of vocational education and training. Emerging policy priorities include: increasing the quality and relevance of tertiary education, and managing the internationalisation of the higher education sector.
The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.
Highlights
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This chapter identified some persisting policy priorities to better prepare students for the future from 2008 until 2017. These include addressing skills mismatch, reducing early school leaving rates, improving the attractiveness and relevance of vocational education and training (VET), or increasing equal access to education.
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In its previous work with countries, the OECD identified some principles of action to help education systems address these policy priorities, such as: 1) making VET more relevant to labour market needs by involving stakeholders from the private sector; 2) providing more and earlier individualised support to students at risk of falling behind and eventually dropping out; or 3) making VET more attractive by facilitating pathways to tertiary education.
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Analysis for this chapter also identified some policy priorities emerging from 2014 to 2017, which include: increasing the quality and relevance of tertiary education, and managing the internationalisation of the higher education sector.
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Key principles of action included in OECD recommendations to education systems with these emerging policy priorities include: 1) favouring policies that encourage students to go back to school; 2) providing students with more guidance; 3) boosting funding, quality standards and teaching quality in tertiary education; and 4) further encouraging internationalisation of the higher education sector as a way to improve its quality.
Introduction
Preparing students for the future goes beyond the prime objective of developing skills for successful entrance into the labour market. It is also about how education systems can provide the necessary range of skills beyond compulsory education so that people can become active players in their country’s economic, social and democratic development over the short-, mid- and longer term. Preparing students for the future is, therefore, inherently linked to how education systems enable the population to become resilient to external and internal changes and continue moving towards greater social prosperity.
Many young people leave school-based education with a deficit of basic knowledge and skills compared to their peers. That has a major impact on their transition to the labour market, their potential income and various other social outcomes. In many countries, low skills levels become embedded in a proportion of the population during the early years and throughout compulsory schooling and can persist through adulthood. Without intervention and a successful transition out of compulsory education, this inequity can deepen and broaden over time (Borgonovi et al, 2017; Heckman, 2008).
Policies are also needed to ensure that young and older adults have the opportunity to re-engage in education or training to acquire the skills they missed out on earlier in life. The capacity for lifelong learning is a vital requirement for those working in increasingly knowledge-based economies (OECD, 2013).
Evidence shows that what people know and what they do with this knowledge can have a major impact on their life chances. As labour markets evolve, individuals can lose the skills they do not use, or the skills they have acquired may lose their relevance for labour market needs. A concerted effort is needed by governments, education systems, employers, labour unions and individuals to ensure that people can acquire the right skills throughout their lives and that economies and societies make good use of those skills.
In the 2016 OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)1, mismatches between adults’ skills and what is required or expected of them at work were found to be pervasive (OECD, 2016). On average, about 22% of workers reported that they are overqualified (i.e. that they have higher qualifications than those required to get their job), and 13% reported that they are underqualified (i.e. that their qualifications are lower than those required to get their job). Moreover, 11% have higher literacy skills than those typically required in their job (over-skilled), and 4% are under-skilled. Finally, some 40% of workers reported being employed in an occupation that is unrelated to their field of study (Figure 4.1) (OECD, 2016).
Furthermore, while education policy initiatives have traditionally tended to focus on the development of cognitive skills and vocational/occupation-specific skills, there is an increasing emphasis on the importance of non-cognitive skills, including social and emotional skills. Evidence is beginning to highlight these as being just as important for lifelong success as cognitive and vocational skills (OECD, 2015). Fostering non-cognitive skills will also be a key requirement to drive future growth and innovation in a scenario of increasing automation of many tasks. Therefore, it is expected that many new initiatives, both nationally and internationally, will focus on development of social and emotional skills to help prepare students for future work and life (Kautz et al., 2014).
This chapter analyses trends in the evolution of policy priorities related to preparing students for the future, as defined by the Education Policy Outlook (EPO) analytical framework, across a variety of OECD and non-OECD education systems and economies. As outlined in Chapter 1, policy priorities encompass the challenges, key issues and objectives of an education system.
Focusing on preparing students for the future, this chapter uses a structure similar to that of Chapter 2 (on equity and quality), covering 43 OECD and non-OECD education systems from 2008 to 2017. It shows how some policy priorities can be shared among different education systems and how common principles of policy action proposed by the OECD can apply differently depending on the contexts and scope of the analysis carried out.
