TUAC - TRADE UNION ADVISORY COMMITTEE TO THE OECD

08/10/2013

TUAC General Secretary John Evans welcomed the release of the first results from the OECD’s survey of adult skills calling it a wake-up call on the need to make lifelong learning far more of a reality for workers. “The findings show that a large number of adult workers still do not take part in continuous, job related training and that access to training in many countries depends on prior education and the skill-intensity of a job. Governments and employers in many countries have failed to invest sufficiently in workforce development,” he said today in Paris.

The OECD survey revealed that participation in adult education varies considerably across OECD countries. While participation rates exceed 60 % in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, they remain below 50% in 8 out of the 24 participating countries. Moreover, the survey reports that better educated and trained adults participate more often in further training than those with lower levels of skills. More specifically, with the exception of Norway, where access to training is more equal, in all countries participation rates in job-related education and training are at least twice as high among adults who attained at least Level 4 in literacy than they are among those who attained at most Level 1. In Austria, Flanders (Belgium), Japan, Poland and Spain the odds are larger than three to one, and in Italy, Korea and the Slovak Republic, highly literate adults are between four and five times as likely to benefit from such training as people with poor literacy skills.

Barriers to access to continuous vocational training are a major problem, but so are human resources policies, work structures, and processes that fail to make full use of skills and competences acquired by workers as well as low-cost and low-skills strategies pursued by business. These together explain why in all participating countries are significant proportions of the adult population with relatively low skills. This is clearest with regard to ICT skills; according to the survey between7% and 27% of the adult population reported having no experience in the use of computers or lacked the most elementary computer skills.

Given the lack and underuse of skills, the report rightly cautions against the conclusion that more education and training would automatically translate into better jobs and higher productivity. What is essential in this respect is the better use of skills in the workplace. “To improve the use of skills in the workplace we need to do more than boosting the supply of skills. We need to strengthen the link between education and training policies on the one hand and innovation policy on the other. We need policies closing the road for low-cost, low-skills strategies and facilitating high-skill strategies. Trade unions are ready to facilitate lifelong learning and the transition towards better jobs,” Evans said.