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Penang is one of Malaysia's most industrial states. Its long-term economic growth has been based on manufacturing and foreign direct investments. Strong dependence on multinational corporations has brought growth and development but also an underdeveloped local industry, limited indigenous innovation and a lack of dynamic new entrepreneurship. How can Penang move up in the value chain, away from manufacturing to knowledge-driven economy? How can Penang capitalise on its diverse population, the co-existence of three cultures and the UNESCO cultural heritage site? How can Penang's diverse tertiary education sector be mobilised for regional and local development? This publication is part of the series of OECD reviews of Higher Education in Regional and City Development. These reviews help mobilise higher education institutions for economic, social and cultural development of cities and regions. They analyse how the higher education system impacts upon regional and local development and bring together universities, other higher education institutions and public and private agencies to identify strategic goals and to work towards them.

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For OECD member countries, high-level workplace skills are considered a key means of supporting economic growth. Systems of vocational education and training (VET) are now under intensive scrutiny to determine if they can deliver the skills required. ‘Learning for jobs’ is an OECD study of VET designed to help countries make their VET systems more responsive to labour market needs. It will expand the evidence base, identify a set of policy options and develop tools to appraise VET policy initiatives. Since 1989, Hungary has made significant efforts to restructure its VET system and it now has many strengths, including a strong national qualifications framework. But there are significant challenges, including weak links between VET and the labour market, early tracking and multiple selection mechanisms in the school system, and the low status of VET. Among the review’s recommendations are: (1) standardise the transition to all types of secondary school after the ninth grade rather than the eighth grade, which is currently the most common option, and in vocational training schools, start practical training in the 10th grade; (2) collect and publish information on labour market outcomes on a school and programme basis; (3) improve career guidance offered to elementary school and VET students; (4) include a substantial amount of workplace training in all VET programmes; and (5) provide better information on the training levy. OECD is conducting country VET policy reviews in Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flanders), the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (England and Wales), and the United States (South Carolina and Texas).

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Other reports in the series are indexed at TD/TNC 94.516, TD/TNC 94.517 and TD/TNC 94.518. Show less

Better skills policies help build economic resilience, boost employment and reinforce social cohesion. The OECD Skills Strategy provides countries with a framework to analyse their skills strengths and challenges. Each OECD Skills Strategy diagnostic report reflects a set of skills challenges identified by broad stakeholder engagement and OECD comparative evidence while offering concrete examples of how other countries have tackled similar skills challenges.

These reports tackle questions such as: How can countries maximise their skills potential? How can they improve their performance in developing relevant skills, activating skills supply and using skills effectively? What is the benefit of a whole-of-government approach to skills? How can governments build stronger partnerships with employers, trade unions, teachers and students to deliver better skills outcomes? OECD skills strategy diagnostic reports provide new insights into these questions and help identify the core components of successful skills strategies. This report [for Italy] is part of the OECD's ongoing work on building effective national and local skills strategies.

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OECD’s Education Committee, together with its Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee, endorsed a new activity on policies for information, guidance and counselling services in 2000. The main aim of the activity is to understand how the organisation, management and delivery of these services can help to promote key policy activities such as lifelong learning for all and active labour market policies. Fourteen OECD countries were involved in this activity: Australia; Austria; Canada; the Czech Republic; Denmark; Finland; Germany; Ireland; Korea; Luxembourg; the Netherlands; Norway; Spain; and the United Kingdom. Information about these countries was gathered using a national questionnaire, country visits, commissioned papers and meetings of national experts and policy makers.

This paper, jointly commissioned by the OECD and the European Commission, begins by examining the demand for career information and career guidance as a market commodity and then looks at the nature of supply and incentives to enhance both the quality and quantity of supply. The nature of market-making is then examined, equilibrating demand and supply, followed by an outline of market failures and an examination of the ways in which different countries have developed career information and career guidance to counteract these failures. The final section contains the conclusions.

Documents from the OECD review of career guidance policies are indexed from TD/TNC 73.122 to TD/TNC 73.151. Show less

This publication presents OECD’s latest review of labour market trends and issues. In addition to its regular overview of labour markets in OECD countries and its comprehensive statistical annex, this edition also includes articles covering trade adjustment costs in OECD labour markets, regional disparities in labour markets, the role of in-work benefits in increasing employment of the unemployed and inactive, and evaluating the impact of labour market programmes and public employment services.

