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The Australian education system fares well in international comparison with regards to [Programme for International Student Assessment] PISA test scores and the higher education system attracts an increasing number of foreign students. Vocational education and training (VET) is an important part of the post-secondary education system, equipping individuals with the skills to enter or re-enter the labour force and offering a pathway to further education. However, a number of challenges need to be addressed. Reducing complexity and fragmentation and tackling issues of under-supply and under-representation of children from disadvantaged groups in the early childhood education and care system is of major importance, given the beneficial impact of early education on outcomes later in life. A key challenge for the school sector is to reduce the achievement gaps of the lowest performing students, while improving overall literacy and numeracy outcomes. Greater autonomy at the school level and improvements in teaching quality would help in this regard. Enhancing the capacity of the VET system to address skill shortages is another key priority. The low rate of completion of training courses is an additional policy issue facing the sector. Finally, moving towards a less rigid policy framework for higher education would enhance flexibility and diversity, making the system more responsive to labour market needs and globalisation challenges. The promotion of a high quality education system that responds swiftly to changing skill needs is a top priority of the new government. The ‘Education revolution’, backed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), pursues reforms across all sectors of the education system, an important objective being the closing of the gap for the Indigenous population.

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In the face of the substantial ageing of population expected to occur in OECD countries over coming decades, policies that boost labour-force participation attract considerable interest. There remain large cross-country divergences in participation rates that are largely accounted for by differences in participation of specific groups, in particular prime-age women, older workers and also youth. This suggests that policies targeting these groups could have important effects. The aim of this paper is to examine whether the potential impact of several policy reforms is able to attenuate or to offset the adverse trend in aggregate participation rates that would otherwise occur because of ageing population. It uses a simple dynamic modelling framework that generates longer-term projections of participation rates and labour supplies in OECD countries and alternative scenarios of policy reforms. The main outcome of this analysis is that the combined effect of possible reforms targeting prime-age women, older workers and youth might suffice to stabilize the average participation rate in OECD countries over the next 25 years but will be insufficient to offset the additional reduction of participation likely to be caused by demographic changes beyond 2025. Show less

This paper looks at a number of efficiency and equity aspects related to skill acquisition of young people and older adults. The results of this analysis suggest that such human capital investment is associated with valuable labour market gains for people, such as higher wages and enhanced employability, and that these gains exceed the original investment costs, mainly foregone earnings and tuition fees, by a significant margin. The analysis also indicates that the net benefits are strongly influenced by policy-related factors, such as study length, tuition subsidies and student support. Overall, the estimates suggest that there are strong incentives for the average student to continue their education past the compulsory schooling age, and highlight the benefits of such investment in education for society in general. However, the net gains fall with age, mainly as a result of a shorter period in which to take advantage of the benefits of education. In conclusion, the author points out that students in higher education tend to come from more affluent socio-economic backgrounds and that they benefit from large public subsidies. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, on the other hand, are less likely to participate in tertiary education and thus derive the benefit from public subsidies. Show less

To continue catching up with living standards in other OECD countries Poland needs to invest in higher skills. Crucial elements include: (1) making sure that all children have access to high-quality early childhood education; (2) strengthening the basic skills of vocational education students and the relevance of their studies through stronger links with firms; and (3) improving the quality of universities by linking university teachers' pay and career progress with their teaching and research performance. The Polish government has taken action in many of these areas. More needs to be done to put immigrants' skills to better use. Polish return migrants frequently complain about difficulties in using their skills acquired abroad, while many immigrants of foreign origin work in professions that do not match their qualifications. Ongoing reforms to improve recognition of foreign credentials and new possibilities to validate work experience through formal qualifications will be helpful.

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A highly educated and skilled workforce has been an important driver of productivity performance and prosperity in Belgium. This paper examines skills policies that could help improve productivity and inclusiveness. An increased focus on lifelong learning, improved and more flexible working conditions for older workers, and a more efficient allocation of students and skills would benefit productivity growth. Improving inclusiveness requires increasing access and participation in tertiary education, especially for students with disadvantaged backgrounds. Digitalisation holds the promise of large gains in labour productivity, but is disrupting the nature of employment relationships. It calls for measures that encourage information and communication technology (ICT) upskilling and for adapting tax and benefit systems to the rise of on-demand jobs linked to the use of e-platforms.