As in Chapter 2, the analysis shows that some policy priorities continue to be prominent in education systems since the previous round of consultation in 2013, which examined policy developments in OECD education systems from 2008 to 2013. Over 2014-17, new policy priorities have emerged more clearly, while others appear to have reduced in relative importance, according to responses to the EPO Survey 2016-17. In many cases, similar policy priorities had also been identified in OECD country-based work over the same period, such as education policy country reviews, country reports in thematic reviews and economic surveys. Figure 4.1 shows key trends in the evolution of the policy priorities discussed in this chapter.
1. Blue bars represent emerging policy priorities and grey bars represent persisting policy priorities, according to education systems’ self-reports and previous OECD country-based work. Priorities are ranked by decreasing order of the number of education systems where the policy priority was identified.
2. See Annex A, Table A A.3, for the year of the country study considered.
3. Priorities identified by education systems in self-reports are drawn from responses to the EPO Survey 2016-17. Priorities were also identified based on the EPO Country Profiles published in 2017 (see the Reader’s Guide).
This chapter also identifies some broad principles of action relevant to these policy priorities that the OECD has recommended to education systems. Principles of action are the component of a recommendation that draws from international evidence produced on a specific topic, either by the OECD or externally (see the Reader’s Guide for more information).
Persisting policy priorities from 2008 to 2017
Addressing skills mismatch
Over 2008-17, the OECD identified different manifestations of skills mismatch in country-based work carried out in several education systems. In addition, according to the responses of participating education systems to the EPO Surveys in 2013 and 2016-17, making education more relevant in order to reduce skills mismatch was a widespread policy priority in many countries, including Belgium (Flemish Community), the Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Korea, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (England) (Table 4.1). In the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, some education systems that reported a need to reduce skills mismatch on the EPO Survey experienced higher levels of skills mismatch than the OECD average (including Estonia, Italy and Norway). Other education systems, however, such as the Czech Republic, Korea, Slovenia and Spain, had comparatively lower levels of total mismatch, but still considered decreasing skills mismatch a policy priority.
Between 2008 and 2013, OECD recommendations to Austria, Korea, Poland, Slovenia and the accession country Colombia, among others, included principles of action for making VET more relevant to labour market needs by further involving stakeholders from the private sector (such as employers), thus more closely matching skills to jobs. In 2013, the OECD advised Austria to better reflect labour market demand by building on existing initiatives to develop institutional mechanisms to ensure that the mix of provision in Fachhochschulen and VET colleges takes account of employers’ needs along with student demand. Also in 2013, the OECD found that Colombia could reach a better match between employers’ needs and institutions’ outputs by giving more weight to regional employment offices and the existing sectoral roundtables organised by the government with the private sector. The OECD also advised Colombia to include private actors in the governing boards of education centres. Between 2014 and 2017, the OECD suggested the same principle of action to Korea for the second time, and to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal and Slovenia for the first time.
Concurrently, many education systems have been implementing policies to respond to skills mismatch that focus on establishing new possibilities for retraining and reactivating the skills of adults. These include, for example, Ireland with its Springboard programme (2011).
Decreasing early school leaving rates
Education systems need to ensure that students remain in education in order to reap its benefits and have better chances later in life. However, the share of students leaving school early remains high in certain OECD countries.
The OECD identified decreasing early school leaving as a persisting policy priority in its work with Iceland, Portugal and Spain over 2008-17. More recently, the OECD also identified this as a policy priority in education systems including Estonia, Italy, the Slovak Republic and accession country Colombia. In essence, the OECD advised these education systems to opt for policies providing more and earlier individualised support to students at risk of falling behind. Given the specific contexts in these countries, these policies were considered potentially more useful than measures to promote employment opportunities and income support for drop outs over their working lives, as such measures can be more costly and less effective.
A number of education systems (including the Flemish and French Communities of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) had reported reducing early school leaving as a policy priority during 2008-13. However, in the EPO Survey 2016-17, some of these systems did not report this same policy priority in their responses covering 2014-17. One reason for this may be that reducing early school leaving is already considered an agreed target for EU countries (aiming to reduce it to less than 10% by 2020) (EC, n.d.). Across Europe, early school leaving rates of 18-24 year-olds have tended to decline over 2008-16. For example, Eurostat data for 2017 show that from 2008 to 2017, early school leaving rates dropped from 19.6% to 14% in Italy, from 17% to 10.4% in Norway, from 34.9% to 12.6% in Portugal, and from 31.7% to 18.3% in Spain (Eurostat, 2017a).
