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MEASURING THE SKILLS OF THE ADULT POPULATION Presentation to International Skills Forum event entitled Skills for Inclusive

and Sustainable Growth in Developing Asia-Pacific: An International Consultative Forum 12-13 December 2011 ADB Headquarters, Manila, Philippines What is the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)? Strong and shared growth increasingly depend on the capacity of nations to develop, deploy and upgrade the skills of their workforce. PIAAC is the OECDs measurement and benchmarking tool to track the acquisition and development of foundation skills (i.e., literacy, numeracy and problem solving), their use in the workplace, and how skills feed into better jobs, higher productivity, and ultimately better economic and social outcomes. Specific policy dimensions examined by PIAAC include: the performance of education and training systems as well as informal skill acquisition, equity in skill development and intergenerational mobility, skills match and mismatch, foundation skills and the economic and social outcomes of migrants, and the capacity of the population to cope in technology-rich environments. PIAAC interviews a sample of adults aged 16-65 years who undertake an assessment of foundation skills in their own homes. It also collects a broad range of information on the antecedents, outcomes and contexts of skill development and use. In addition, as part of the assessment of literacy, an assessment of the mastery of the basic building blocks of reading is administered to respondents with low literacy to provide detailed information about this important group. Currently, 25 countries from Europe, North America and the Asia/Pacific region are in the process of collecting data as part of the first round of the study. A number of additional countries have expressed an interest in the study including in Asia (e.g., Indonesia, China, and India) and a second round is now underway. Some adaptation of the instruments is planned for low and midlle income countries. Future rounds of PIAAC, possibly in 2017 and 2022, will aim to adapt further the measurement instruments to increase their relevance to a broader range of emerging and developing countries. PIAAC has been developed as a computer-based assessment. However, a pencil and paper version of the assessment has been developed which focuses on the assessment of literacy for implementation in countries in which relatively high proportions of the population have little familiarity with computers. The purpose of this presentation is to provide information on the value and relevance of adapting PIAAC for Asian countries. The value and relevance of PIAAC to Asia Foundation skills such as literacy, numeracy, problem solving and the capacity to manage information in technology rich environments are becoming increasingly important determinants of the success and well-being of individuals in modern societies and economies as well as of the performance of the economy as a whole. While low skilled jobs will not disappear, technological change, particularly, the increasing presence of ICTs in all areas of life together with changes in the structure of employment is leading to a growing demand for higher-level cognitive skills involving the understanding, interpretation, analysis and communication of complex information. As countries move up the value-added chain of production, employment shifts away from jobs involving routine cognitive and manual tasks, 1

towards jobs involving tasks such as expert thinking (solving problems for which there are no rule-based solutions) and complex communication (interacting with others to acquire information, explain it, or persuade others of its implications for action). Policy makers in Asia face a range of challenges in developing a workforce that will support on-going economic growth and increasing productivity and the transformation of their economies. While some progress has been made to improve rates of literacy among adults, many adults remain illiterate, particularly in low and low-middle income countries (see Appendix Table 2 in UIL, 2009). Similarly, while levels of educational attainment of the adult population are increasing, many reamin without any primary education or with only low levels (see Appendix Table 2 in UIL, 2009). A key challenge in many Asian countries is, therefore, to foster skill development among adults beyond the age of formal schooling. Implementation of PIAAC in Asian countries would add considerably to the information on the foundation skills of the respective populations which is currently available to policy makers. Firstly, PIAAC provides a direct measure of these skills which covers the full spectrum of ability in the adult population. In conjunction with information on educational attainment, this will provide a more complete picture of the human capital stock in Asian countries than has been available before. Secondly, participation in PIAAC will allow the benchmarking of the performance of Asian countries with the results from other participating countries. Thirdly, PIAAC collects a range of information regarding the background of respondents, their education and training history, their current activities (work and everyday life) and other outcomes such as their general health. From this point of view, PIAAC will aid policy makers in Asian countries to understand better the factors that facilitate the acquisition and maintenance of foundation skills as well as the impacts that proficiency has on access to employment, income, on-going education as well as other outcomes such as health. Measures of skills presently available and used in OECD countries as well as developing and emerging economies focus primarily on quantitative proxies for skills such as years of education or the level of qualification attained. However, these quantitative measures are based on the assumption that each additional year of education adds the same amount of skills in all countries and that qualifications acquired in different countries equip people with exactly the same amount of skills. The fact is that more schooling does not necessarily mean more skills, and a large share of students in developing countries and emerging economies are leaving primary school with low levels of literacy. Quantity and qualification-based measures also ignore the fact that skills can be acquired informally and outside the education and training system through work experience and that skills decline over time if they are not used. While investment in education and training are key, foundation skills can be developed via other channels that are not necessarily well understood for policy purposes. In many developing and emerging economies, skills are often acquired informally, on the job and through experience. This has to be taken into consideration when assessing the skill supply, something that PIAAC will be able to do. In summary, PIAAC will offer a snapshot of the level and distribution or variability of proficiency in foundation skills in participating countries. It will be possible to look at the performance of key subgroups of the population and, depending on the sample size, literacy levels by geographic region. The estimates of proficiency will be able to be compared with those of other participating countries. Additionally, PIAAC will enable a better understanding of how skills are acquired, used and translate into economic and social outcomes. While these methods are complex and resource intensive, they increase our knowledge on skills considerably and can set standards for future development of skills measures including for emerging and developing countries.

References UIL (2009). Global Report on Adult Learning and Education. Hamburg: Unesco Institute for Lifelong Learning.

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