An OECD study published today says the United States should take concerted action to address the adult skills challenge, warning it could progressively fall behind other countries. The study argues that low-skilled populations face a bleak future, creating challenges both to equity and social cohesion.

Higher level vocational education and training (VET) programmes are facing rapid change and intensifying challenges. What type of training is needed to meet the needs of changing economies? How can employers and unions be engaged? The country reports in this series look at these and other questions. They form part of Skills beyond School, the OECD policy review of postsecondary vocational education and training.

Korea has made significant progress towards decentralising the management of employment and training programmes, but can still do more to create stronger links with employers at the local level, according to a new OECD report.

Countries should step up their efforts to improve the quality of post-secondary vocational training in order to meet the changing needs of today’s job market, according to a new OECD report.

Higher level vocational education and training (VET) programmes are facing rapid change and intensifying challenges. What type of training is needed to meet the needs of changing economies? How should the programmes be funded? How should they be linked to academic and university programmes?

Can PISA results predict the quality of a country’s labour force one decade later? To find out, we compared some of the results from the PISA 2000 and PISA 2003 tests with results from the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC).

Latin America’s GDP growth rate has slowed down in 2014, dropping below 1.5%. This is the first time in a decade that the region grows less than the OECD average, according to the OECD Development Centre, the Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean and the development bank for Latin America. Given the projections in the past weeks, any recovery in 2015 is likely to be challenging.

The OECD Directorate for Education and Skills helps individuals and nations to identify and develop the knowledge and skills that drive better jobs and better lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. We encourage countries to compare their experiences and learn from each other, and we accompany them in the difficult process of policy implementation.

The United Arab Emirates is identified by PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) as one of the most rapidly improving education systems in the world. However its students still perform well below the levels expected in advanced economies.

More than 35 million 16-29 year-olds across OECD countries are neither employed nor in education or training (NEET) – and around half of all NEETs are out of school and not looking for work. These young people are likely to have dropped off the radar of their country’s education, social and labour market systems.

Educational opportunities have a very important impact on a person’s life. Employment, earnings, well-being, health and trust are all strongly related to education and skills. A lack of high-quality educational opportunities is the most important way in which poverty, social inequality and exclusion are transmitted from one generation to another.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) permeate every aspect of our lives, from how we work, to how we “talk” with friends, to how we participate in political processes. But what are the returns to “digital skills” – the capacity to use digital devices and applications to access and manage information and solve problems – on the labour market? Do they help land a job or earn higher wages?

Human capital is key for economic growth. Not only is it linked to aggregate economic performance but also to each individual’s labour market outcomes. However, a skilled population is not enough to achieve high and inclusive growth, as skills need to be put into productive use at work.

Bringing you the highlights from the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Spain is emerging from a challenging period. The good news is that the economy has returned to moderate growth and unemployment rates are falling. Yet Spain’s progress along the path to inclusive growth may well falter if steps are not taken today to boost skills outcomes.

The Korean economy has seen significant growth in the past decades. However, much of the economic growth has been supported by intensive labour resource utilisation. Korean workers work the second longest hours among OECD countries. This is not sustainable in the long-term because Korea’s working age population is projected to decline from 2017 onwards.

Education systems are not static; they change. There have been some important changes at both ends of the education ladder recently: in early childhood or “pre-primary” education, at one end, and in tertiary or higher education at the other.

This commentary is one of a series of country reports on postsecondary vocational education and training (VET) in OECD countries, prepared as part of an OECD study. The series includes reviews, involving an in-depth analysis of a country system leading to a set of policy recommendations backed by analysis.

Since 2000, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has been measuring the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in over 70 countries.

Technology has indeed entered the classroom; but it has not yet changed the ways we teach and learn to the same extent that it has transformed our way of communicating in the outside world.

Who wants to be a teacher? As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, in many countries the teaching profession is having a hard time making itself an attractive career choice – particularly among boys and among the highest-performing students.

How school systems respond to immigration has an enormous impact on the economic and social well-being of all members of the communities they serve, whether they have an immigrant background or not.

