Education

As countries seek to draw lessons the COVID-19 crisis and increase their future resilience, evaluations are important tools to understand what worked or not, why and for whom. This report builds on the OECD work on 'government evaluations of COVID-19 responses'. It evaluates Belgium’s responses to the pandemic in terms of risk preparedness, crisis management, as well as public health, education, economic and fiscal, and social and labour market policies. Preserving the country’s resilience in the future will require promoting trust in public institutions and whole-of-government approaches to crisis management, reducing inequalities, and preserving the fiscal balance. The findings and recommendations of this report will provide guidance to public authorities in these efforts.

The Flemish Community of Belgium has one of the OECD’s most devolved education systems, but there are concerns among Flemish education stakeholders about the overall quality of education. In recent years, the Flemish government has initiated a series of reforms to strengthen the quality of education. These include the introduction of full cohort standardised student assessments in Dutch and mathematics. Students will take the assessments in Grades 4 and 6 at the primary level and in Grades 8 and 12 at the secondary level starting in 2024. This ambitious and innovative reform aims to strengthen and monitor the quality of education, with student results envisaged to inform improvement efforts at different levels of the system. As a follow up to the support provided by the OECD Strategic Education Governance Project, the Flemish Department of Education and Training asked the OECD Implementing Education Policies Project team to support the successful design and implementation of the standardised student assessment reform. This report presents the analysis, key findings and recommendations to help realise this objective.

This paper investigates the demand for language skills using data on online job vacancies in 27 European Union member countries and the United Kingdom in 2021. Evidence indicates that although Europe remains a linguistically diverse labour market, knowing English confers unique advantages in certain occupations. Across countries included in the analyses, a knowledge of English was explicitly required in 22% of all vacancies and English was the sixth most required skill overall. A knowledge of German, Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese was explicitly demanded in between 1% and 2% of all vacancies. One in two positions advertised on line for managers or professionals required some knowledge of English, on average across European Union member countries and across OECD countries in the sample. This compares with only one in ten positions for skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers and among elementary occupations.

Being able to swim empowers individuals to make choices, have agency, and be free to choose core aspects of their life, such as working safely on or near water. It is also associated with lifelong health benefits and reduces the risk of drowning. Using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2019, this paper provides the first global estimates of adults’ ability to swim without assistance. Individuals in high-income countries are considerably more likely to report being able to swim without assistance than individuals in low-income countries. Disparities also exist within countries. In particular, women are less likely to be able to swim without assistance than men in virtually all countries, birth cohorts, and levels of education. Investing in reducing inequalities in life skills, such as swimming, can foster economic development and empowerment, especially in light of threats, such as climate change.

Understanding adults’ attitudes towards the environment is necessary to gauge the opportunities and challenges of creating effective and politically-feasible climate policies. Using data from the Wellcome Global Monitor 2020, the European Social Survey (Round 8), World Values Survey and EM-DAT, this paper examines how adults’ environmental attitudes vary within and across countries and details how environmental attitudes are associated with adults’ engagement in pro-environmental behaviours and support for environmentally-friendly policies. The paper explores whether the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment over the state of the economy or vice versa depends on individuals’ exposure to natural disasters or negative labour market conditions. Results indicate that people’s economic vulnerability and the sectors they work in impact their attitudes towards their environment and support for public policy. Furthermore, the findings suggest that increases in unemployment and exposure to natural disasters influence the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment.

The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: ‘The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: From leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet’.

The paper is the second in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The first paper is titled ‘Young people’s environmental sustainability competence: Emotional, cognitive, behavioural and attitudinal dimensions in EU and OECD countries.

This OECD Skills Strategy Implementation Guidance report presents a model for the segmentation of the adult learning population in Flanders, which resulted in the identification of nine representative learner profiles. These profiles provide unique insights into the diversity of factors that affect decisions to participate in learning, including motivation, obstacles to learning, socio-demographic characteristics, and labour market characteristics. These profiles will assist Flanders’ reflections on how to target and tailor existing and new lifelong learning policies to the needs of learners.

The German-speaking Community of Belgium is in the process of developing an overall vision for its education system (the 'Gesamtvision Bildung') to guide reforms across the education sector for greater quality and equity. To support this process, the OECD review offers an independent analysis of the German-speaking Community’s school system and assesses the system’s strengths and challenges from an international perspective. It provides a description of the system’s policies in international comparison and proposes options for future reforms, covering pre-primary to upper secondary education. The analysis addresses the funding and governance of school education, policies to support equity and inclusion, the evaluation system, school leadership and the development of the teaching profession. The report aims to highlight opportunities for the German-speaking Community to build on the strengths of its school system, enhance the effectiveness of its resource use and ensure that the system delivers the best outcomes for all students.

The report on Resourcing Higher Education in the Flemish Community of Belgium is the first in a series of publications produced by the OECD's Resourcing Higher Education Project. This project aims to develop a shared knowledge base for OECD member and partner countries on effective policies for higher education resourcing through system-specific and comparative policy analysis. The review of resourcing in the Flemish Community of Belgium has a strong focus on the funding of operating costs, teaching and research in Flemish higher education institutions. It also analyses financial support for students, system-level frameworks governing human resources policy in higher education and key trends in higher education that will impact future higher education resourcing policy. Alongside analysis and comparison of Flemish resourcing policy approaches, it provides recommendations to support future refinement of policies.