It all starts with building the right skills

by Andreas Schleicher
Deputy Director for Education and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary General

Skills transform lives and drive economies. Without the right skills, people are kept on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into economic growth, and countries can’t compete in today’s economies. But the toxic co-existence of unemployed graduates and employers who say that they cannot find the people with the skills they need, shows that skills don't automatically translate into better economic and social outcomes. The OECD has put together a strategy that helps countries transform skills into better jobs and better lives.

It all starts with building the right skills. Anticipating the evolution of the demand for labour is the essential starting point. We then need to improve the quality of learning outcomes, by putting a premium on skills-oriented learning throughout life instead of qualifications-focused education upfront. That’s about fostering relevant learning. Skills development is far more effective if the world of learning and the world of work are linked. Compared to purely government-designed curricula taught exclusively in schools, learning in the workplace allows young people to develop “hard” skills on modern equipment, and “soft” skills, such as teamwork, communication and negotiation, through real-world experience. Hands-on workplace training can also help to motivate disengaged youth to stay in or re-engage with education and smooth the transition to work. Data from our new Adult Skills Survey (PIAAC) provide powerful evidence of that. While you learn when you are in education between the ages of 16 and 25, the learning curve is even steeper if you combine education with work.

All of this is everybody’s business; and we need to deal with the tough question of who should pay for what, when and how, particularly for learning beyond school. Social partners can help in developing curricula that include broader, transferable skills and ensuring that good-quality training is available to all. Employers can do a lot more to create a climate that supports learning, and invest in it. Some individuals can shoulder more of the financial burden. And governments can do a lot to design rigorous standards, provide financial incentives and create a safety net so that all people have access to high quality learning.

But even the best skills simply evaporate if they aren’t maintained and upgraded to meet the changing needs of societies. There are people who are highly skilled who have decided not to work. Why? They may be too busy caring for children or elderly parents; they may have health problems; or they may have calculated that it just doesn’t pay to work. The answer is that we need to make better use of our talent pool.

Equally important, we need to ensure that skills are used effectively at work. OECD data show the link between how skills are used on the job and people’s earnings prospects and productivity. If you have great skills and have a demanding job, you’re fine, and your earnings continue to increase. If you don't yet have the skills but your job is demanding, you’ll see progress too. But if your employer does not use your skills, the earnings over your lifetime tend to deteriorate.

So what can we do about this? Quality career guidance is essential. People who have the latest labour-market information can help steer individuals to the education or training that would best prepare them for their prospective careers. Helping young people to gain a foothold in the labour market is fundamental too. Vocational training is a very effective way to achieve this. Coherent and easy-to-understand qualifications help employers identify potential employees who are suitable for the jobs they offer. And reducing the costs of moving within a country can help employees to find the jobs that match their skills and help employers to find the skills that match their jobs.

There may be young people just starting out who are well educated but have trouble finding jobs that put their education and training to good use. What most people don’t realise is that we can shape the demand for skills. Often we think that the demand for skills is as it is, and we just need to educate people to meet existing demand. That is a big mistake. There is much that governments and employers can to do promote knowledge-intensive industries and jobs that require high-skilled workers. Adding these kinds of high value-added jobs to a labour market helps to get more people working—and for better pay.

Last but not least, education that fosters entrepreneurship can help create jobs. Indeed, education is where entrepreneurship is often born.

In short, we’re all in this together – and there’s a lot more that we all can do to develop the right skills and turn them into better jobs and better lives.

Links:
To download the report:  Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: The OECD Skills Strategy   – and much find out more about skills and skills policies around the world – visit our interactive skills web portal: http://skills.oecd.org

Follow the launch of the Skills Strategy and join the debates on @OECD_Edu and @SchleicherEdu #OECDSkills

Making your Preschooler resilient

Your preschooler is encountering and experimenting with everything for the first time. In the preschool your child meets new friends, learns new skills and activities and also is introduced to a new environment for the first time. Though the preschool age is a little early to introduce resilience to your child, it is the right time to gently plant the idea of resilience in your child.