Efforts to decrease early school leaving can relate to a variety of measures, which include providing more transparency and flexibility on what students are being able to learn. In the Flemish Community of Belgium, related policy actions include providing targeted information to specific schools on their performance and tracking of study trajectories of individual students from school to school and programme to programme. Norway’s 2008 proposed pilot project on the Certificate of Practice Scheme (Praksisbrev) aimed to facilitate certification of students who are otherwise at risk of leaving without a qualification. In Italy, recent policy actions aim to broaden VET pathways to provide students in upper secondary education with a greater variety of learning options and flexibility and to increase interaction between school and work settings. Furthermore, Italy’s National Reform Programme aims to reduce early school leaving to below 16%. That same objective is also a cornerstone of Italy’s National Operational Programme for Schools (2014-20).
Improving the attractiveness and relevance of VET and apprenticeships and promoting successful transitions
From 2008 to 2017, the OECD has repeatedly identified the need to improve the attractiveness of VET as a policy priority, in countries including the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Mexico, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. This has also been identified as a key target in responses to the EPO Surveys in both 2013 and 2016-17. Between 2008 and 2013, Belgium, Canada, Germany and the Slovak Republic expressed the need to tackle this issue, while Spain and Sweden did so between 2014 and 2017.
Recommended principles of action include making programmes more relevant to the labour market, facilitating pathways to tertiary education or higher-level VET and further involving employers in establishing the curriculum. In 2016, the OECD advised Estonia (where only 36% of students of all ages were enrolled in VET in 2015) to employ a holistic strategy involving more funding to VET institutions, improved career guidance for students and a deeper engagement from employers. In 2012, the OECD advised Iceland (where the share of students of all ages enrolled in VET in 2015 was 33%) to boost the status of VET by emphasising the importance of modern careers in the technical and innovation sectors and ensuring that equipment is modern and teachers are up to date.
In terms of policy efforts, Portugal, for example, has revised curricula at upper secondary education and created Qualifica Centres (2016). Improving the quality and relevance of VET and access to it has also been an area of effort in countries such as Belgium (Flemish Community), especially for students at risk of early school dropout, and Spain, where the new Dual Vocational Training Model has improved outcomes (2012).
OECD country-based work has also identified facilitating school-to-work transition for students as a policy priority in 13 education systems, including Austria in 2013, Belgium (Flemish, French and German-speaking Communities) in 2015, Greece in 2013 and 2016, the Slovak Republic in 2014 and accession country Colombia in 2016 and 2017. Diverse principles of action proposed by the OECD to achieve this include increased employer engagement, improved work-based training to better bridge the transition from education to the labour market, and providing students with more information about education pathways and labour market needs.
In 2015, the OECD identified several options for Mexico to improve the VET sector. These included: 1) establishing a formal consultation framework between employers, unions and the VET system; 2) adopting quality standards and apprenticeships to support and expand workplace training as an integral part of vocational programmes; and 3) developing the capacity to analyse and use data on labour market needs to guide the design of policies and improve decision making. In 2015, the OECD advised Ireland to ensure that students receive appropriate information on all educational options available to them after school (including vocational and technical options), to facilitate transitions to work and to reduce skill mismatches.
In the EPO Surveys in 2013 and 2016-17, countries such as Belgium (Flemish Community), Canada, England, France, Japan, the Slovak Republic and Spain also identified this as a policy priority. These education systems had also identified this as a policy priority over 2008-13, except for Canada, which highlighted it for the first time in the EPO Survey 2016-17. In a majority of these education systems, as in Canada, France and Spain, employment rates of 25-34 year-olds who had attained upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education as their highest level of education were lower than the OECD average.
Measures to facilitate transitions to the labour market in OECD countries include: 1) the implementation or revision of national qualifications frameworks, as in Iceland (which adopted the National Qualifications Framework for all school levels in 2016); and 2) the updating of curricula in upper secondary education, as in Italy (which reformed the upper secondary curriculum in 2010 and modernised and streamlined the VET offering to students in 2017) and Japan (which revised its National Curriculum Standard in 2009).
The OECD identified strengthening apprenticeship systems as an important policy priority in its work with Australia, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the Slovak Republic, and the United Kingdom from 2008 to 2013, and with France, Italy, Latvia (regarding work-based learning), Mexico and accession country Costa Rica from 2014 to 2017. Principles of action proposed to tackle this policy priority include: 1) providing an apprenticeship system with VET programmes that reflect student preferences and employer needs; 2) improving financial support for students in vocational education; 3) strengthening collaboration of businesses and schools at the local level; and 4) increasing work-based learning.
