The Netherlands should improve its policies to attract and retain highly skilled migrants in order to address labour shortages and strengthen its position as a knowledge-based economy, according to a new OECD report.

Low birth rates have become a pressing issue in Italy and many young Italians feel they do not enjoy the necessary economic stability to plan ahead and start a family. Education that matches the skill needs of employers leading to work-based learning in the form of apprenticeships can be useful to help young Italians plan ahead and to sustain the much needed increase in the birth rate.

New research finds that green jobs use high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills more intensively compared to non-green jobs, and tend to be less routinized. They are also heterogeneous in terms of skill level.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are profoundly changing the skill profile of jobs. Skill development policies need to be overhauled to reduce the risk of increased unemployment and growing inequality.

Skill requirements in the labour market have significantly changed over the past two decades. The restructuring of the economy is making the labour market increasingly knowledge-based.

An increasing number of middle-income countries are participating in projects measuring cognitive skills of the adult population. Large differences in skill levels exist between these countries, with some having a large skills gap compared to OECD countries. Skill differences not only reflect differences in educational attainment, as skill levels among adults with the same level of educational differ widely across countries.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are changing profoundly the skill profile of jobs. To thrive in the digital economy, ICT skills will not be enough and other complementary skills will be needed, ranging from good literacy and numeracy skills through to the right socio-emotional skills to work collaboratively and flexibly.

In an increasingly competitive international environment, providing workers with the right mix of skills can help ensure that globalisation translates into new jobs and productivity gains rather than negative economic and social outcomes, according to a new OECD report.

The conference on Adapting to changing skill needs was an OECD event supported by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. This event showcased the OECD Skills for Jobs database, providing detailed information about the skill needs of the labour markets in all EU countries and South Africa.

The Slovenian economy is rebounding after a long downturn, experiencing stronger growth, declining unemployment, healthier public finances and renewed income convergence with more advanced European economies. Further reforms are now needed to increase investment, boost productivity, improve living standards and ensure that all Slovenians benefit from inclusive growth, according to a new report from the OECD.

Full and effective implementation of recent reforms, including the Jobs Act and the Good Schools reform, would help boost growth in Italy by improving people’s skills and ensuring their more effective use across the country, according to a new OECD report.

This conference organised jointly by the OECD, Warwick University, the Work Foundation, and the Centre for Cities brought together stakeholders from national government departments, cities, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) as well as business, NGOs and research institutions to discuss the key challenges facing the United Kingdom in building more and better quality jobs

South Africa has suffered from persistently high unemployment and low labour force participation rates. Moreover, country faces high qualification and field-of-study mismatch. Promoting skills development is a key priority in many of the South African government’s plans and strategies. As a result, the OECD suggests several policy recommendations and good practice examples from other countries in order to address those issues.

To boost growth, productivity and earnings, the UK should encourage lifelong learning among adults and promote better skills utilisation, according to a new OECD report.

The UK has enjoyed record-high employment levels in recent years and one of the lowest unemployment rates among OECD countries. However, labour productivity growth, which is closely linked to the use of skills, remains weak. As a result, the OECD’s Getting Skills Right: United Kingdom suggests that several actions should be taken to bring skill supply more in line with skill demand to help to boost growth, productivity and earnings.

France’s economy is growing and the labour market is gradually improving. However, the share of people out of work for more than 12 months remains high and many young people are on temporary contracts, with weak long-term job prospects and little opportunity for training.

Recent reforms of Italy’s education system (“Buona Scuola”), labour market (“Jobs Act”) and industrial policy (“Industria 4.0”) have clear synergies and could reduce worrying imbalances between the supply and demand of skills on the Italian labour market, according to the new OECD report Getting Skills Right: Italy.

Skill mismatches and shortages are pervasive in the Italian labour market. In light of the many skill challenges, the Italian Government recently launched a set of comprehensive reforms. However, a number of implementation challenges remain, which are discussed in the recently released OECD report Getting Skills Right: Italy.

