What we know about successful skills strategies and employer engagement? Skills are a long-term investment for growth and productivity Skills need to be relevant for growth and productivity Employers need to be engaged in skills development

1. An international perspective:
the importance of skills and vocational education
Deborah Roseveare
Head, Skills beyond School Division
OECD
16 November 2012

2. What is the OECD and how does it work?
How we work
 Engage governments and also a wide
What OECD is range of stakeholders
 International organisation  Produce comparative data and
 34 member countries (and EU) evidence
 Established over 50 years ago  Compare policy experiences across
 Mission: to promote better policies countries to draw together lessons and
for better lives policy options for countries
 link together policies across different
sectors to achieve better outcomes
labour markets statistics education
taxation development
health economics
trade
environment
migration competition investment
entrepreneurship agriculture
governance corruption
innovation
social policy pensions insurance
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Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives

3. Why do skills matter to countries?
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4. Why do skills matter to people?
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5. How can we improve skills and their use?
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6. OECD Skills Strategy
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7. How does a country maximise its skills?
 Encouraging and enabling people to learn
throughout life
Developing relevant skills  Fostering international mobility of skilled
people to fill skills gaps
 Promoting cross-border skills policies
 Encouraging people to offer their skills to the
Activating skills supply labour market
 Retaining skilled people in the labour market
 Creating a better match between people’s skills
Putting skills to effective use and the requirements of their job
 Increasing the demand for high-level skills
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8. Taking the OECD Skills Strategy forward
Developing national
and local skills
strategies
Enhancing
Enhancing
vocational
the
education
evidence
and
base
training
Anticipating and
responding flexibly to
changing skill needs
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Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives

9. What we know about successful skills strategies and
employer engagement?
 Greater economic competitiveness – for
Skills are a long-term countries, for sectors and for individual firms
investment for growth  Higher quality jobs, more productive workforce
and productivity  More sustainable economic and social outcomes
 Relevant through time – immediate, evolving and
longer term skill needs
Skills need to be
 Relevant mix of foundation skills, technical skills
relevant for growth and
and generic/life skills (teamwork, communication,
productivity
initiative, problem solving etc)
 Employers know about what skills they need
Employers need to be  Employers can transform their workplaces to
engaged in skills make the most of skills
development  Employers benefit from supporting investments
up and down the supply chain
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10. What we know about how to enhance VET* through
employer engagement?
 Employers know labour market needs best
 Employers need to be involved in:
VET works best when  Designing curricula and qualifications
responsive to labour  Monitoring emerging requirements
market needs  Developing workplace training
arrangements
 Other stakeholders also need to be involved
 Workplaces offer real on-the-job experience for
learning hard and soft skills
VET works best when  Workplace learning lets potential employers and
combining workplace employees learn about each other
and classroom learning  Employer willingness to offer workplace training
signals that a VET programme is relevant
 Workplace learning helps to keep student places
aligned with likely future employment demand
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* Vocational Education and Training

11. To learn more…..
On skills, check out our online skills portal skills.oecd
 up-to-date information on skills work at OECD
 country-specific skills data and analysis
 OECD Skills Strategy
On vocational education and training
www.oecd.org/edu/vet
For all OECD data, analysis and policy advice
www.oecd.org
skills.oecd
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