Archived webinar December 17 2015 - Immigrant Students at School: Easing the Journey towards Integration presented by Presented by Andreas Schleicher, Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills, OECD

In Finland, the numeracy and literacy skills of adults are among the highest in the countries measured through the OECD’s 2012 Survey of Adult Skills. The Survey assessed the skills of adults in literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments in 24 countries and sub-national regions in the first round of the Survey.

The OECD's work on Trends Shaping Education looks at major social, demographic, economic and technological trends affecting the future of education. The newest edition of the publication will be released on 18 January.

One of the most remarkable consequences of the expansion of education in OECD countries over the past decades is the reversal of the gender gap in education. From outright exclusion and discrimination in educational institutions less than a century ago, girls and young women have conquered schools and colleges.

Most 15-year-olds in OECD countries spend at least some time each day wandering through cyberspace as part of their media diet.

What is the nature of modern childhood? Released today, the book Trends Shaping Education 2016 looks at major social, demographic, economic and technological trends affecting the future of education

Whoever has a hammer sees every problem as a nail. Those in the security business tend to see the answer to radicalism and terrorism in military might, and those in the financial business in cutting flows of money.

There are an estimated 9 million working aged adults in England (more than a quarter of adults aged 16-65) with low literacy or numeracy skills or both. This reflects England’s overall performance in the Survey of Adult Skills - around average for literacy, but well below average for numeracy relative to other OECD countries in the Survey (OECD, 2013).

Qualifications are useful because they make skills visible. It is confidently assumed that the holder of a school-leaving certificate can read and understand instructions, and make calculations, and that those with university degrees can do much more.

Archived webinar - Low-performing Students: Why they Fall Behind and How to Help them Succeed (February 10, 2016) with Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, OECD, and Daniel Salinas, Analyst, OECD.

School leaders are calling the PISA-based Test for Schools one of the better indicators out there of how well students are prepared for 21st century learning.

A new PISA report, Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed, offers an in-depth analysis of low performance at school and recommends ways to tackle the problem.

Teacher professionalism is about a teacher’s knowledge, their autonomy and their membership of peer networks. These are the key elements that lead to more effective teaching.

Primary school is a fundamental stage in children’s education. Yet it is often neglected in education research and policy debates, somehow squeezed between the seemingly more important stages of early childhood education and secondary education.

Children and young people are among the biggest losers in the European economic and debt crisis.

A generation ago, teachers could expect that what they taught would equip their students with the skills needed for the rest of their lives.

Today, around 5 million students study and do research in a country other than their own, attracted by the quality of overseas universities and willing to complement their education portfolio with international experience.

Students who avoid making an effort to understand mathematics concepts may succeed in some school environments; but a lack of deep, critical and creative thinking may seriously penalise these students later in life when confronted with real, complex problems.

Equality of opportunity is a lofty ideal, but some societies get closer to achieving it than others.

Ensuring that all people have solid foundation skills has become one of the central aims of the post-2015 development agenda.

The Survey of Adult Skills finds that even adults with the lowest proficiency in literacy possess some basic reading skills, although the level of these skills varies considerably across countries.

Despite the progress observed by PISA over the last decade, Latin American education systems still have a long way to go to reach world class standards. Ibero-American countries will also need to rethink their instructional system to better anticipate the knowledge and skills it will need to reignite its economy.

Over the past 15 years, Colombia’s education system has undergone an extraordinary transformation.

The education sector performs well for information and communication technology (ICT) and problem-solving skills, although it still lags behind the professional, scientific and technical activities sector.

If one were to ask ministers of education what they consider to be the most important factor determining the quality of their education systems, the odds are high that they would refer to the quality of the teaching work force.

Increased life expectancy represents one of the great achievements of modern societies: living longer and better has been a dream of past generations. At the same time, it implies changes to many aspects of life.

The Survey of Adult Skills finds that adults aged 55 to 65 are less proficient in literacy and numeracy than adults aged 25 to 34. But differences in skills proficiency that are related to age vary widely across countries, implying that skills policies can affect the evolution of proficiency over a lifetime.

Common sense and hard evidence point to the significant impact of socio-emotional skills such as perseverance and responsibility on children's lifetime success.