DO WE ALL HAVE IT WRONG? (WELL EXCEPT ME!) International comparison of higher level skills.

DO WE ALL HAVE IT WRONG?

(WELL EXCEPT ME!)

International comparison of higher level skills

A skills mission for universities

HE is changing. It is being resigned by learners and employers who, in evermore flexible labour markets, are demanding a more vocational and occupationally orientated system. Many universities have begun to offer higher level skills provision that is distinct from universities’ traditional product base, new and innovative provision that is shorter, vocational focused, and often undertaken in the work place.

Skills Commission Technicians and Progression 2011

UK

The proportion of jobs requiring higher levels of qualifications has been rising whilst the proportion requiring low or no qualifications has been declining, a trend reflected in the substantial growth of ‘white collar’ professional, associate professional, technical and managerial jobs and the decline of ‘blue collar’ jobs in both manufacturing and services

(Ambition 2020: World Class Skills and Jobs for the UK: The 2010 Report UKCES)

All individuals aged between 16 and 64 in EnglandLFS Q2, 2011

Highest qualification

% In employment

% with award in graduate level jobs

(SOC 1-3) %Higher Degree 88 78

NVQ 5 87 48First Degree 85 66Foundation

Degree82 50

HND/HNC 83 50In Europe 83.9% with higher skills are employed, 70.6% with medium and 48.1% with low level skills (EC, 2020)

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How well do Universities prepare students?

Aggregated graduate responses to the employability and University skills

Skill Area Importance of skill for job Very important/ important (per cent)

How well university provided cohort member with skills needed in job Very well/well (per cent)

Difference between 'how important' and 'how well'

(percentage points)

Communication 99.0 89.7 9.3

Teamwork 96.9 89.2 7.7

Problem solving 96.2 92.9 3.3

Initiative/creativity 89.3 77.8 11.5

Planning/organisation

94.9 91.7 3.2

Self-management 96.9 91.9 5.0

Learning skills 98.2 95.1 3.1

Technology 90.3 79.7 10.6

Average % 95.2 88.5 6.7

Europe

EUROPE 2020 A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth European Commission

An agenda for new skills and jobs to modernise labour markets and empower people by developing their of skills throughout the lifecycle with a view to increase labour participation and better match labour supply and demand, including through labour mobility.

16 million new higher skilled jobs by 2020.

The EU labor market sends a strong message (New Skills for New Jobs; Action Now, 2010)

A recent EC Expert Group report identifies four priorities for action:

(a) investing in skills requires the right incentives for individuals and employers;

(b) the worlds of education, training, and work need to be brought together;

(c) the right mix of skills needs to be developed (job-related as well as transferable); and

(d) future skills needs have to be better anticipated

Supply trends by qualifications (labour force aged 15-64), EU-27 (Cedefob, briefing note 2011)

Key Competences for Lifelong Learning – A European Framework (EU2007)

The essential, transversal, skills from the European Framework are:Mother tongue; Foreign language; Maths, science and technology; Digital competence;Learning to learn; Social and civic competences; Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; and Cultural awareness/expression

Professional Schools or Universities Vocational education and training at higher qualification level, , 2011 Cedefob

(a) dual system: Germany;(b) integrated system of certification and

recognition:, Ireland. France, England;(c) tertiary VET part of higher education policies:(i) higher professional education and university

education increasingly integrated: Norway;(ii) higher professional education and university

education kept separate: Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland;

(d) policy emphasis on academic tertiary education: Greece, Poland;

(e) no explicit focus on VET at tertiary education levels: Portugal, Romania.

Professional degrees at all levelsVocational education and training at higher qualification level, , 2011 Cedefob

Professional Bachelor (hogescholen in Netherlands – B.Sc. Applied Sciences

A vocational Master (maîtrise professionnelle) which involves non-academic practitioners (institutions, research units) in teaching and managing these new programmes

Doctorate of professional studies (UK)

Quality of entrants – is HE a threat or a lifeline? (Apprenticeship: International Comparisons’ NAS 2011)

Average score on OECD PISA mathematics scale 2009

460

470

480

490

500

510

520

530

540

Switzerland* Australia* Germany* Austria France Sweden UK Ireland

ATTITUDES TOWARDS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING Special Eurobarometer 2011

ATTITUDES TOWARDS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING Special Eurobarometer 2011

CHEERS survey of European Students

Country Little use of Knowledge

HE not necessary

work worse than expected

Dissatisfaction

Norway 3 3 7 4

UK 25 27 24 18

Germany 23 15 10 7

France 37 26 24 14

Total (10 countries)

19 14 19 11

Vocational or professional?

