Education

In an increasingly digital world, the significance of cyber security for individuals, businesses, and governments has never been greater. Rising cyber attacks are challenging current defence and operational capabilities, highlighting a critical shortage of skilled cyber security professionals. This report delves into the demand for cyber security expertise by analysing online job postings in France, Germany and Poland in between 2018 and 2023. It examines trends in the demand for cyber security professionals, the geographical distribution of job opportunities, and the changing skill requirements in this field. Focusing on France, the report also explores cyber security education and training programmes, the characteristics of the programmes, the demographics of enrolled learners, and their outcomes. Additionally, it reviews French policies and initiatives aimed at broadening the cyber security workforce and enhancing educational opportunities in this field. This comprehensive analysis is part of a larger effort to understand the evolving landscape of cyber security policies and professional experiences worldwide.

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.

The paper discusses the implications of recent advances in artificial intelligence for knowledge workers, focusing on possible complementarities and substitution between machine translation tools and language professionals. The emergence of machine translation tools could enhance social welfare through enhanced opportunities for inter-language communication but also create new threats because of persisting low levels of accuracy and quality in the translation output. The paper uses data on online job vacancies to map the evolution of the demand for language professionals between 2015 and 2019 in 10 countries and illustrates the set of skills that are considered important by employers seeking to hire language professionals through job vacancies posted on line.

Vocational education and training (VET) is an important part of education systems around the world. VET systems differ widely between countries in how programmes are designed and delivered. Moreover, countries differ in terms of the types of providers that deliver VET. This report looks at the VET provider landscape in Australia, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. It provides insights into the number of different providers by country, their focus areas and target populations. It describes how providers are different and how they overlap, as well as structures and initiatives to foster co-ordination between them.

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.

Teachers and in-company trainers are central to vocational education and training (VET), as they support the school-to-work transitions of learners from diverse backgrounds. VET teachers develop learners’ skills in school-based settings, while in-company trainers support learners during their time in work-based learning. Countries use different strategies to ensure an adequate supply of well-prepared VET teachers and trainers. This report focuses on two aspects: entry requirements for the VET teaching and training profession to ensure quality and consistency; and initial education and training for VET teachers and trainers to ensure that they are well-prepared when taking up their role. It draws lessons from policies and practices in Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway for developing a skilled teaching and training workforce through entry requirements and training, while maintaining sufficient flexibility.

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’.

Ageing populations and rising skill demands have heightened expectations that higher education systems will widen their offer of continuing education and training (CET) for adults aiming to renew or augment their skills at an advanced level. CET is becoming increasingly important for maintaining a highly skilled workforce also in Germany, and particularly in the state of Brandenburg. However, Brandenburg’s public higher education institutions have so far been only marginal providers. To expand their offer of CET, they would require more legal certainty about the use of public funding in light of European Union (EU) state aid policy. EU state aid policy ensures public subsidies (state aid) are not used by state agencies to crowd out markets (economic activity). There are no clear EU, federal or state-level directions about whether CET is a non-economic activity and thus exempt from EU state aid rules. This report analyses the reasons for this legal uncertainty and provides recommendations to the state government and public higher education institutions in Brandenburg about how to clarify the status of continuing education and training as a state-aided activity. It also proposes pointers for interpretation and future reform of the EU framework on state aid, and provides impulses for policy action in other German states and at the federal level.

Brandenburg’s economy is undergoing structural change, which opens exciting new prospects for highly skilled workers. The state has intensified efforts to diversify the economy towards cleaner and more knowledge-intensive industries, including the development of advanced manufacturing, spill-over effects from the start-up scene in Berlin, fostering entrepreneurial activities at its own higher education institutions, promoting innovative places for working and living, and phasing out of coal production in favour of next-generation technologies. As the engine of skills development and research, the higher education system will play an important role in helping the state unleash these opportunities. The German State of Brandenburg has therefore entrusted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – in close collaboration with and supported by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support – with the development of recommendations on how to enhance the visibility of its institutions’ programme offer, align this offer with the skills and innovation demand, and make it more attractive to prospective students from the state and beyond.