A mixed picture across OECD countries for adult skills
The second international Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), published this week by the OECD and co-funded by the European Commission, assessed 31 countries and economies for adult literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving proficiency in 2023. The report aims to prove how developing and using skills can improve employment prospects and quality of life as well as boost economic growth.
What does the report say? Just like its counterpart PISA, also PIAAC shows an alarming trend of decreasing competences across OECD countries. In fact, on average, 18% of adults do not even have the most basic levels of proficiency in any of the domains.
Literacy and numeracy proficiency is decreasing
Despite efforts to strengthen education and adult training over the last decade, literacy skills are decreasing among the adult population in surveyed countries. Significant improvements in Europe were observed only in Finland and Denmark, while they declined in Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Czechia and France.
Numeracy outcomes are slightly more positive, with eight countries overall improving their scores - from EU countries, these were only Finland, Estonia, Denmark and the Netherlands. In fact, most of the countries saw a steep decline across multiple age groups.
The survey also shows that skills inequalities between lowest- and best-performing adults have widened within countries, especially on literacy proficiency. Skills are key drivers of employability and wages.
According to the OECD, these findings highlight an urgent need for countries to focus on lifelong and life-wide learning, ensuring that education and training systems are more adaptive to evolving demands and to individual needs.
What’s even more worrisome is that declines in literacy and numeracy proficiency were particularly staggering among the least educated segments of the adult population. This means that the social gap is widening, with the least-educated segments being left behind in skills development.
Higher educational qualifications have an impact
This is reflected in the role that formal education attainment plays in skills development throughout one’s life. In fact, “adults with tertiary education consistently score higher, on average, than those who left education earlier”.
This is not a hard rule. In the best-performing countries, like Finland, high school graduates consistently score higher than tertiary-educated adults in several other lower-performing countries, like Lithuania or Chile. This gap may be the result of systemic differences in the quality of education systems, but might also point at differences in lifelong learning systems.
Generational legacy: parents' educational attainments still matter
There is also a generational aspect to skills level across the adult population in OECD countries. While education can help reduce inequalities, it can also reproduce and reinforce them. In fact, PIAAC 2023 shows that disparities in educational attainment tend to persist across generations. Adults whose parents had attained higher levels of education perform better than adults whose parents had lower levels of attainments.
The full publication points to a mixed picture: while some excellencies persist, most OECD countries show a neat decrease in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills across the adult population.
Understanding Skill Gaps in Firms
The PIAAC Employer Survey Module examines the prevalence and impact of skill gaps in five European countries: Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovakia, and analyses how firms are responding through strategies such as skills anticipation, training and targeted recruitment. More than one in three firms report a mismatch between the skills they need and those their employees possess. More information and data can be found on the OECD website.
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