The concept of resilience is like the concept of a rubber band, your child should be strong enough to go to school, learn concepts, make friends and come back home the same child who left for school. The ability to stretch their imagination, interact with peers and develop new skills is all a part of the concept of resilience.

Teaching your child the concept of resilience is similar to teaching him to fall down and get back again, without making a hue and cry about it. You can teach your child that if they don’t win they have the inner strength to improve and win the next time. You can teach your child how to rebound when something doesn’t go its way.

Here are some tips on how you can make your child a strong and more resilient child. If you wish to foster resilience in your child, don’t offer it a quick solution every time he faces a problem. Let it learn to find solutions. For example, if you go out with your child, and he falls down, wait for a minute and see whether he makes attempt to get up on his own or waits for you to help him. If he gets up on his own and goes about his way, you can admire him and appreciate his ability to get back again. Help him clean the mud of his knees but admire his running skill and generally don’t focus on solving his problem for him.

Teach your child the concept of persistence over perfection, he should not be taught the concept of perfection, which will unnecessary confuse him; instead teach him that participating is as good as winning. Praising your three-year old will build his self-confidence, which is essential in making him more resilient. Set example of resilience and show your resilient behaviour to your child.

Use words that encourage persistence rather than perfection. Don’t use words like always and never. Avoid saying I can never make it, instead encourage making efforts, when you make efforts your child too will learn to make efforts.

Pushing perfection on the child means, setting examples in front of and asking your child to be like them, instead allow your child to develop his self-confidence. Allow your child to make choices and appreciate them, this will make him more confident and resilient. If your child shows a choice for wild colours, let him wear the colour it likes, this will foster his self-confidence and make him more resilient. A confident child is a resilient child. Your pre-schooler can also become more resilient, if you encourage him to be more self-confident, by avoiding solving his problems and encourage him to make independent choices.

Will Preschool education make your child ready for school?

Some parents are concerned whether their children will be ready for school after they have attended a nursery school. So, they go through increased anxiety and are on the lookout for good pre-primary schools. Little millennium is one such school that specializes in training children, through a scientific curriculum that they practice in their school.

 The school’s early development training ensures that the child is able to read write and comprehend once it has attended their pre-school. They focus on the all round development of your child. A good pre-school should ensure that there is complete cognitive development of your child.

Through a planned and systematic curriculum the child should develop problem-solving skills. Developing a capacity for a strong knowledge basis which would ensure academic success in future is essential in a good preschool education. Education should have horizontal relevance to the child rather than vertical relevance. In other words, you should not view your child as an adult in the making but whatever it is doing now should be valued and should have relevance in the present rather than living for the future.

Besides learning to read and write children also learn social interaction in a pre-primary school. The classroom should be considered as a place where the teacher and the kids socially interact with each other and together negotiate the school curriculum.

Little children should be given a chance to learn skills which would help them, make sense of their world. Learning is most effective when it is taught by the play-way method. There should be a relationship between what is being learnt and the learning environment. Knowledge and understanding of the subject should be developed through social interactions. The final goal should be to create a learning environment in which the teachers and students have opportunities to make decisions, connect the known to the unknown, and test out new ideas by interactive methods. The role of the teacher in the learning process is to provide guided participation. The role of the children is to interact by play and informal learning new ideas and activities.

Children should be allowed to develop ideas and concepts which help them understand their world. The process of teaching is effective when children build concepts on the basis of their understanding of the world. The teachers provide situations that enhance the experiences of children which makes them reconstruct their experiences and express.

Children’s curriculum should be designed to foster factual knowledge and should build their conceptual understanding of mathematics and science. For instance children should learn representational systems in the early stages of learning literacy. Children should also develop skills which make them gather information like identifying numbers and letters and different ways to acquire information about their natural and social world.

Pre-primary education should make children learn by participating in activities that are meaningful to them. The activities they indulge in should develop knowledge, skills and ways of learning and thinking and develop a disposition of learning.

Good preschools like Little Millennium develop children’s ability through interactive systems and thus contribute towards their learning.