In 2010 and 2013, the OECD encouraged Austria to enhance quality and ensure minimum standards in apprenticeships through effective monitoring and support to training firms. The OECD also proposed that Austria use different self-assessment tools as a way to strengthen the apprenticeship system. In 2015, reflecting a different contextual starting point, the OECD recommended that accession country Costa Rica use new legislation to pilot and develop an apprenticeship system, developing it carefully to take account of international experience and the need to fully involve and engage the social partners. Canada (Alberta), Estonia and Spain reported changes to apprenticeship systems as a policy priority in their responses to the EPO Surveys in 2013 and 2016-17.
The OECD also identified improving employer engagement as a policy priority in Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Korea and Slovenia from 2008 to 2013, and in Austria, Israel and Latvia, among others, from 2014 to 2017. OECD recommendations to governments included providing incentives, such as tax exemptions, to promote increased employment engagement.
In 2012, the OECD advised Korea to promote industry involvement in VET by creating a high-profile national body including industry, government and other stakeholders, with either an influential advisory role or decision-making power in relation to VET policy. In 2016, the OECD recommended that the Czech Republic encourage employers to provide training to young, unskilled workers through either tax subsidies or targeted reductions in social security contributions.
In the EPO Survey 2016-17, just three education systems reported increasing employer engagement in VET as a policy priority: Belgium, Canada (Alberta) and Estonia. Canada (Alberta) reported specific initiatives in 2016 to increase employer engagement as a way to improve job opportunities and outcomes for apprentices.
Promoting equal access to tertiary education
Analysis of this report on OECD work from 2008 to 2017 has identified the need to increase access to tertiary education for some groups as a persisting policy priority across OECD countries. Evidence shows that parental education is still a strong predictor of their children’s educational attainment in many contexts. In countries with available data, the proportion of adults (age 30-44) with tertiary education whose parents do not hold a tertiary-level qualification is 20% (OECD, 2017a).
From 2012 to 2017, the OECD advised 16 education systems (including Australia, Chile, Estonia, Germany, Israel, Japan, Slovenia, Portugal, accession country Colombia and partner country Kazakhstan) to: 1) boost access to tertiary education by reducing financial barriers to education, especially for disadvantaged students; and 2) develop a strong, reliable and well-disseminated system of labour market information that reports on the outcomes of higher-education graduates, to help students make well-informed decisions about their orientation and career.
In 2016, the OECD advised accession country Colombia to remove financial obstacles to enrolment for low-income students, in order to promote equitable access for less-advantaged students. The OECD also recommended that Colombia ensure that students have easy access to adequate information to support their decisions, as helping students make the right choices about further education and the labour market is vital in a country where half the student cohort drops out and pathways between institutions and programmes tend to be unclear.
In Portugal in 2017, the OECD highlighted the strong relationship of students’ socio-economic backgrounds with access to tertiary education. According to the evidence collected by the OECD, young people from families with high levels of education have a much higher probability of reaching a higher level of education. Along with other analysis, this strengthened the case for providing more generous support to tertiary students from disadvantaged backgrounds, which would likely prove a powerful tool to reduce inequalities.
In country responses to the EPO Survey 2016-17, three education systems identified increasing equal access to tertiary education as a policy priority: Australia, Japan and Turkey. Other education systems have also taken action in this regard. Policies to improve access to tertiary education have been implemented in New Zealand, as part of its 2014-19 Tertiary Education Strategy, and in Belgium’s Flemish Community, with its National Qualifications Structure (2009-13).
Decreasing youth unemployment and the share of NEETs
From 2014 to 2017, some policy priorities have emerged more strongly among education systems, including decreasing youth unemployment and the share of 15-29 year-olds who are neither employed nor in education or training (OECD, 2017a). This was a policy priority for Estonia, Italy, Korea, the Slovak Republic and accession country Colombia.
In 2012, the OECD advised Estonia to consider moving towards a model similar to those implemented in Austria, Finland and the United Kingdom, which require the employment office to offer formal education or apprenticeships to youth who are not in employment, education or training, at least until the age of 18 (often called youth guarantees). The OECD proposed these measures in combination with financial incentives offered to employers for developing apprenticeship places, a measure that has proven to be effective in Denmark.