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The 'OECD review of migrant education' was launched to help policy makers to design and implement migrant education policy successfully in their countries. It will provide solid facts about access, participation and student performance of immigrant students in comparison with their native peers and identify a set of policy options based on evidence of what works and examples of experience from many countries. The OECD is conducting policy reviews of migrant education in Austria, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. This report is one in the series of country policy reviews and provides country-specific diagnosis and policy recommendations. By international standards, immigrant students in Ireland, on average, perform as well as their native peers at age 15. However, non-English speaking immigrants face particular challenges and do less well. Ireland is currently undertaking measures with a strong focus on language support and intercultural education. There is scope to: improve access to quality early childhood education and care for all, especially immigrant children, by implementing 'Free Pre-School Year for All'; strengthen initial and ongoing learning opportunities for language support teachers; concentrate efforts on mainstreaming language support and intercultural education into regular curriculum, teacher education and research; reinforce a 'whole-school approach' by enhancing capacities of teachers and school leaders to be more responsive to the growing linguistic and cultural diversity of students; ensure access to school, home and community liaison services for immigrant families, with careful attention to language and cultural barriers; collect better data to further encourage schools to adopt diversity and inclusive education; and set up a coherent framework for continuous feedback - at classroom, school and system [levels] - embedded in policy evaluation and school inspection. The overall findings of the review will be published in 2010 as a concise, action-oriented handbook for policy makers.

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The OECD thematic review of adult learning was undertaken between December 1999 and November 2001 to analyse policy options in different national contexts for improving access to, and participation in, adult learning and to enhance its quality and effectiveness. OECD countries taking part in the review prepared a descriptive background report on the adult learning practices in their own countries. These reports were used to provide an OECD expert review team with the information required to conduct an effective direct analysis. This document represents the background report for Sweden and it focuses on adult learning taking place below university and university college levels. The report contains the following parts: chapter one, ‘Adult education in Sweden: an overview’, provides broad background information on the development of adult learning and adult education; chapter two, ‘Adult learning: needs, incentives and access’, focuses on the individual as well as the conditions, opportunities and barriers to participating in learning; chapter three, ‘Organisers of adult education’, examines the supply of adult education and the various providers in this arena, such as national schools for adults, folk high schools, labour market training, private providers, and higher education; chapter four, ‘Current initiatives and overview’, reviews measures for improving opportunities for adult learning and examines the results that have been achieved; chapter five, ‘Challenges ahead’, reviews the current situation and the probable development of adult learning in the future.

The background country reports available in English are indexed from TD/TNC 73.64 to TD/TNC 73.69 and at TD/TNC 62.795. Available analytical country notes, prepared by the OECD multinational review team and based on the background reports and discussions with national stakeholders, are indexed from TD/TNC 73.70 to TD/TNC 73.75. The final comparative report is indexed at TD/TNC 73.63. Show less

This paper reviews international research in the field of dropout from upper secondary education and training in OECD countries in order to present possible solutions to policymakers faced with the completion challenge. The paper begins by presenting existing definitions of dropout and upper secondary completion and states that dropout must be understood as the final step in a process of disengagement that begins early. Causes that lead to dropout in OECD countries are then studied, and the paper illustrates that causes of dropout are highly complex and intertwined. Finally, to address these causes or risk factors, the paper reviews research that had been carried out on piloted or implemented measures across OECD countries. It finds that successful measures address several risk factors and involve action both within school, outside school and at systemic level simultaneously. The paper concludes by presenting a set of solutions according to educational level and emphasizes that preventive measures to reduce dropout should start early. Early identification enables broader, less costly measures to be set up earlier and leaves the more costly one-on-one measures for later stages of education to the remaining at risk students that have not yet been picked up. Overcoming the completion challenge requires a close cooperation between educational authorities and many other parts of government such as social and labour services, health services and justice system in some countries.

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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. Adults tend to lose their information-processing skills as they age, especially if they do not use them. While older adults may compensate for this loss by developing other valuable skills, the importance of being proficient in information-processing skills in determining wages and employment does not diminish as workers age. 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. And while older adults are generally less proficient than younger adults, they do no worse, and often better, than younger adults in terms of labour market outcomes. The paper concludes that, to ensure economies do not suffer unduly as the working population ages, school leavers will need a basic set of information-processing skills on which they can build as they grow older. Also, more opportunities are needed for high quality adult and on-the-job training so that older adults can maintain the skill they already have and acquire new ones.

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This paper places the competencies to be measured by the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in the context of the technological developments which are reshaping the nature of the workplace and work in the 21st century. The largest technological force currently shaping work is the computer. Computers are faster and less expensive than people in performing some workplace tasks and much weaker than people in performing other tasks. On the basis of an understanding of the kinds of work computers do well, it is possible to describe the work that will remain for people in the future, the skills that work requires and the way that computers can assist people in performing that work. The paper argues that a technology-rich workplace requires foundational skills including numeracy and literacy (both to be tested in PIAAC), advanced problem-solving skills or Expert Thinking (similar to the construct of Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments to be tested in PIAAC) and advanced communication skills or Complex Communication (not being tested in PIAAC).

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