Education at a glance” “

In the member states of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development –whose members comprise 30 industrialized countries in the world, 22 of which European – “the levels of education are in progressive growth” but “the opportunities for post-school education and training seem to privilege persons already endowed with a good level of education and in employment, rather than those less qualified or in search of a job”. That’s the conclusion drawn by the 2005 edition of the OECD Report on education and training, published in recent days. We present a résumé of the data in the report, privileging the situation in Europe. NOT ONLY BASIC EDUCATION. According to the OECD research project with the title “Education at a Glance”, “people are facing growing pressures to go on developing skills and knowledge over their working life-time as job mobility increases and job tasks become more complex”. This places pressure on “governments to do more to foster education and training at all stages of people’s lives”. The level of education continues to rise in almost all the OECD countries, says the Report, with the result that “on average, three quarters of those born in the 1970s have gone all the way through secondary school, now the essential baseline qualification for successful entry into the labour market, compared with only half of those born in the 1940s”. Nonetheless in France, Italy, Great Britain, the Slovak Republic, Turkey and Mexico “more than 10% of 15-19 year olds” have low levels of education, and are neither in work not in education. POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION AND TRAINING. “If school education is a gateway to employment”, it in itself is not enough: “further education and training are also crucial for maintaining and improving people’s employability”. Adult training opportunities are essential, but according to the OECD Report “still seem to be skewed more towards the better-skilled and those who already have jobs than towards people looking for work”. In Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA, “more than 40% of people in the labour force now take part in non-formal job-related education and training each year. By contrast, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Spain provide such training to fewer than 10% of employees”. While “post-graduate education and training opportunities are generally as accessible to women as to men, they remain less frequent for those who need them most, such as the unemployed or people in low-skilled jobs. More generally, adult education and training are more common in large firms, the public sector and in sectors such as business services, banking or finance; usually for full-time or established workers in a firm; more prevalent for management and senior posts than for non-executive or unskilled jobs; more frequent for young and mid-career workers than for older workers; and likely to increase in line with an individual’s initial level of qualification”. DISPARITIES IN EARNINGS. The Report further underlines the progressively widening gap “between the earnings of better qualified workers and those less qualified”. This is a disparity that, according to the OECD Report, increased by 25% in Denmark and New Zealand between 1997 and 2003; while in Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, UK, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Hungary and the USA it reaches levels of between 50% and 119%. This is further confirmation of the importance of combining “basic education and ongoing training”. SCHOOL EXPENDITURES. “OECD countries now spend an average of 7,343 US dollars per student per year between primary and tertiary education, but this figure masks a broad range of expenditure across countries. Switzerland and the USA spend the most, with average annual outlays per student of more than 11,000 US dollars. At the other end of the scale, Mexico and the Slovak Republic spend around 2,000 US dollars per student per year. The drivers of expenditure per student vary across countries: among the five countries with the highest expenditure per student, Switzerland and the USA are two of the countries with the highest teachers’ salaries at secondary level of education, whereas Austria, Denmark and Norway are among the countries with the lowest student to teaching staff ratio”. “Spending, however, is not necessarily a guarantee of higher quality in terms of education – concludes the Report -: Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and New Zealand all have moderate expenditure on education per student at the primary and lower secondary levels but are among the countries where 15-year-olds perform strongest in key subject areas”.