Between 2008 and 2013, Ireland and Italy reported decreasing high levels of youth unemployment and NEETs as a policy priority. The rate of NEETs reached a peak of over 20% for Ireland in 2010 (decreasing to 16.3% in 2016) and rose to a high of 27.4% in Italy by 2015 (decreasing to 26% in 2016) (Eurostat, 2017b). According to the EPO Survey 2016-17, this was first identified as a policy priority in Portugal in 2014-17. Over the same period the share of NEETs peaked in Portugal at 17.1% of the age cohort in 2013, before dropping to 13.3% in 2016 (Eurostat, 2017b).
To decrease youth unemployment and the share of NEETs, some countries have implemented policies focused on connecting employers with job seekers. Some examples include Canada and its Job Bank website (2014) and Ireland’s 2012 Action Plan for Jobs.
Emerging policy priorities identified from 2014 to 2017
Increasing the quality of tertiary education
Increasing the quality of tertiary education is a policy priority that emerged more clearly in the analysis OECD’s work with individual countries carried out from 2014 to 2017, with 16 OECD education systems where this was identified (Table 4.8). The Czech Republic and Germany also specifically noted this as a policy priority in the EPO Survey 2016-17. General principles of action proposed by the OECD in this area include raising education funding and quality standards, improving teaching quality and making tertiary education more responsive to labour market needs. In 2016, the OECD advised the Czech Republic to introduce output-based accreditation criteria and student fees to increase resources for the provision of public tertiary education, accompanied by a mixed system of means-tested grants and income-contingent repayment loans.
Reflecting the growth in importance of this topic in recent years, initiatives are underway at an international level to set quality standards for higher education. For example, the European Higher Education Area (the group of 48 countries working to implement the Bologna Process of instituting internationally comparable higher education standards) published a first set of Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area in 2005 and updated them in 2015 (ENQA, 2015). National agencies which meet these standards are registered with the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR). The OECD project on Enhancing Higher Education System Performance is also working towards establishing international benchmarks to assess performance, policies and practices of higher education systems in OECD countries (OECD, 2017b).
Many national initiatives which aim to improve quality in higher education are also underway or have recently been implemented, often with the aim of ensuring coherence with international standards. The Slovak Republic, for example, has developed a strategy to increase internal quality controls, with its 2012 amendment to the Higher Education Act. In Latvia, the Academic Information Centre has been operating as an independent national agency for licensing and accreditation and quality assurance of higher education study programmes since 2015, and it is aiming for inclusion in the EQAR in 2018. The Slovenian Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, an independent agency established in 2010, was included in EQAR in 2013 and became a member of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education in 2015.
Internationalisation of the higher education sector
From 2014 to 2017, as comparability of higher education qualifications between countries becomes clearer and common international standards are adopted, a related policy priority has come to the fore more clearly: an increasing focus on internationalisation of the higher education sector. By 2025, demand for international education is expected to be almost four times higher than 2000 levels (Knight, 2015).
Many OECD governments are now working to increase internationalisation in the student population. Only Slovenia specifically referenced it as a policy priority in the EPO Survey 2016-17. However, in its work with seven member countries (Finland, Japan, Latvia, Norway, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia) and partner country Kazakhstan, the OECD encouraged internationalisation of the higher education sector as a way to boost its quality, through increased exchanges of best practices. The share of international or foreign students for all levels of tertiary education in these countries was below the OECD average of 5.6%, except for Latvia (6.1% in 2015) , the Slovak Republic (5.9% in 2015) and Kazakhstan (2.1% in 2014) (OECD, 2017a; OECD, 2017c).
In 2015, the OECD indicated that accelerating the internationalisation of tertiary education in Japan could help attract outstanding students to leading graduate schools. Slovenia also adopted measures on internationalisation, including the Strategy for the Internationalisation of Slovenian Higher Education (2016-20), which includes an Action Plan with over 50 measures and a web page to promote Slovenia as a study destination.
In Kazakhstan, state initiatives such as the Bolashak programme, the adoption of the Bologna Process and the establishment of Nazarbayev University have all had an impact on the level of internationalisation in higher education. In 2017, the OECD advised Kazakhstan to review these initiatives to ensure that they are having the desired impact and support system improvement (OECD, 2017c).
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Note
← 1. Countries participating in PIAAC (* indicates OECD partner countries):
Round 1 (2008-13): Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flemish Community), Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation*, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom (England and Northern Ireland) and the United States.
Round 2 (2012-16): Chile, Greece, Indonesia*, Israel, Lithuania*, New Zealand, Singapore*, Slovenia and Turkey.