Education

Every year, the World Bank's World Development Report takes on a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 Report, Learning to Realize Education's Promise, is the first ever devoted entirely to education. Now is an excellent time for it: education has long been critical for human welfare, but is even more so in a time of rapid economic change. The Report explores four main themes. First, education's promise: Education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies - both within and outside the education system. Second, the learning crisis: Despite gains in education access, recent learning assessments show that many young people around the world, especially from poor families, are leaving school unequipped with even the most foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. Third, promising interventions to improve learning: Research from areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, or school management have identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, that teachers are skilled as well as motivated, and that other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, learning at scale: Achieving learning throughout an education system will require more than just scaling up effective interventions. Change requires overcoming technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and being adaptive when implementing programs.

Continuous learning lies at the heart of thriving in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The skills required for most jobs are evolving rapidly but our adult education and training systems are lagging behind. While 35% of the skills demanded for jobs across industries will change by 2020, at least 1 in 4 workers in OECD countries is already reporting a skills mismatch with regards to the skills demanded by their current jobs. Thus, enabling and empowering workers to transform and update their skills is a key concern for businesses and societies across the globe.

In order to create a robust and inclusive adult education and training system, leaders from across business, government and civil society need to start laying a common foundation through strategic and coordinated action. This White Paper lays out key pathways for change and illustrates successful examples of implementation to inspire broad-based transformation. It is the outcome of a Dialogue Series in the World Economic Forum’s System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Education, Gender and Work, drawing upon submissions by leaders and experts who engaged in the dialogue, as well as the latest thinking from international organizations, think tanks, businesses and other stakeholders.

‘A New Skills Agenda for Europe’ focus on equipping Europeans with the right skills in order to increase Europe’s workforce employability and to respond to changes in labour market requirements. The agenda is grounded on the evidence of the existence of skills gap and mismatch across the Union and within countries. There is a shortage of basic, digital, transversal, and entrepreneurial skills. A common understanding of key competences on the job is missing. Vocational education and training (VET) is undervalued and its attractiveness and opportunities may be enhanced. Overall, skills intelligence allowing for more informed choices is indispensable for skills policies to make a difference in addressing the extent of mismatch of supplied competences and the occurrence of gaps. All these aspects are relevant at the territorial level. In fact, the outlining of policies and/or interventions in the domains of education and training as well as of youth, employment and migration is not solely a prerogative of national governments. It also occurs at the local and regional level. Furthermore, it is at this same level that labour market needs meet the skills supply and that future trends of job opportunities as well as cooperative approaches among different stakeholders of the labour market are shaped.

Die Studien zur Arbeitslandschaft untersuchen in regelmäßigen Abständen, wie sich Angebot und Nachfrage am Arbeitsmarkt entwickeln und welche Ungleichgewichte sich einstellen. Im aktualisierten Gutachten sind vor allem die Beurteilung der Auswirkungen des technologischen Fortschritts und der Digitalisierung auf die zukünftigen Arbeitsinhalte auf den aktuellen Stand der Forschung gebracht worden. Zudem wurde eine angepasste wirtschaftliche Rahmenprognose der Analyse zugrunde gelegt.

The New Vision for Education project examines the role that technology can potentially play to improve education for the future. In phase II, we investigated innovative ways to help students develop competencies* and character qualities** broadly defined as social emotional skills, which are critical components of 21st century skill framework but not a core focus in today’s curriculum.

Can technology effectively facilitate the development of competencies and character qualities, in addition to cognitive skills? If yes, what are the opportunities to capture to make it happen? What are the immediate, mid-term, and long-term barriers to remove? How can multistakeholders work together to create a roadmap for this vision?

In seeking answers to these questions, the report assembles a list of 52 research-based digital product features that are highly correlated with the ten competencies and character qualities and identifies five nascent technology trends – wearable devices, leading-edge apps, virtual reality, advanced analytics and machine learning, and affective computing – that extend ways of fostering social emotional learning (SEL) and also offer potential for exciting new learning strategies. The report concludes with recommendations to each stakeholder on actions to advance SEL and SEL technology adoption.

The Growth Initiative working group, a working group seeking to strengthen long-term economic growth, proposes measures to boost productivity growth in Finland in the 2010s. In the long term, beyond the current economic cycle, growth in productivity will be the only driver of the nation’s average income growth or GDP per capita. In the short term, improving the employment rate is also important.
The Growth Initiative working group’s final report begins by providing a brief introduction to issues vital to productivity growth. It then presents the working group’s policy recommendations, divided under the following ten headings: 1) Science and innovation policy, 2) Education policy, 3) Life phase policy, 4) Competition policy, 5) Enterprise policy, 6) Public sector operating policy, 7) Public sector information system policy, 8) Public sector procurement policy and the general availability of publicly collected information, 9) Broadband network and intelligent transport policy and 10) Transport infrastructure policy.

Major transitions are rapidly reshaping Africa. Populations are growing substantially and urbanising. Economic growth has accelerated over the last decade. New technologies, including mobile phones and solar cells, are sweeping across the continent. Longstanding confl icts have been or are being addressed. On the broader stage, but with important regional implications, the rise of China, India and other major emerging countries are changing our trading and investment patterns.

Yet major uncertainties face us. How rapidly will we bring communicable diseases under control and advance the education of our citizens? Can Africa diversify its economies and employ its growing populations in manufacturing and services, as well as successfully managing the wealth generated by its raw materials? Will climate change increase pressures on agriculture or will Africa have its own green revolution? How will the continent build the extensive infrastructures that it desperately needs? What will be the quality of our governance? How will external actors, both governments and fi rms, approach and affect Africa?