The complexity of the distinction between vocation and profession at tertiary education levels can further be illustrated by referring to the recent VET Communication (Bruges) in which it is argued that the demand for specific professions is one of the factors that determine the attractiveness of VET for individual learners.

However, as examples of professions currently in demand, only traditional craft trades, such as carpenters, welders and plumbers, are mentioned.

USA

22WFS 7-09

21st Century Skills USA (Ralph Wolff WASC )

Problem identification or articulation 1

Ability to identify new patterns of behavior or new combinations of actions

2

Integration of knowledge across different disciplines

3

Ability to originate new ideas 4

Comfort with notion of ‘no right answer’ 5

Fundamental curiosity 6

Originality and inventiveness in work 7

Problem solving 8

Changing trends in skills demands in the United States economy (Pre-employment Skills Development Strategies, OECD, 2009)

East Asia

Putting Higher Education to Work Skills and Research for Growth in East Asia (World Bank East Asia and Pacific Regional Report, 2011)

The first disconnect: Between higher education and employers (skill users)

The second disconnect: Between higher education and companies (research users)

The third disconnect: Between higher education and research institutions

The fourth disconnect: Among higher education institutions themselves and between these institutions and training providers (horizontal disconnect across skill providers)

The fifth disconnect: Between higher education and earlier education (schools) (vertical disconnect across skill providers)

East Asia Importance of Skills – Empl0yers (World Bank East Asia and Pacific Regional Report 2011)

Skills Viet Cambo Indone Malay Philippi Thaila Mong Average

Technical 7 4 5 7 7 5 5 5.7

Communication

6 5 7 5 5 4 4 5.1

English 5 5 3 4 3 7 7 4.9

Problem solving

- 7 5 4 6 4 3 4.8

Leadership - 6 4 4 6 4 4 4.7

Information technology

- 3 4 6 3 6 6 4.7

Creativity - - - 6 5 4 4 4.6

Work Attitude

7 5 6 4 4 3 3 4.6

Australia

Australia Workforce Futures A National Workforce Development Strategy, 2010

The eight identified skills are: Communication skills that contribute to productive and

harmonious relations between employees and customers Teamwork skills that contribute to productive working

relationships and outcomes Problem solving skills that contribute to productive outcomes Self-management skills that contribute to employee satisfaction

and growth Planning and organising skills that contribute to long-term and

short-term strategic planning Technology skills that contribute to effective execution of tasks Life-long learning skills that contribute to ongoing improvement

and expansion in employee and company operations and outcomes Initiative and enterprise skills that contribute to innovative

outcomes.

Professional identity

Activities, skills and practices

What do employers worldwide want?

Is it? Techniques SkillsDispersed practicesIntegrated practices

Techniques and SkillsRelated to tasks

Technique is a way of doing something in the sense of a procedure. They are usually difficult to acquire and require characteristic of persistence and attention to detail

Skill is a description of how a task is done. A skill is the use of methods or techniques

Skilfulness is to act in a praiseworthy way

Practice as a temporally unfolding and spatially dispersed nexus of doings and sayings (Schatski, 2008)

A practice is a nexus of doings and sayings (activities) Basic activities take place without the actor having to do something else: they are actions a person can perform without further ado

A practice embraces all the activities contained in a teleological hierarchies

A practice links activities organised by practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structures.

Integrative and dispersed practices related to purposes and ends

Integrative practices are ‘the more complex practices found in and constitutive of particular domains of social life’ e.g. cooking, farming or business.

Dispersed practices include ‘describing… explaining, questioning, reporting, examining and imagining’ and they can take place within and across different domains or subfields.

(Schatzki, 1996)

Higher Skills?

I suggest that employers are looking for integrated practices for adoption in specific workplace.  These are deconstructed into an ill defined term - skills - so as to di-situationalised practices and the site of these practices.

Higher skills provision for employers fail because at that level these skills are themselves diverse practices and cannot be unbundled because they are social, and are situationally specific