France Stratègie discussion of OECD report Getting Skills Right: France

Chile’s economy is strengthening and wage growth picking up. The country should now address the challenge of improving people’s skills, particularly among women and low-skilled workers, in order to boost productivity, innovation and inclusive growth, according to a new OECD report.

Norway should step up its efforts to boost the job prospects of young people without upper-secondary qualification to further reduce the share of under-30 year-olds who are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs), according to a new OECD report.

29/03/2012 - Slovak Republic should help preschool teachers improve their skills, says OECD, and should encourage preschool teachers to keep improving their qualifications throughout their career and attract more young people, especially men, to the profession

Without adequate investment in skills, people languish on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into inclusive economic growth, and countries can no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global society, said OECD Secretary-General.

A country’s success in integrating immigrants’ children is a key benchmark of the efficacy of social policy in general and education policy in particular. The variance in performance gaps between immigrant and non-immigrant students across countries, even after adjusting for socio-economic background, suggests that policy has an important role to play in eliminating such gaps.

The OECD has launched its Skills Strategy to help governments build economic resilience, boost employment and reinforce social cohesion. Despite the pressure on public finances, spending on education and skills is an investment for the future and must be a priority.

As the spectre of another economic downturn looms large in many countries and is already a reality in others, new data from the 2012 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators – released today – provides powerful insights into the link between education, economic progress and social mobility around the world.

Did you know that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development helped to lay the groundwork for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals? Even though Development is part of our name, there are many people who don’t realise just how much of our resources are devoted to developing economies and not only to the development of the OECD’s 34 member countries.

When we think of innovation in education these days, we immediately think of technology: getting more computers into more classrooms, offering online courses to students in higher education. - See more at: http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.fr/2012/12/oecd-education-today-and-tomorrow.html#sthash.dv2MKgEf.dpuf

The exceptional turnout at the 2013 OECD/Japan Seminar in Tokyo this week, where over 300 participants from over 20 countries discussed global strategies for higher education, shows that the seminar had exactly the right agenda at exactly the right time. I asked myself how many people would have turned up had this seminar been held five years ago; or whether five years ago, Japan would have ventured to take the lead on this theme.

Education is one OECD department that has embraced the information revolution.

Digital economies are powered by skills. People with the high-end skills needed to invent and apply new technologies are in high demand the world over. At the same time, the portfolio of basic skills needed to navigate technology-rich environments and function effectively in our connected societies has expanded. How severe is the shortage of ICT skills? And what needs to be done to fill the gaps?

How do apprenticeships and other forms of workplace learning help people to make a successful transition from school to work? Global economic competition requires a labour force with a range of mid-level trade, technical and professional skills alongside the high-level skills typically associated with university education.

In most OECD countries, newly arrived 15-year-old immigrant students show poorer reading performance than immigrant students who arrived in their new country when they were younger than five.

The transition from school to work in Germany is remarkably smooth. An excellent vocational education and training (VET) system ensures that young people are well-prepared when they enter the labour market and can find jobs that match their qualifications.

David Hoey, Chief Executive Officer of WorldSkills International spoke to us of the international skills extravaganza (WorldSkills Leipzig 2013) going on now, between 2-7 July.

In a global economy, the benchmark for educational success is no longer improvement by national standards alone, but the best performing school systems internationally.

Everywhere skills transform lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. And if there’s one lesson the global economy has taught us over the last few years, it’s that we cannot simply bail ourselves out of a crisis — stimulus plans and printing money can never be a lasting solution to our economic problems.

The informal meeting of OECD Education Ministers will be held in Istanbul, Turkey on 2-3 October 2013. The theme of the meeting is “Fostering Skills and Employability through Education”.

The low-skilled are more likely than others to be unemployed, have bad health and earn much less, according to the first OECD Survey of Adult Skills. Countries with greater inequality in skills proficiency also have higher income inequality.

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.