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This paper provides guidance for developing country-specific policy recommendations from the broad policy principles of the new OECD Jobs Strategy. To this end, it identifies countries' main policy challenges and develops broad policy packages to address them. It highlights the importance of considering countries' initial conditions - in terms of the state of the business cycle, fiscal and administrative capacity, past reforms, preferences and demography - for tailoring policy recommendations to country specific challenges, capabilities and needs. It also contains a checklist with key questions for each of the broad dimensions of labour market performance that should be considered when developing country-specific recommendations.

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The unemployment rate among young people has reached painfully high levels, in particular among those young people with low levels of education. There are two crucial policy priorities to improve employment prospects for youth in Spain. First, in the very short term, there is need for quick action to target well-designed active labour market programs to the most disadvantaged youth and provide more job-search assistance and guidance for all youth experiencing difficulties in finding a job in the current labour market. Second, the current crisis is an opportunity to tackle some of the structural weaknesses in the Spanish youth labour market. This implies in particular reforms to prevent youth from dropping out of education at a very early stage and to improve the school to work transition of young people. Key issues are to better match skills acquired in education to those asked for by businesses, as well as to establish an effective system of vocational education, and to reduce remaining demand side barriers, notably labour market duality and a rigid collective bargaining system, which both have prevented an efficient allocation of labour resources in the past and a flexible adjustment during the crisis.

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With sound framework conditions, fine universities, good infrastructure and policies friendly towards foreign direct investment, Ireland scores high in international innovation scoreboards. Overall, policies to boost innovation and entrepreneurship are on the right track, but investment in knowledge-based capital could be made a more dynamic source of growth and jobs. While Ireland has made good progress towards building up its scientific capabilities, innovation capacity remains weaker than in other small advanced OECD countries, such as Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.

To become more effective, the innovation strategy should be simplified, with a drastic reduction in the number of government agencies involved in funding innovation, so as to better focus on strengthening the linkages between the business and academic communities. While attracting high-tech multinationals should remain central, there is potential to better develop spillovers between these firms and domestic [small and medium-sized enterprises] SMEs, notably by establishing applied research centres. Entrepreneurship should be fostered by improving the business environment, including access to non-bank finance, streamlining the insolvency regime and transfer of intellectual property rights, and upgrading the broadband network.

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Greece's labour market entered the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 shock following several years of sustained employment growth and with wages picking up. Unemployment remained high and employment rates were low, especially among women, the young and older workers. The shock led to a sharp fall in labour force activity and has stalled new hiring. The improved social protection and temporary support measures have helped to support households' incomes and protect jobs during the COVID-19 crisis. However, high tax and social security contribution rates, together with little in-work support for the low-paid, continue abetting high structural informality. This heightens insecurity - by excluding many workers from activation policies or social and employment protection - and weakens productivity.

This paper applies the 2018 OECD Jobs Strategy [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 134.545] to Greece to identify reforms that can help to overcome the COVID-19 crisis and create a virtuous cycle between productivity, job creation, and wellbeing. Boosting the capacity of employment services and activation policies would support the recovery from the COVID-19 shock, in addition to durably improving employment prospects especially of long-term unemployed. Giving workplaces further flexibility to adapt collective agreements to specific circumstances would help align wage growth with productivity developments and help businesses to weather the COVID-19 shock. Building on the population's solid education levels by equipping workers with the skills needed by the labour market can support employment and incomes. This will require a substantial boost to professional education and training at all levels and ages.

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Based on the OECD data from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) this paper sheds light on the skills of migrants. In line with earlier research the data show that migrants from Poland are more likely to have a tertiary degree than peers at home, but they often work in elementary professions abroad that do not match these high qualifications. This may well be at least partly a language issue, as migrants from Poland resemble migrants from other low-income countries in that their numeracy and literacy skills in the language of their host country is markedly lower than the average across all PIAAC participants, migrants or not. This gap is smaller, though, when looking only at migrants who report having been tested in a language that they use often and master well. The data reveal an interesting difference with migrants from higher-income countries, as their test results do not differ from the average, although they face the same language issues as other migrants. The reason may well be that only migrants from low-income countries can hope to earn higher wages abroad even if they work in low-skill professions, while migrants from higher-income countries need to master the language of their host country to do well. In fact, Polish migrants earn higher wages than their peers who stayed at home, even though they are particularly often overqualified.

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